A Theater Critic Reviews the Harris-Trump Debate

The theatrical event of 2024 was not on Broadway, but a small stage in Philadelphia. It featured just four actors and no live audience — spare the millions of Americans nervously watching from home. They know as well as you that the debate between former President Donald Trump and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris will have consequences that will reverberate through American history long after we are all dead.

How could it not? The last presidential debate, held in the unseasonable month of June, resulted in a sitting president being ousted as the standard-bearer of his party. Trump vanquished Joe Biden (or more accurately, Biden revealed himself to be unfit for another four years in office), leading to a remarkable series of events in which Harris replaced him at the top of the ticket. It’s the kind of KO that rarely happens at presidential debates, and Trump had every reason to go into this night feeling confident. But Kamala Harris is no Joe Biden, as she made abundantly clear last night.

Harris started strong, marching straight up to Trump with an extended hand as he sheepishly slunk behind his podium. She wore a black suit with a white scarf shirt, as if she was starring in a demure production of Hamilton. It made an elegant contrast to Trump, who wore his standard boxy blue suit and red tie. With Trump, you know exactly what you’re going to get, which proved to be both a selling point and his Achilles’ heel.

The boldest costume choice came from moderator Linsey Davis, clad in a gray striped suit fitted with outsize shoulder pads that wouldn’t look out of place at a New Wave concert. Her fellow moderator David Muir opted for an inconspicuous navy suit and hair so shellacked that it could act as a helmet should he be suddenly called away to report from the Donbas.

Of course, the moderators were only supporting players in this drama, and not ones that were strictly crucial to the plot. No matter the question, Trump managed to weave around to his favorite issues: tariffs, inflation, and immigration. He closed his eyes as Harris spoke early in the debate, seemingly bored. But she eventually managed to wake him up.

“People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” the Vice President said as Trump’s eyebrows lifted incredulously. It was a strategic provocation that came during the segment about illegal immigration, arguably Trump’s strongest issue and her weakest. Yet he took the bait, swatting away a question about the border bill to talk about how much better his rallies are than hers. And then things really went off the rails.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump claimed about Haitian immigrants in the Ohio town. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there.” When Muir challenged Trump’s statement, noting that city managers in Springfield have received no substantiated reports of pet-ingestion, Trump shot back, “Well, I’ve seen people on television,” reminding us all of that cable-news-addicted uncle who will not be dissuaded by any amount of evidence. For Harris, it was mission accomplished.

This exchange is destined to be the most talked-about moment of the debate for its sheer outrageousness. The devouring of domestic animals is a plotline that only a Sarah Kane-obsessed undergraduate playwrighting student would ever attempt onstage, and it was painful to watch Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, defend it in the post-show spin room. I imagine it won’t be the last time he is questioned about it. Expect this story to stick around and get weirder, while the memes just keep rolling along.

That aside, the night wasn’t a total disaster for Trump. He’s the greatest salesman of my lifetime with a talent for layering lie upon insinuation so that it is impossible for his opponents to respond to each point. This is the tapestry he weaves.

“They get all this money from all of these different countries,” he said of President Biden and his son. “Why did he get three-and-a-half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife?” Harris was never going to waste precious airtime defending the man she just replaced at the top of the ticket, which allowed this allegation to go unchallenged. He may not have been calling Harris corrupt directly, but guilt by association is enough, especially in a time when Americans have good reason to suspect that all politicians are on the take.

“She’s been there for three-and-a-half years,” Trump blustered. “They’ve had three-and-a-half years to fix the border. They’ve had three-and-a-half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?” This was Trump’s most effective line of attack, but it only came in the closing statement, which was delivered in his stream-of-grievances style that Americans either love or loathe. After a decade of Trump as the main character in our politics, I highly doubt anyone is truly undecided — no matter what they’re telling producers at CNN.

As with all theater, politics is governed by the tyranny of expectations. When a show arrives on a wave of hype, it is easy to walk away disappointed. Similarly, a show can benefit from low expectations by simply turning in a halfway decent performance. Kamala Harris gave a better showing last night than we’ve come to expect from her Veep-like interviews. She certainly delivered a better performance than her predecessor, an admittedly low bar.

Meanwhile, Trump, whose gift has always been an ability to speak plainly (if circuitously) about the issues and to feel unburdened by the rules of political decorum, looked awfully hamstrung when he was unable to offer a straight answer about whether he would veto a national abortion ban. Could it be that a decade at the center of American politics has transformed Trump into just a regular old politician?

Try as Trump did to tie her to Biden, Harris’s strongest appeal was a promise to move on from the age of the political dinosaurs, deploying the phrase “turn the page” four times. We’ll see in November if Americans are genuinely ready to start the next chapter.

At least one pop superstar clearly is. Minutes after the debate ended, she took to Instagram with an endorsement of Harris signed, “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.” Americans love their pets, and I sincerely doubt that the Trump-Vance ticket will be able to win back legions of pissed-off cat owners with lurid stories about pet abductions in Ohio — but that won’t stop them from trying.