Why Kamala Harris’ campaign is fighting to have live mics at next week’s debate against Trump in Philadelphia

The ABC presidential debate in Philadelphia is less than a week away and the battle over the microphones is still not over. At least not for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.

Harris’ team is still pushing to have live mics for the duration of the vice president’s debate with former President Donald Trump, likely seeking to portray an unfettered look at the Republican nominee, who could interrupt Harris or articulate falsehoods at any given moment on the stage at the National Constitution Center on Sept. 10.

“We are running for President of the United States. Let’s debate in a transparent way — with the microphones on the whole time,” Harris wrote in a post on X Saturday.

The Trump campaign wants the mics to be muted when a candidate is not speaking, which would muffle interruptions from Trump when Harris is speaking.

Harris’ prosecutorial debating style has typically fared well in creating off-the-cuff, and sometimes viral, moments on the national stage the last several years, whether she was debating former Vice President Mike Pence behind a plexiglass, pandemic-era partition or sharing the stage with almost a dozen other Democrats. She could be hoping to create more notable moments at next week’s debate.

Here’s how Harris has dealt with interruptions and high-pressure moments at debates in the past:

Harris coined this viral line while debating Pence during the 2020 vice presidential debate.

What spurred this moment was Pence interrupting Harris’ answer about COVID-19. “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” Harris repeated throughout the night when Pence interrupted her.

At one point, Pence interrupted Harris’ response on President Joe Biden’s tax plan. Harris responded, “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can then have a conversation, OK?”

These moments made national headlines as one of the key moments of the vice presidential debate and even inspired a Saturday Night Live skit dedicated to the line (and the infamous fly that landed on Pence’s head during the debate).

The instance further highlighted Harris’ skills as a debater and served as the most recent debate moment in which Harris seemed unfazed by a spontaneous remark from an opponent. In the present day, Harris “is ready to deal with Trump’s constant lies and interruptions in real time,” Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, said in a statement.

Unmuted mics have created some quotable instances for other Democrats in the 2020 debate cycle, specifically when Biden said, “Will you shut up, man?” when Trump continuously interrupted him during a presidential debate.

Harris showed she could cut through the noise on the debate stage as far back as the second 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate.

It all started when then-candidate Biden and U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California got into a back-and-forth about new vs. old leadership in the Democratic Party. From there, a squabble erupted on stage and Harris tried to break it up.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table,” Harris told her fellow Democrats, resulting in applause erupting from the audience and even garnering a small clap from Biden.

This served as one of Harris’ headlining moments on the debate stage that year, catching the eyes of pundits and the public before she eventually became Biden’s running mate later that election cycle.

One of Harris’ biggest opponents in 2019 was former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii who sought to target Harris’ record as California’s attorney general.

Gabbard has since left the Democratic Party and is a member of Trump’s 2024 transition team while helping the former president with his debate prep. During a Democratic primary debate in July 2019, she said she was “concerned” about Harris’ record as attorney general.

The former representative cited what she claimed to be Harris’ policies on marijuana and bail at that time. Gabbard also alleged that Harris “blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so.”

Some of Gabbard’s claims were misleading or lacked context, according to fact-check analysis from PolitiFact. Harris quickly responded to this swipe on her record, though some thought her response was lackluster and donors wished the campaign had a more sharp response to Gabbard’s remarks.

“I am proud of that work,” Harris said at the debate of her efforts in criminal justice reform. “And I am proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches or be in a legislative body and give speeches on a floor, but actually doing the work of being in the position to use that power that I had to reform a system that is badly in need of reform.”