Harris baits Trump over and over at presidential debate

Vice President Kamala Harris met former President Donald Trump for the first time on Tuesday night – and promptly goaded him into a number of missteps and false statements.

In the first and what might be the only debate between the two major-party nominees before November’s elections, Ms. Harris repeatedly tweaked Mr. Trump’s ego and seemed to get under his skin, sending him down rabbit holes on topics from their comparative crowd sizes, to how much money his dad gave him to start his career, to a baseless social-media rumor about Haitian immigrants eating pets.

Ms. Harris’ team clearly felt she’d won, immediately proposing a rematch. “Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon asked in a statement.

Mr. Trump himself seemed to know things hadn’t gone great – he came to the spin room afterwards to speak to reporters, a very unusual move for a presidential candidate and the first time he has done so after a general-election debate. Mr. Trump’s allies were left complaining about the moderators, who on a few occasions fact-checked falsehoods from Mr. Trump without doing the same for Ms. Harris.

Mr. Trump has had bad debates before and rallied. Pundits and polls widely found he was the loser of his three 2016 debates against Hillary Clinton, before he beat her in the election that November. His 2020 performances against Joe Biden were uneven as well, before Mr. Trump fell just short in the swing states. And this debate was nowhere near as bad as the disastrous outing President Biden had in June, the last time Mr. Trump was on the debate stage.

But Ms. Harris, who had more at stake as the lesser-known candidate in this tight race, clearly had the better night on Tuesday. Here are five takeaways from the debate.

“They’re eating the pets of the people that live there”

Mr. Trump decided to elevate an internet rumor with zero evidence behind it on the national debate stage, claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had been stealing residents’ pets and eating them.

“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. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” the former president said.

The racially charged claim appears to have originated in a Facebook post and quickly caught fire on the right, including being echoed by Mr. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. As ABC News debate moderator David Muir pointed out during the debate, Springfield officials said they have seen no evidence that this is true.

“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the Springfield Police Department said in a statement to Reuters.

That wasn’t the only time during the 90-minute debate that Mr. Trump made false or evidence-free statements. He repeated his oft-disproven claims that he actually won the 2020 election. 

And he claimed, without evidence, that Democrats are looking to import millions of illegal immigrants to get their votes. “Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English, they don’t even know what country they’re in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote,” he said.

It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote and there have been very few cases of undocumented immigrants caught attempting to vote.

Trump kept taking Harris’ bait

Ms. Harris repeatedly sought to wound Mr. Trump’s ego. “On this debate stage you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances, and name-calling,” she said at the debate’s beginning. And she frequently succeeded in getting Mr. Trump to take the bait.

At one point she said that his supporters often leave early from Mr. Trump’s rallies as his speeches drag on (a phenomenon this reporter has witnessed multiple times). “People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” she said.

He retorted that “people don’t go to her rallies,” though Ms. Harris’ rallies have rivaled the size of Mr. Trump’s, while claiming without evidence that “she’s busing them in and paying them to be there.”

She went after him for his legal troubles and for praising foreign dictators, said that world leaders were laughing at him as a “disgrace,” and mocked him for receiving a princely sum from his dad to start his career (though the $400 million she claimed he got was a lot more than the $14 million Mr. Trump’s father actually loaned him).

Mr. Trump took the bait each time, wasting valuable debate time litigating those issues rather than zeroing in on the economy and criticizing Ms. Harris for her numerous flip-flops on issues.

Trump was all about immigration

Mr. Trump turned back to immigration over and over again, often pivoting from other less friendly topics back to border security.

He pivoted back to immigration when asked about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, when talking about abortion, and even when the topic was the economy, another strong issue for him.

“They allowed criminals, many, many millions of criminals, they allowed terrorists, they allowed common street criminals, they allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country,” Mr. Trump said at one point.

He didn’t offer a clear answer when asked how he plans to deport the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants, however.

A shaky start for Harris on the economy

The best moments in a rough night for Mr. Trump came at the start and end of the debate.

Mr. Trump spent the first few minutes onstage pushing hard on the economy, which polls show is voters’ biggest issue and their biggest concern about Democrats retaining the White House.

“Look, we’ve had a terrible economy because [of] inflation, which is really known as a country-buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history,” Mr. Trump said early on in the debate.

“She doesn’t have a plan. She copied Biden’s plan, and it’s like four sentences, like ‘Run Spot Run,” he said.

Mr. Trump sought to directly tie Ms. Harris to President Biden – an effective line of attack given how unhappy swing voters are about the economy. But he failed to drive the argument until his closing remarks, when he asked repeatedly “Why hasn’t she done it?” 

Harris passionate on abortion

Ms. Harris’ strongest policy statement of the night came on abortion, where she delivered an impassioned case and put Mr. Trump, who clearly looked uncomfortable talking about the subject, on the spot.

Ms. Harris talked about how Mr. Trump had ensured that a conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturned national abortion rights. “Now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans, which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care,” she said – including, in some states, for women whose lives are at stake or for victims of rape or incest.

Mr. Trump struggled in his response, repeatedly refusing to answer moderators’ questions about whether he would veto a national abortion ban. 

Ms. Harris didn’t answer directly when asked if she supported any restrictions on abortions in the seventh, eighth, or ninth month of pregnancy, saying only that she supported returning to the standard of Roe v. Wade. That now-overturned Supreme Court ruling guaranteed a national right to an abortion until the fetus was viable, or 24-28 weeks after conception. After that point, states could impose restrictions if they chose to do so.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify and add additional context around the candidates' exchanges on abortion. It previously misstated that Democrats uniformly oppose abortion in the ninth month. (Updated on the day of original publication, Sept. 11, 2024.)