Forget brat summer and demure autumn—if you’re at all plugged into this year’s election cycle, it’s the season of Dana Bash. Last week, the CNN anchor and chief political correspondent scored a sit-down with Vice President Kamala Harris, the first interview she’s done since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Bash has also interviewed the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, and perhaps most famously, she moderated the extraordinary June debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump that changed the course of the election: Biden visibly struggled throughout the evening, often providing incoherent answers and appearing physically weak; less than a month later, he dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.
The morning before her Harris interview aired (the anchor said at the time she was feeling “nervous and excited” for the world to see the conversation), Bash spoke with ELLE.com to reflect on that monumental debate night. “At the end of the day, what we saw on the debate stage was very illuminating for voters,” Bash says. “That was our job.” See the full conversation, below.
I really feel like the meme of Wolf Blitzer with his spritzer—him enjoying his day off and then immediately getting called into work due to breaking news—that’s you and the whole CNN team this summer. Does that ring true?
[Laughs] Oh my gosh, yes. I was finally doing a quick getaway with my family at the beach, and I got the call about the Kamala Harris interview, and it was like, bye. I mean, lucky us that we have the opportunity and as political reporters to live in these times where you never know what is around the corner ever, ever, ever. Boom, a big story pops up that is the story of your lifetime. And then another story pops up that’s the story of your lifetime.
Speaking of, let’s go back a bit and talk about the debate. How did you and your co-moderator, Jake Tapper, prepare for that?
It was hundreds of hours of prep. I don’t want to say that it was hundreds of hours just with the two of us, although it could have been if I actually do the math… But [hundreds of hours] with the team. You start big: This is the pot of potential topics, and then these are the questions in the topics. Then you go through questions, and you hone them, and then you see the world change and the news change, and then you hone them again, and then it keeps going until the morning of the debate.
When we’re sitting in these rooms and debating ideas and words and topics, I have to stop myself sometimes and say, “This is amazing that we’re actually getting to do this for a living.” It’s—I believe—a public service for the American people. And we do not take it lightly. I certainly don’t.
We can now point to the debate as the inflection point that changed the trajectory of the election. What was the mood in the room as things were unfolding? Did it feel, in real time, like something historic was happening?
Yes, we saw what you saw in real time. As the debate unfolded, pretty quickly we saw that President Biden was struggling. And we didn’t know how it was going to unfold throughout that 90 minutes, never mind after the debate. But it was clear that something was happening, and we were moderating a debate that was not what we planned for.
Looking back at the debate, are there any moments that stood out to you?
When I had to ask Donald Trump three times about accepting election results. I felt like it was so important to ask not once, not twice, but a third time when he didn’t directly answer. And I do feel like as a debate moderator, by the third question, if the person isn’t going to give an answer, that’s their answer. Viewers and voters are very smart, and I think they got that.
When they were arguing about golf, and you had to jump in and get them back on track, what you were thinking?
“I can’t believe that they’re actually talking about their golf game right now. Is this actually happening?” I was thinking something like, “What is happening right now?”
Similar to what everyone at home was thinking.
I mean, it was about their golf game, but it wasn’t about their golf game. It was about everything else. It was about them as men, and it was happening through the prism of golf.
I do want to ask about the decision for you and Jake not to challenge either of the candidate’s statements in real time. Post-debate, some people were supportive of that decision, some were critical. Now that you’re on the other side, would you have done anything differently?
I do still think it was a good decision, and I wouldn’t have done anything differently. We made the decision as a network to follow the traditional debate format, because we felt it served voters best. The traditional debate format is that we as moderators are there to facilitate the debate, not participate. And my experience with debates, and Jake feels the same way, is the most successful debate is one where nobody’s talking about us. It’s up to the candidates to debate one another. That means to fact check one another if they want to.
It’s really different from having a one-on-one interview, where there’s no other person who they’re running against to say, “Wait a minute.” If we would’ve done that, if we would’ve approached this debate saying we’re fact checking, it would’ve taken the debate in a different direction. We would’ve been participants, which was the absolute opposite of what we felt was our job. At the end of the day, what we saw on the debate stage was very illuminating for voters. That was our job, and that was a job that we did for the American people.
Let’s just say I would have gotten in and said, “No, no, President Trump. The three things you just said are not true,” I really feel like that would’ve been maybe doing President Biden’s job for him. And vice versa. That’s the whole reason why there’s a debate, because we don’t need to do their jobs for them. That is literally why they’re standing there.
You’ve also been working on a book called America’s Deadliest Election about the violent 1872 election in Louisiana. There was voter suppression, and ultimately, 150 Black people were killed in what is known as the Colfax Massacre. You call the book a cautionary tale. What do you mean by that?
If you’re not focused on making sure that a fundamental right to vote is protected for everybody, things can go south very quickly. And if you don’t recognize how fragile our democratic system is… The framers and the writers of our Constitution were brilliant in so many ways, but they also assumed a lot about human nature that they weren’t entirely right about. Some things are not explicitly written, but part of a tradition that can be completely blown out of the water if you have players who don’t respect that tradition, never mind the law.
Working on that book, do you have a new perspective on how political violence has shaped this election cycle?
Absolutely. The moment Trump was shot, one of the first things I thought of was the history of the Reconstruction period, particularly in Louisiana. There were multiple assassination attempts of governors there. We think of the modern, horrible assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., going back to Abraham Lincoln. But there are so many more examples. As much as we pride ourselves on a peaceful transition of power, the truth is that our political process and political system has a pretty violent history. It’s something we have to keep in mind so we don’t repeat it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Madison is the digital deputy editor at ELLE, where she also covers news, politics, and culture. If she’s not online, she’s probably napping or trying not to fall while rock climbing.