Vice President Kamala Harris made a sharp, fiery case against Republican nominee Donald Trump during a freewheeling debate Tuesday, blasting the former president’s character and preoccupation with himself while pressing him on issues including abortion, democracy and foreign policy.
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Both sides went into their first debate, hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, spoiling for a fight after several weeks of attacking one another on the campaign trail, and they wasted little time launching into harsh attacks. Harris’s barbs landed crisply, while Trump often veered off-message in response to her attempts to bait him on sensitive topics like the size of his rally crowds, his 2020 election loss and his admiration for strongmen.
“In this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” Harris said early in the debate, one of several times that she turned to address viewers rather than her opponent. A few minutes later, she said, “Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Trump dismissed the remark as “just a sound bite” and went on to accuse Harris of misleading the public about her positions.
“Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window — she’s going to my philosophy now,” Trump said. “In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat. She’s going to my philosophy. But if she ever got elected, she’d change it and it will be the end of our country.”
Harris was able to deliver the Democratic case against Trump — that he is self-involved, unfit and consumed with his own interests — in a way that President Joe Biden struggled badly to do in the last debate, a little over two months ago. Her performance, and Trump’s often-frustrated reaction, underscored how much the dynamics of the race have changed since Biden stepped aside.
Harris seemed to regularly get under the former president’s skin, sometimes prompting angry or meandering responses. He accused the vice president and the Biden administration of being responsible for inflation, high crime and illegal immigration, but he also went on tangents, such as repeating baseless assertions.
In one of the most aggressive exchanges from the night, Harris and Trump sparred over abortion, with each casting the other as holding extreme positions.
Harris said Trump was responsible for the worst of the fallout of abortion bans stemming from the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, blaming the former president for women “bleeding out” in parking lots and children having to carry a pregnancy resulting from incest.
Trump said it “took courage” to overturn Roe v. Wade and falsely claimed that “every legal scholar” wanted abortion policy to be left up to the states. He also falsely stated that Democrats support abortion after birth, which led to the first of several fact checks from the moderators.
Trump declared that he would not sign a national abortion ban but dodged when asked whether he would veto such a ban if it passed Congress, saying that would never happen. “I’m not signing a ban, and there’s no reason to sign a ban,” Trump said. As for vetoing it, he said, “I won’t have to.”
