Analysis: Kamala Harris baited Donald Trump for nearly all of the one hour and 45 minutes of their first and potentially only debate – and Trump took every bit of it.
The vice president had prepared extensively for their debate, and peppered nearly every answer with a comment designed to enrage the former president.
She told Trump that world leaders were laughing at him, and military leaders called him a “disgrace.” She called Trump “weak” and “wrong.” She said Trump was fired by 81 million voters – the number that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.
“Clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that,” she said.
US DEBATE: How it all played out in real time
Trump was often out of control.
He loudly and repeatedly insisted that a whole host of falsehoods were true.
The former president repeated lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
He parroted a conspiracy theory about immigrants eating pets, and lied about Democrats supporting abortions after babies are born – which is murder, and illegal everywhere.
He painted a dire picture of the United States, reminiscent of the “American carnage” he’d warned of when he was inaugurated in 2017.
“We have a nation that is dying,” Trump said.
Here are some quick takeaways from the debate.
Harris sets the tone
When Harris and Trump walked onto stage in Philadelphia, it was the first time they’d met in person. Trump, after all, skipped Biden’s inauguration.
Harris set the tone by walking across the space separating her podium from Trump’s and reaching out for a handshake.
She introduced herself and said, “Let’s have a good debate.”
“Nice to see you,” Trump responded.
It was the first handshake in a presidential debate since Trump and Hillary Clinton squared off in 2016.
Trump famously loomed uncomfortably close to Clinton during their town hall-style debate.
Trump generally looked forward as Harris spoke, while the vice president communicated through facial expressions.
She laughed at some Trump comments, smirked at others, shook her head at some and at times appeared bemused.
When Trump repeated a debunked myth about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Harris laughed mockingly while shrugging and pointing at Trump.
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Trump indulges in conspiracy theories
Despite signals from even his running mate, Trump did not refrain from repeating the conspiracy theory du jour during the debate.
The former president brought up the unfounded conspiracy theory that migrants from Haiti living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s cats and dogs.
He said at one point “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of people who live there.”
When ABC moderator David Muir pointed out that city officials denied any evidence that migrants in Springfield were actually eating pets, Trump doubled down saying “the people on television” were saying it.
When pressed, Trump just said, “We’ll find out.”
When the debate moved to crime, Trump claimed that crime was up in the United States contrary to the rest of the world.
There too Muir pointed out that, according to FBI data, crime had actually declined in the past few years.
Trump, again, deferred to a different conspiracy theory that the FBI is deeply corrupt and issuing “defrauding statements.”
He argued “it was a fraud.”
Later in the debate, Trump argued that US elections are “a mess” and claimed that Democrats are trying to get undocumented immigrants to vote in elections.
“We have a nation that is dying,” he said.
Fierce argument over abortion, a key issue for both candidates
Few moments highlighted the difference between Biden’s June debate performance and Harris’ as much as the abortion debate.
The vice president, who has long been one the administration’s strongest surrogates on reproductive rights, was able to respond to the former president’s defence of his abortion policy in a way Biden was not.
The former president, who appointed three of the Supreme Court judges who overturned federal abortion protections, has sought to moderate his stance on the issue by criticising six-week abortion bans and reiterating his support for exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
But he has also defended the overturning of Roe v Wade.
“Now it’s not tied up in the federal government,” Trump said. “I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it.”
Trump repeated several of the arguments he made about abortion during his June debate with Biden. He argued that “everyone” wanted the issue returned to the states, despite widespread resistance from Democrats and some independents.
He argued inaccurately that a former governor of Virginia said that babies should be executed – a reference to comments former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, a doctor, made about care for births after nonviable pregnancies.
And Trump repeated the false claim that some states allow abortions to be performed after a baby has been born, which drew a fact check from ABC News’ Linsey Davis.
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” Davis said.
Harris responded by highlighting cases where women have been unable to get abortions after being victims of rape or struggled to get miscarriage care.
“You want to talk about this is what people wanted?” Harris said.
“Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot – she didn’t want that.”
Trump takes the bait – over and over
Harris came onstage with a clear plan: throw Trump off his game.
It was, by any measure, a dramatic success.
When the vice president mentioned Trump’s criminal conviction and outstanding legal issues, he bit.
When she called him out for sinking a bipartisan immigration bill, he bit harder. And when Harris suggested Trump’s rallies were boring, he nearly choked on the bait.
Rather than engage on the issues raised by the moderators, including a few that Trump considers some of his political strengths, the former president went on at length about the entertainment value of his rallies, claims the Biden administration was legally targeting him and, in a long, bizarre spell, insisted – against all available evidence, that migrants were eating Americans’ pets.
“In Springfield,” Trump said, after Harris criticised him for tanking the immigration bill, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.”
Harris looked on as though she was puzzled, but rarely returned to the claims, apparently content to allow Trump go off.
Trump seemed especially aggrieved by the vice president’s aside about his campaign events. Even after Muir sought to redirect the debate to immigration – again, one of Trump’s preferred topics – the former president refused to let it go.
“First, let me respond as to the rallies,” Trump said, first mocking Harris’s crowds, then turning back to his own.
“People don’t leave my rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
The first hour of the debate then ended much like it began – with Trump off on a long, narrowcast tangent about the 2020 election, which he claimed, falsely once again, was stolen from him.
Vice president casts Trump as out for himself
Seeking to introduce herself to voters, Harris set the tone early, drawing contrast with Trump by framing herself as an advocate for middle-class Americans – and framing her opponent as self-absorbed.
“Donald Trump has no plan for you,” Harris said in response to a question on the economy, looking into the camera in a direct appeal to voters.
Leaning into her personal biography as she cast herself as a “middle class kid,” Harris outlined an economic vision including tax cuts for families and tax deductions for small businesses, while Trump, she said, will “do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations.”
Trump, Harris continued, “actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Her campaign has argued in its ads and talking points that Trump is a candidate looking out for himself, and Harris took that message to the debate stage Tuesday.
“I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. And I’ll tell you: I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first,” she said.
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