Page 43 of 107 Days

That morning, I went for a walk-through of the actual set the studio had created for the debate.

It’s important to know every detail: what will be in your line of sight, whether the cameras will be on you when you’re not speaking, even the length of the walk to the podium.

The room was so much smaller than where we practiced.

Network aides showed me where the moderators would sit, where the digital clock would be.

Then we headed back to the hotel for what I thought would be a practice of my closing statement. A final tune-up before the real thing.

Philippe Reines surprised me by entering the room dressed as himself, not Donald Trump.

Unbeknownst to me, he and Karen Dunn had decided that the last thing I needed at that point was more intense work.

They’d cooked up something different. Philippe rose to give what I thought would be a mock Trump closing statement.

Instead, it was a comic monologue. He started by making fun of me for what he called my un-politician-like punctuality.

“What politician do you know who is ever on time? Sometimes she even gets there first!” Then he hunched his tall frame and pitched his naturally deep voice into a high register.

“I may look big and strong, but I’m really a very small, very scared little man.

” And finally, dropping the Trump character entirely, he turned and looked at me directly for the first time in five days of prep sessions.

He spoke about my strengths and ended with a twist on the “radical” label that his mock Trump had been hurling at me.

“You’re radically ready. You’ve got this!”

It was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment, and I was so grateful.

It was followed by something that I didn’t need to hear at all.

I was in my room at the hotel in Philadelphia, wrapped in a robe, fat rollers in my hair. The makeup artist had left. It was just Doug and me and my pre-debate butterflies.

I got a call that Joe Biden wanted to talk to me. I was pleased that the president had thought to give me a pre-debate pep talk.

“I’m calling to wish you good luck,” Joe said, but there was little warmth in his voice. Still, he’d thought to call.

“I love you,” I replied, smiling. “I’m about to go into the boxing ring.”

“You’re going to do fine.” Then, with barely a pause: “By the way, are you going to be back in Philadelphia between now and the election?”

Why’s he asking that? I wondered. It seemed, under the circumstances, a non sequitur. I told him I wasn’t sure. I’d certainly be back in Pennsylvania, but I’d have to check my schedule to see which locations.

“My brother called. He’s been talking to a group of real powerbrokers in Philly.” He rattled off several names. “Do you know them?”

No, I replied, thinking he was maybe going to offer to introduce me to them or call them on my behalf. But I was confused as to why he was raising this right now, on this day.

Then he got to his point. His brother had told him that those guys were not going to support me because I’d been saying bad things about him. He wasn’t inclined to believe it, he claimed, but he thought I should know in case my team had been encouraging me to put daylight between the two of us.

“Okay, well, have those guys talk to me directly,” I said. “I’d like to meet them.”

Joe then rattled on about his own former debate performances. “I beat him the other time; I wasn’t feeling well in that last one.” He continued to insist that his debate performance hadn’t hurt him with the electorate. I was barely listening.

He knew what it was like to be in my seat, getting ready to face Trump one-on-one. Indeed, he and Hillary Rodham Clinton were the only humans who knew what it was like.

The pressure I was under before I would step onto that stage was immense.

I’d just likened it to a fighter going into a boxing ring for the big prizefight.

And that’s what it felt like, only worse, because the outcome of my performance wasn’t just a win or loss for me.

It had grave consequences for the country, even for the world.

My head had to be right. I had to be completely in the game.

I just couldn’t understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself.

Distracting me with worry about hostile powerbrokers in the biggest city of the most important swing state.

Doug could see how angry and disappointed I was. “Let it go,” he said. He knew I had to redirect my focus. “Don’t worry about him. You’re dealing with Trump. Let it go.”

Sixty-seven million people witnessed what happened next.

Donald Trump and I had never met. So when he walked right to his podium, I strode past mine over to him, extended my hand, and introduced myself.

It wasn’t a tactic. I always shake hands when I meet someone for the first time.

I’d told my prep team I would do it, because it was the natural and polite thing to do.

Trump’s eyes widened; he hadn’t expected this.

He took my outstretched hand almost deferentially.

“Kamala Harris,” I said. “Let’s have a good debate.”

In rehearsals, someone suggested saying, “It’s pronounced KAmala .” But at the last minute I decided not to. It felt bitchy.

It was the last time he looked at me in the entire ninety minutes.

The small set was bathed in blue lights, with a graphic of the Constitution behind the two podiums. It was lit so that from my podium I couldn’t see anything except the impassive faces of the moderators and a massive screen featuring a countdown clock, which I glanced at every now and then to make sure I had time to land my points.

Donald Trump had won the toss and opted to give the first opening statement.

