Vice President Kamala Harris met former president Donald Trump in a sparring match, moderated by ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis. Harris aimed to keep Trump on the ropes.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” she said, in an attempt to bruise her Republican rival’s ego.
Trump platformed a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” — that they’re “eating the pets of the people that live there.”
When Trump was asked to discuss race, he repeated his accusation that Harris plays up parts of her identity when doing so is politically desirable.
“I think that it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” Harris responded
As of right now, it’s unclear whether there will be a second debate. Harris’ team is goading Trump into another round, while the former president has said that he must “think about it.”
Here are some of the other key takeaways from Tuesday’s showdown:
Trump was on defensive over abortion
Harris spoke about the extreme challenges that pregnant women, including those who have survived rape, have faced in their pursuit of health care since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“The government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris declared, stressing that the Republican nominee has called himself the “most pro-life president.”
Trump said that states permit the killing of a baby after birth, which is not accurate. He also contended, “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted [abortion] to be brought back to the states” — another false claim, per PolitiFact.
Harris attempted to tie Trump to Project 2025
It took minutes for the conservative manifesto known as Project 2025 to come up — and for Trump to distance himself from it.
He denied that he’s involved with Project 2025, with Harris challenging that assertion. At least 140 of Trump’s closest associates created the blueprint, according to a CNN analysis, and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, has deep ties to The Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded it.
Trump sidestepped questions about January 6
The moderators pressed Trump about his actions on Jan. 6, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Multiple times, they pushed Trump to take responsibility for his actions on that day, which he did not do.
At one point, he asserted that he told his acolytes to behave “peacefully and patriotically.”
Trump tried to blame the assault on Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and on Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Harris, for her part, attempted to convince viewers that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 weren’t anomalous.
“Let’s remember Charlottesville,” she said, referring to the deadly white nationalist rally that Trump characterized as having had “very fine people on both sides.” “Let’s remember that when it came to the Proud Boys, a militia, the former president said, ‘Stand back and stand by.’”
Harris leaned into a message of economic prosperity
The first question of the night focused on the economy, a strong area for Trump, and a topic that Harris has hit hard in recent weeks.
Trump said on Tuesday that neither Harris nor President Joe Biden knows how to handle the economy. In response, Harris said, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden.”
The vice president revisited her middle-class upbringing, underscoring that she was the sole person on the stage who grew up in a middle-class household and arguing that, unlike her opponent, she wants to generate an “opportunity economy.”
This has been one of Harris’ refrains on the campaign trail.
Trump went tough on crime
“Crime here is up and through the roof!” Trump proclaimed on Tuesday.
Crime did rise during the pandemic, but, as PolitiFact noted, “the FBI’s preliminary data for 2023 and multiple non-governmental efforts to track crime data in 2023 and 2024 have found a decline in violent crime since the last annual FBI data was released.”
Trump also alleged that immigrants drive up crime in the U.S. Per analysts, immigrants are 30% less likely to be incarcerated than white U.S.-born individuals.
This story has been updated.
