From the courtroom to the debate hall, Vice President Kamala Harris the prosecutor tried to put former President Donald Trump on defense during their first and potentially only debate before November’s election, something President Joe Biden could not execute.
Harris prosecuted her case against Trump on Tuesday in Philadelphia in personal terms, provoking him to be a less presidential version of himself by alluding to his crowd sizes and how world leaders are laughing at him. At the same time, Harris did not emerge unscathed, appearing perturbed by Trump parroting her “I’m speaking” line from her 2020 vice presidential debate and later telling her to be quiet.
2024 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE LIVE UPDATES: TRUMP AND HARRIS FACE OFF IN ABC SHOWDOWN
Harris and Trump, in their first-ever meeting, cross-examined each other on the economy, immigration, and abortion policy for 90 minutes at the National Constitution Center during the ABC-hosted debate after an awkward Harris-initiated initial handshake.
Harris tried to portray herself as a positive, forward-looking, and younger candidate as she appealed to independent and undecided voters. Meanwhile, Trump sought to tether her to Biden in the hope his record would drag her down as he highlighted her flip-flopping on policy positions she adopted during her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, the last time she ran for president.
“Donald Trump actually has no plan for you because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you,” Harris said during her opening remarks, introducing her economic plan and criticizing Trump’s for creating an in-kind “sales tax.”
“That’s just a soundbite they told her to say,” Trump replied. “She doesn’t have a plan. She copied Biden’s plan, and it’s, like, four sentences. Like, ‘Run, Spot, Run.’”
Harris went on to remind Trump she is now the 2024 Democratic nominee, saying, “You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me.”
It was Trump’s last debate against Biden that set the stage for his first meeting with Harris on Tuesday. Biden’s stumbling for answers and mental lapses on the June debate stage sparked a chorus of Democrats demanding Biden step down, citing concerns about his age and mental acuity. With Harris stepping up as the new nominee, she went on offense against Trump and made the case for new generational leadership.
Since 2020, the last time Trump ran for president, his own record now includes the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the Supreme Court‘s repeal of abortion precedent Roe v. Wade, and his civil and criminal prosecutions, all of which Harris litigated during the more Trump-dominated debate.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said. “We cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election.”
“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” Trump responded. “They say I’m a threat to democracy — they’re the threat to democracy.”
Trump, who mentioned Harris’s “Marxist” economist father, would also not commit to blocking a federal abortion ban, conceding he did not “discuss it” with Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). Last month, Vance told NBC News that Trump would veto an abortion prohibition.
For her part, Harris would not respond to Trump’s direct question on whether she backs late-term abortions to the ninth month.
Ed Lee, director of Emory University’s Alben W. Barkley Forum for Debate, Deliberation, and Dialogue, admitted he was surprised Trump raised Hungarian Prime Minister’s Viktor Orbán endorsement.
“However, it is consistent with his desire to be seen as strong and decisive,” Lee told the Washington Examiner. “While Harris should be in a better position by talking more about the bipartisan immigration bill and the ‘Trump tax,’ she controlled a lot of this debate by getting Trump to talk about issues unrelated to inflation. She was clearly getting under his skin. The interruptions and dismissal of the moderator did not look good for him.”
Republican strategist Cesar Conda agreed Trump “scored points early on the economy but never mentioned inflation again for well over an hour.”
“She has an extreme liberal record but Trump missed so many opportunities to clearly define her extreme views and positions,” Conda told the Washington Examiner.
Both campaigns were concerned about what repercussions Harris’s gender and race as the first minority woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee would have on the debate, especially after Trump told the National Association of Black Journalists in July that Harris’s embrace of her blackness was political opportunism. Some of his interactions with 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during their debates, including calling her a “nasty woman,” became viral moments that election cycle too.
To that end, Trump was helped by the debate’s time limits and muted microphones, as well as having no one in the room to pander to, though he did promote a disputed story that illegal immigrants are eating pets in Ohio. At times, both his and Harris’s complaints about one another could be overheard, despite the muted mics, with Harris using the television split screen to convey her emotions, while Trump stopped looking at her completely.
But Trump was not helped by the moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who pressed Trump on his policy positions, including on foreign policy and Obamacare, followed up, and then fact checked. Yet they did push Harris on her flip-flops.
“This wasn’t a debate between Trump and Harris,” Conda, the Republican strategist, said. “It was a debate between Trump and the ABC moderators. It was a draw between Trump and the Harris-ABC moderator team.”
Before the debate, the Harris campaign downplayed expectations for the vice president, describing the Democrat as the underdog and Trump as being “ready” for his seventh presidential debate, the most of any candidate in modern history. After it, campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon encouraged Trump to accept a second debate, which Trump expressed an openness to in a rare post-debate spin room gaggle.
“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in a statement. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign emphasized what was at stake for Harris with the debate as polls, including last weekend’s New York Times-Siena College survey, demonstrate that her summer momentum may be slowing as the season changes into fall, with her aides having protected her from the press and unscripted moments so far.
“Kamala’s vision of America was a dark reminder of the oppressive, big government policies of Joe Biden that she wants to continue,” Trump campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in their own post-debate statement. “High inflation, a porous border that allows criminals and terrorists to flood across, and being soft on crime — that is what Kamala represents.”
After the debate, Harris is scheduled to travel to New York for Sept. 11 memorial services before heading to North Carolina on Thursday and Pennsylvania on Friday. Simultaneously, Trump will be in Arizona on Thursday and California on Friday.
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Harris had higher stakes and was more at risk before the debate because “she’s much less defined and this was her first presidential debate ever,” according to University of Michigan debate director Aaron Kall.
“Given all this, Harris performed more admirably on the stage, but the true winner and impact may not be known until the coming days or weeks, as social media and news cycles can impact voter processing of what actually happened,” Kall told the Washington Examiner. “If Harris follows up tonight’s solid performance with a blitzing round of interviews and speeches, she could take advantage of a reframed race and provide the campaign with some momentum heading into the final stretch.”