He launched right into his lies about immigrants being rapists and murderers, stealing “Black jobs.” I figured viewers would understand how demeaning and ludicrous that was, since I was right there on the stage, enjoying my Black job as vice president.

He bragged about his economic plan—his tariffs—which gave me a golden opportunity to punch right back.

I was coursing with adrenaline. I’d studied this stuff for my entire career.

I knew what those tariffs would do to the American people.

Trump’s tariffs, I said, were nothing but a national sales tax that would send prices soaring and would plunge us into a recession by the following summer.

I quoted sixteen Nobel laureate economists to back me up.

He responded with the absurd claim that I was a Marxist and disparaged my father.

I decided not to go on his turf and hoped my smile and raised eyebrow indicated how ridiculous it was.

He has a skill for going for the very personal and pulling people into a false reality, forcing them to debate nonsense.

Running after his crazy lies was a trap I was determined to avoid.

When the question turned to abortion, Trump branded our policy as “extreme” and then repeated his lie about Democratic states allowing newborns to be put to death.

There hadn’t been any real-time fact-checking in Joe Biden’s debate, but this time, to their credit, the moderators cut in to say that there was no state in which such a practice was allowed.

No matter what question the moderators asked, Trump tried to turn it back to his scaremongering of an immigrant “invasion.” I pointed out that he’d killed the bipartisan bill that would have strengthened the border because he “would rather run on a problem than fix a problem,” and I said that his rantings had become so rambling and tedious that people leave his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.

His obsession with his crowd sizes led him to take this bait. He had no good explanation as to why he had killed the bill, so he embarked on his “eating the pets” rant. I could not believe he was saying it. The cameras caught my look of incredulity.

I did have some clue that it might have been on his mind.

Kirsten and Brian had noticed that when Trump deplaned in Philly, Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who had been identified as a proponent of this garbage, was traveling with him.

Apparently, as the last thing he heard, it had stuck in his head.

It served to make my point about how unhinged he had become.

Once again, the moderators stepped in to say that this claim that Haitians had stolen and killed pets for food had been debunked by none other than the Springfield, Ohio, city manager.

“Talk about extreme,” I interjected. It’s his familiar tactic. Say the crazy. Everyone will dive on it. That will be the headline, the distraction. They will follow the heat instead of, for instance, his policy on tariffs.

When Trump tried to claim that crime was rising under our administration when it was actually falling, I answered that it was “rich” for someone who had been prosecuted and convicted of numerous felonies to be positioning himself as a champion of law and order.

I heard him audibly gasp when I mentioned his convictions.

He shot back that I had been in favor of defunding the police.

Another lie. Even though my mic was off, I said, “That’s not true. ”

He heard me and snapped, “I’m talking now.”

“Don’t lie,” I countered. The camera was on me then and you didn’t need to be a lip-reader to understand what I’d said.

We were not allowed to interact with anyone during the commercial breaks. Trump walked off the stage in one direction, I went the other. I took a moment in the wings and then went back to the podium, alone in my head, watching the seconds flash by on the massive clock until I could reengage.

There was little he said that night that I hadn’t gamed out. But there were spontaneous moments where my adrenaline-flooded synapses fired off retorts I came up with on the spot.

When Trump tried to justify his bogus claim that the 2020 election had been stolen, I pointed out that this was a man who had been fired by eighty-one million Americans and “clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

Another moment came as he attacked us on a vulnerability: the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It was important that people understood the origins of that tragedy.

It began with the disastrous deal he’d struck with the Taliban, committing us to an impossibly rapid exit date.

It infuriated me that he had invited the Taliban—murderous terrorists, torturers, heinous oppressors of women—to Camp David, where true statesmen had worked to create real peace.

I gestured toward him to reinforce the contrast. “And this…” I could feel the retort forming itself on my lips.

I confess that sometimes I have a salty mouth.

I keep it in check on most occasions. But the adrenaline was taking over.

In a long pause, I just managed to stifle the name I so badly wanted to call him.

“And this… former president, as president, invited them to Camp David.”

Even though I hadn’t actually said it, plenty of people filled in the blank. Later, the comedian Wanda Sykes would remark that I’d called the former president a “mutherfuckah” to his face, without using the word.

When the debate ended, I genuinely had no idea how I’d done.

I felt like the survivor in the aftermath of a bomb blast, barely able to hear what was being said to me for the whooshing in my ears.

I could see Doug’s face, swimming in front of me as he came up on the stage.

He was talking, but I couldn’t take in what he said.

I registered the fact that he was smiling.

Well then, I thought. I must’ve done okay.