Sensitive Issues and Outrageous Claims

The most anticipated 90 minutes of the presidential campaign are over, and the microphones have been turned off — for good.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ first and potentially only showdown with former President Donald Trump was a start-to-finish offensive from Harris that drew often irate, inane responses from Trump in a closely watched moment two months before Election Day.

Here’s what we remember most about the Harris-Trump debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Harris irritated Trump

Harris took a direct swipe at Trump from the start of the evening, casting the former president as a fringe candidate and provoking him by talking about things that irritate him, like supporters leaving his rallies early, world leaders calling him a “disgrace” and criminal cases against him. She called him “weak” and said 81 million voters had dismissed him. “It’s obvious he’s having a very hard time processing this,” she said.

Trump took the bait several times and attacked even with his microphone turned off (though moderators turned it on almost every time he intervened).

One early example is Harris saying that “people are starting to leave his rallies early,” and moderators asked Trump about immigration.

But instead of talking about one of his strongest points, Trump veered off topic from his campaign events, calling them “the most incredible rallies in political history.” He falsely said that Harris rally attendees were bused in and paid to attend, and then claimed that President Joe Biden “hates her. Can’t stand her.”

» READ MORE: Live Coverage: Harris-Trump Debate in Philadelphia

Trump tried to paint Harris as a tender candidate. But for 90 minutes, Harris kept Trump on the ropes. She cast him as a self-absorbed leader who “loves[s] strong men instead of caring about democracy.” She said Russian President Vladimir Putin would “eat” Trump “for lunch.”

For Trump, one of the biggest questions heading into the debate was whether he could maintain discipline and stay on topic. There were multiple moments when Harris challenged him to show his belligerent side, alienating some voters.

After the debate, Trump personally met with members of the media, an event typically reserved for campaign representatives rather than the candidates themselves.

He ignored shouted questions about whether his presence indicated concerns about his performance, claiming it was his “best debate yet” and criticising the ABC moderators, saying the debate was “basically three on one”.

Harris changes her mind on Trump’s outrageous claims, tries to appeal to the center

Trump spent much of the debate portraying Harris as too liberal, at one point calling her a “Marxist,” but the vice president clearly played to the center. She said she and running mate Tim Walz own guns, boasted about their Republican support and referred to “the late, great John McCain,” the 2008 GOP presidential nominee.

Trump was much less concerned with winning over moderate supporters. Perhaps most tellingly, Trump expanded on a story from this week about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio that has been thoroughly debunked. “They eat cats. They eat the pets of the people who live there,” Trump falsely claimed.

Harris responded to the outlandish claim by citing her support for the Republican Party, naming former GOP White House staff members who have endorsed her, including former Vice President Dick Cheney.

» READ MORE: What is the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump about?

When Trump declined to answer a question on Jan. 6, 2021, about whether he would do anything differently, Harris suggested that Republicans discouraged by Trump’s election lies might vote against him.

“It’s time to turn the page,” she said. “And if that was a bridge too far for you, well, there’s a place for you in our campaign.”

And when Trump was asked about his comments suggesting that Harris — who is Black and of South Asian descent — had recently “become a Black person” for political gain, the former president appeared to double down, saying, “whatever she wants to be, that’s fine with me.”

Harris tried to use it as a unifying moment, running through Trump’s history of racially divisive remarks and saying most Americans “want something better.”

“We don’t want an approach that constantly tries to divide us,” she said, “especially on the basis of race.”

Both candidates have addressed their most sensitive issues — with varying degrees of success.

Asked at the start of the debate whether Americans were doing better economically than they were four years ago, Harris sidestepped the question and instead emphasized that she had a better economic plan for the future.

Polls show voters trust Trump more on the economy by about 10 percentage points, and Trump pressed that point Tuesday, accusing Harris — linking her to the Biden administration — of causing inflation. Inflation has slowed from its peak, but prices remain high.

“People can’t go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else,” Trump said. “People in our country are dying because of what they did.”

While the economy has shown low unemployment, Americans remain frustrated by the inflated costs of everyday items. And in Pennsylvania, job growth has been slower than in other states.

Harris has tried to respond by portraying Trump’s economic plan as essentially for the wealthy. She said she plans to cut taxes for billionaires and corporations, and referred to her plan to impose a blanket tariff on all imported goods as a “Trump sales tax.”

Harris was asked about several issues on which she has changed her position, including a ban on fracking, decriminalizing border crossings and mandatory gun buybacks.

She reiterated her current positions, particularly her support for fracking, but offered little detail about what prompted her ideological shift. Still, the expected focus on her flip-flops, which Trump attacked, was a passing moment, not something that dominated the debate.

And if the economy was the hardest issue for Harris to solve, abortion was for Trump. Harris was the most prominent abortion advocate in the White House, and it showed.

Trump said that by appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned convictions Roe v. Wadegave the people “what they wanted” by returning decisions about reproductive rights to the states. Harris seized on that phrase.

“Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term and are having a miscarriage, who are being denied emergency room care because health care providers are afraid they’re going to end up in jail, and she’s bleeding out in her car in a parking lot?” Harris said. “She didn’t want that.”

Trump struggled to respond, saying: “That’s a lie. I’m not signing a ban. And there’s no reason to sign a ban. Because we got what everybody wanted.”

Asked if he would veto a federal abortion ban, Trump declined to answer and dismissed comments by his vice presidential candidate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, suggesting that Trump would veto a federal ban.

“I haven’t talked to JD about it,” Trump said.

Trump spent most of his time trying to link Harris to Biden

Trump spent much of the night attacking Biden and describing him as an absentee president, saying he “spends all his time at the beach” and “we don’t even know if he’s president.”

And Trump tried to link Harris to the president, saying: “She’s worse than Biden. In my opinion, I think she’s the worst president in the history of our country. She goes down in history as the worst vice president in the history of our country.”

He also blamed Biden for the crisis at the border and described immigrants with disparagement.

“These are the people that she and Biden have allowed into our country. And they are destroying our country,” he said. “They are dangerous. They are at the highest level of criminality. And we need to get them out.”

Separating herself from Biden is a key challenge for Harris. He is widely unpopular, but as vice president, she cannot credibly criticize his administration. She has remained largely in line with Biden disagreed with the policies but presented herself as the candidate of the future.

“You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” Harris said, responding to a question about the war in Ukraine.

She later added: “It goes without saying that I am not Joe Biden and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I am offering is a fresh generation of leadership for our country.”