4 takeaways from the first Trump-Harris presidential debate

Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the 2024 election and the second — and final? — 2024 presidential debate.

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The big moment

The 2024 election appears about as tight as can be, meaning the onus was on both Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump as they took the stage for the ABC News debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. And the stakes were especially high, given no further debates have been scheduled.

Harris was introducing herself to many casual voters who knew relatively little about her, as she looked to capitalize on her rise in popularity and the polls since taking over from President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. Trump, meanwhile, aimed to stay disciplined and define Harris more than she could define herself — by tying her to Biden and the more liberal positions she took during her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign.

Below are my takeaways.

1. Harris successfully made it all about Trump — and he struggled

If Democrats were concerned about anything amounting to a repeat of Biden’s shoddy debate performance in late June, which led to his dropping out, it was quickly erased. Harris returned to the form that made her the runaway winner of the early 2020 Democratic primary debates.

More than that, though, with a premium on Trump defining the lesser-known Harris, she made sure the debate was overwhelmingly about Trump and his less-appealing traits.

Harris covered just about all of the greatest hits that Biden wasn’t able to get to: Trump’s criminal trials, Project 2025, Jan. 6, his lauding of dictators, his criticism of John McCain and reported disparagement of soldiers, the racist violence in Charlottesville, which he downplayed, Trump’s suggesting that he would terminate parts of the Constitution, criticisms from Trump’s former aides and, perhaps most notable of all, abortion rights.

She also baited him by talking about his often-confusing rambling at rallies and his crowd sizes, as well as citing a negative review of his economic policies from his alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump was frequently on his heels, focused on defending his record rather than hitting Biden’s and Harris’s. He repeatedly cut in to ask for more time to talk about his own vulnerabilities. It was often as if Trump were the incumbent.

And Harris repeatedly tied everything together by offering the prospect of a less chaotic presidency.

“For everyone watching, who remembers what January 6th was, I say, we don’t have to go back. Let’s not go back. We’re not going back,” Harris said. “It’s time to turn the page. And if that was a bridge too far for you, well, there is a place in our campaign for you to stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law and to end the chaos and to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our democracy because you don’t like the outcome.”

Trump didn’t get to spend much time tying Harris to Biden until late in the debate. And except for a brief moment toward the end, he didn’t really hit her on specific liberal positions she took years ago, like a mandatory gun buyback program and banning fracking.

Trump also got into relatively little detail about his own policies, apart from repeatedly pointing to his plan for tariffs (which co-moderator David Muir of ABC News unhelpfully noted could lead to costs rising on consumers).

The one point Trump hit over and over again was migrant crime and record illegal immigration during the Biden administration — a real liability for the Democratic ticket, even as illegal border crossings have fallen substantially in recent months.

At one point while discussing it, Trump called for action.

“I would say we would both leave this debate right now,” Trump said. “I’d like to see her go down to Washington, D.C., during this debate, because we’re wasting a lot of time.”

It’s almost as if he would rather have been somewhere else.

2. Trump’s fire hose of falsehoods

Trump’s debate performance was, from the start, a fire hose of misinformation.

He falsely claimed or suggested:

But perhaps on no issue was Trump’s reliance on bogus information as pronounced as it was when he referred to ridiculous and dehumanizing rumors that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — claims that have taken off among right-wing social media users. Trump broached the subject early and then returned to it later.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump claimed. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Except just hours earlier, Trump’s own running mate, JD Vance, had conceded, after sharing the rumor, that it might well be false. Muir noted that officials in the city say it’s baseless.

Trump didn’t back down, though, claiming he had seen people on TV confirming the story.

If there was a moment that epitomized a debate that often appeared to be about appealing to far-right supporters and social-media allies, this was surely it.

“Talk about extreme,” Harris responded.

3. Harris delivered an impassioned case on abortion

Harris drove the argument on abortion in a way that Biden never could.

She repeatedly spoke in passionate terms about the issue, which has cut strongly against the Republican Party ever since Roe was overturned. She noted that overturning Roe has led to many Republican-controlled states banning abortion, sometimes with no exceptions for rape and incest.

“A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body,” Harris said, citing how this could affect 12- and 13-year-olds. “That is immoral.”

She added at another point: “It’s insulting to the women of America. … Working people, working women who are working one or two jobs, who can barely afford child care as it is, have to travel to another state to get on a plane, sitting next to strangers to go and get the health care she needs — barely can afford to do it. And what you are putting her through is unconscionable.”

Trump’s response was to basically disown the results in those red states — to play up leaving the issue to the states — and to cite Democrats not drawing a line on third-trimester abortions, as well as the falsehood about legal executions after birth. (Harris was asked by the moderators whether she would allow any restrictions; she said she supported the standard set by Roe.)

Trump also credited himself with getting Alabama to reverse a state Supreme Court ruling that severely restricted access to in vitro fertilization.

“I’ve been a leader on it,” Trump said. “They know that, and everybody else knows it. I have been a leader on fertilization, IVF.”

4. Trump was all about undocumented immigrants and migrant crime

It was clear from the earliest moments of the debate that Trump was singularly focused on this issue. He almost instantly brought up Aurora and Springfield, and he repeatedly brought the conversation back to the subject.

“They allowed criminals,” Trump said, claiming without evidence that there were “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.”

Trump added at another point: “Bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. They have and she has destroyed our country with policy. That’s insane.”

But Trump’s claims were often undercut by falsehoods.

Harris, meanwhile, sought to insulate herself by bear-hugging the bipartisan Senate immigration deal that Trump helped kill, accusing him of preferring “to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” The particulars of that bill — which even several Republicans argued was a good deal and quite conservative — got a thorough airing, which could help Harris.

Take a moment to read: