By Maegan Vazquez
(c) 2024 , The Washington Post
Former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris participated in their first and potentially only debate against one another on Tuesday, marking their first time facing off since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.
During the debate in Philadelphia, which was hosted by ABC News and co-moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis, Harris made a clear effort to get under Trump’s skin by talking about the small size of his crowds, Project 2025 and his ongoing legal battles. Trump demonstrated restraint during the beginning of the event but grew increasingly loud in rebutting the vice president, who largely pivoted when pressed by the moderators on her policy record.
Although microphones were muted when the responding candidate was speaking, there were still interruptions among the candidates talking over one another and the moderators.
The Harris campaign also announced after Tuesday’s debate a desire for a second matchup with Trump before the November elections.
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“Kamala Harris – let’s have a good debate.”
At the start of Tuesday’s debate, Harris walked directly up to Trump and toward his podium, extended her hand and said, “Kamala Harris – let’s have a good debate.”
“Nice to see you. Have fun,” Trump told his opponent.
“Thank you,” Harris responded.
It’s not uncommon for presidential debate participants to greet one another onstage, but Tuesday night marked the first time Trump and Harris had ever met in person, Muir noted. It was also the first time the Democratic candidate introduced herself to an opponent who had repeatedly botched the pronunciation of her name on the campaign trail.
Unlike past debates where the audience typically would clap as candidates take the stage, there was no audience at Tuesday’s event, making their terse attempt at being cordial all that viewers at home could hear.
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“I have concepts of a plan.”
When Trump was asked if he has a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which he previously campaigned on but failed to achieve while in office, the former president initially said his campaign is “looking at different plans.”
“If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population less money and be better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it. But until then, I’d run it as good as it can be run,” Trump said.
Davis, the co-moderator, followed up and pressed the former president on whether he had a plan, and Trump responded, “I have concepts of a plan.”
“I’m not president right now. But if we come up with something – I would only change it if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive. And there are concepts and options we have to do that. And you’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future,” he added.
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“They’re eating the pets.”
Trump doubled down on a false and dehumanizing claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who came into the country during the Biden-Harris administration are injuring and eating Americans’ pets.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump claimed. “And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
When Muir pushed back, saying that the city manager of Springfield has said there were no credible reports of such claims, Trump refused to concede.
“I’ve seen people on television … the people on television claimed my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump said, interrupting Muir. “So maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”
Responding to Trump, Harris laughed and said, “Talk about extreme.”
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“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
Trump’s response to a question about abortion prompted one moderator, Davis, to clarify that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
Trump had been asked why women should trust him on the issue of abortion when he has changed his position so many times. The former president did not directly address the question and responded by making the unfounded claim that “the plan is … they have abortion in the ninth month. … Because they’re radical. The Democrats are radical in that.”
He referred to “the previous governor of West Virginia,” who he claimed “said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.” Trump seemed to be misattributing and mischaracterizing comments made by then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) in 2019.
Northam, a pediatric neurologist, said in an interview at the time that late-term abortion procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Northam’s office later clarified that he was talking about prognosis and medical treatment, not ending the life of a delivered baby. But the comments sparked outrage among conservatives and have been used as a political cudgel by Trump for years.
In Tuesday’s debate, Trump went on to claim that Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Walz, “says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth – it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born – is okay. And that’s not okay with me.”
Walz has made no such statements.
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“I’m talking now … Does that sound familiar?”
On more than one occasion during the debate, Trump requested that Harris stop interrupting by recycling a notable phrase from the vice president.
As Trump claimed Harris tried to “defund the police,” Harris – whose microphone was muted – could be faintly heard saying, “That’s not true.”
“Wait a minute. I’m talking now, if you don’t mind, please,” Trump said. “Does that sound familiar?”
Trump appeared to be referencing a moment during a 2020 vice-presidential debate between Harris and then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” Harris told Pence. “I’m speaking.”
In another instance during Tuesday’s debate, when Harris interrupted Trump, Trump told Harris: “Quiet please.”
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“I read where she was not Black … And then I read that she was Black, and that’s okay.”
Trump again attempted to sow doubt around Harris’s identity at the debate when asked about his false statements regarding the vice president’s ethnicity.
“I don’t care what she is,” Trump said. “ … All I can say is I read where she was not Black, that she put out, and, I’ll say that. And then I read that she was Black, and that’s okay.”
In July, Trump told a panel of Black journalists that he “didn’t know” Harris “was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black.” He added later that Harris “was Indian all the way” but then “became a Black person.”
The Trump campaign did not directly address a question from The Post asking to clarify what Trump meant. Instead, they sent a statement from campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles saying in part that Trump was “the clear winner” of the debate.
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“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. … We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”
In her effort to rebuff Trump’s claims about her policy plans as president, Harris brought up the fact that both names on the Democratic ticket are gun owners.
Harris disputed Trump’s assertion that she “has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun,” saying, “This business about taking everybody’s guns away – Tim Walz and I are both gun owners.”
“We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,” she added.
Walz, the vice-presidential nominee, has been public about his gun ownership, bragging that he was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month.
Harris’s gun ownership is less widely known, but she said in 2019 that she owned a gun “for personal safety.” A campaign aide told CNN at the time that she owned a handgun which she keeps locked up.
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“She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”
Trump, attempting to cast Harris as a “radical left liberal,” asserted that Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”
The comment was an apparent reference to Harris’s response to an ACLU questionnaire when she was running for president in 2019. CNN recently published a story about Harris’s responses to the questionnaire, in which she affirmed her support at the time for taxpayer funding going toward gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.
The Harris campaign has since sought to distance the vice president from her questionnaire responses. Her communications director, Michael Tyler, told Fox News on Tuesday that the questionnaire “is not what she is proposing. It’s not what she’s running on.”
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“I have nothing to do with Project 2025 … I’m not going to read it.”
Trump tried to distance himself once again from Project 2025, the conservative think tank policy agenda intended for the next Republican president. Democrats have for months tried to tie Project 2025’s far-right proposals – penned by Trump political allies and former Trump administration officials – to the former president’s platform.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025 … I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it,” Trump said. “This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas, I guess some good [and] some bad, but it makes no difference.”
He added: “Everybody knows I’m an open book. Everybody knows what I’m going to do.”
A CBS News review of Project 2025’s 900-page policy document identified 700 policy proposals and found that at least 270 of them matched Trump’s past policies or current campaign proposals. The review also found that at least 28 of the document’s 38 primary authors worked in the Trump administration.
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Amy B Wang, Mariana Alfaro, Ashley Parker and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.