My Debate Questions for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
Here are seven questions I would ask each presidential candidate in Tuesday night's debate.
I’d love one day to get a chance to moderate a US presidential debate. But let’s be honest: I almost certainly never will. My style of interviewing and moderating is… ahem… a little tougher than most of my (former) colleagues in the US mainstream media.
Nevertheless, I’ll be watching live on Tuesday evening as ABC News hosts perhaps the biggest presidential debate of our lifetimes, in Philadelphia, with anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis in the moderator chairs.
How many of their questions will be softballs? Are there going to be follow-ups or – whisper it quietly – fact-checks? Will the moderators, as is so often the case, launder right-wing talking points as neutral-sounding questions, on everything from border policy to foreign policy?
We’ll have to wait and see. But for now, here are the seven questions I would ask Donald Trump if I were in the moderator chair in Philly on Tuesday, as well as seven questions for Kamala Harris.
FOR DONALD TRUMP:
You said over the weekend that your plan to forcibly deport 14 million undocumented immigrants from the United States will be “bloody.” How much violence against migrants can we expect as part of what you yourself have described as “the largest deportation operation in the history” of this country? As president, will you repeat your call to shoot migrants in the legs?
The president of the United States has to swear an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Given you once called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution, how can you be trusted to swear that oath? Haven’t you disqualified yourself from the presidency?
Your felony convictions aside, a jury of your peers found you liable for sexual abuse, and a judge said what you did to writer E. Jean Carroll could be described as rape. Why are you still in this race?
You have been mocked for a rambling and incoherent non-answer you gave to a recent question on childcare policy. Would you like to take this fresh opportunity to lay out, in detail, and without going off on a tangent about tariffs, what your childcare policy is and how you plan to pay for it?
You ridiculed Joe Biden’s age and mental health. You called him “Sleepy Joe.” Yet you are now the oldest person to ever run for president of the United States, and you constantly confuse the names of your opponents (Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley; Barack Obama and Joe Biden; Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un). Isn’t it time for you to step aside for a younger, fitter replacement, too?
On Jan. 6, 2021, you encouraged your supporters to “fight like hell” at the Capitol and have since pledged to pardon those supporters who have been jailed for assaulting police officers. Multiple police officers died in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots. Have you ever apologized to the families of those police officers? If not, why not? And would you like to apologize to them tonight?
What do the letters in NATO stand for?
FOR KAMALA HARRIS: