Last week, we hosted the best debate of the election. Sam Harris is voting for Kamala Harris. Ben Shapiro is voting for Donald Trump. They spoke for two hours, with Bari moderating, about why. Click here to listen to, watch, or read it.
Today, we’re happy to publish an essay by each of them, in which they distill their closing arguments. Read Ben’s here, and scroll down to read Sam’s, which originally appeared on his Substack.
There is a positive case to be made for the candidacy of Kamala Harris, but it is not as compelling as the negative one that has been building these last nine years against her opponent, Donald Trump. When I think of Harris winning the presidency this week, it’s like watching a film of a car crash run in reverse: the windshield unshatters; stray objects and bits of metal converge; and defenseless human bodies are hurled into states of perfect repose. Normalcy descends out of chaos. In the same way, many of the reasons to hope for a future Harris administration bear the signs of a peculiar, counterfactual origin: the appalling prospect of Trump winning a second term as president of the United States.