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Kamala Harris and Donald Trump showcased starkly different visions for the country Tuesday on abortion, immigration and American democracy as they met for the first time for perhaps their only debate before November\u2019s presidential election.<\/p>\n
The Democratic vice president tried to get under the skin of the Republican former president, provoking him with reminders about the 2020 election loss that he still denies and delivering derisive asides at his other false claims. Harris\u2019 needling prompted Trump to launch into the sort of freewheeling personal attacks and digressions from which his advisers and supporters have tried to steer him away.<\/p>\n
The pair outlined sharply opposite visions of where the nation is and where they intend to take it if elected. Harris promised tax cuts aimed at the middle class and said she would push to restore a federally guaranteed right to abortion overturned by the Supreme Court two years ago. Trump said his proposed tariffs would help the U.S. stop being cheated by allies on trade and said he would work to swiftly end the Russia-Ukraine war, even if it meant Ukraine didn\u2019t achieve victory on the battlefield.<\/p>\n
The debate, Trump\u2019s seventh as a presidential nominee as he mounts his third run for the White House and Harris\u2019 first, was perhaps the best opportunity by Harris to define herself on her own terms to voters. Their debate concluded hours before the first ballots of the election will begin to be mailed Wednesday in Alabama. Election Day is Nov. 5, less than two months away.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019 performance by nearly every measure seemed to be the opposite of President Joe Biden\u2019s in June, with sharp, focused answers designed to hit her talking points while needling Trump, whereas Biden at times was muddled, halting and at times incoherent. Harris used her body language and facial expressions to confront Trump and express that she found his answers ridiculous or amusing \u2014 or both \u2014 while Biden at times had a slack-jawed expression while Trump attacked him.<\/p>\n
In one moment, Harris turned to Trump and said that as vice president, she had spoken to foreign leaders, \u201cAnd they say you\u2019re a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump in turn tried to link Harris to Biden, questioning why she hadn\u2019t acted on her proposed ideas while serving as vice president. \u201cWhy hasn\u2019t she done it?\u201d he said. Trump also focused his attacks on Harris over her assignment by Biden to deal with the root causes of illegal migration.<\/p>\n
He repeatedly dismissed her and Biden as weak, and cited the praise of Hungary\u2019s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n to show that he is a widely respected by leaders around the world, saying Orb\u00e1n calls him the \u201cmost feared person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump again denied his loss to Biden four years ago, when his efforts to overturn the result inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.<\/p>\n
\u201cDonald Trump was fired by 81 million people,\u201d Harris said, \u201cSo let\u2019s be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saying it\u2019s \u201ctime to turn the page,\u201d Harris delivered an appeal to Republicans and independents turned off by Trump\u2019s style and his efforts four years ago to overturn the 2020 presidential election, saying there\u2019s a place in her campaign for them \u201cto stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law and to end the chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump twice declined to say that it was in the best interest of the U.S. for Ukraine to win its war against Russia. Harris said it was an example of why America\u2019s NATO allies were thankful he was no longer in office, as she and Biden have sent tens of billions of dollars to help Kyiv fend off Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n
As the former president made a series of false claims about migrants, Harris seemed to smirk as he said that migrants are \u201ctaking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTalk about extreme,\u201d Harris responded, when Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating their neighbors\u2019 dogs and cats.<\/p>\n
The candidates met in a small, blue-lit amphitheater converted into a television studio, with no live audience, meaning there was no rowdy applause, cheers or jeers. The intimate setting \u2014 with the candidates\u2019 lecterns positioned less than 10 feet from each other \u2014 belied the contentious debate to follow.<\/p>\n
As Harris seemed to try to interject during one of his responses, Trump replied, \u201cI\u2019m talking now, sound familiar?\u201d harkening back to a moment when Harris shut down an interruption from then-Vice President Mike Pence.<\/p>\n
Harris sharply criticized Trump for the state of the economy and democracy when he left office, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the nation and after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we have done is clean up Donald Trump\u2019s mess,\u201d Harris said. She opened her answer by saying she expects voters to hear \u201ca bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling\u201d from her GOP opponent during their 90-minute debate.<\/p>\n
Trump, meanwhile, quickly went after Harris for abandoning some of her past liberal positions and said: \u201cShe\u2019s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.\u201d Harris smiled broadly and laughed.<\/p>\n
Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs \u2014 and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned \u2014 as pragmatism, insisting that her \u201cvalues remain the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the debate opened, Harris walked up to Trump\u2019s lectern to introduce herself, marking the first time the two had ever met. \u201cKamala Harris,\u201d she said, extending her hand to Trump, who received it in a handshake \u2014 the first presidential debate handshake since the 2016 campaign.<\/p>\n
Harris, in zeroing in on one of Trump\u2019s biggest electoral vulnerabilities, laid the end of a federally guaranteed right to abortion at Trump\u2019s feet for his role in appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving more than 20 states in the country with what she called \u201cTrump abortion bans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris gave one of her most impassioned answers as she described the ways women have been denied abortion care and other emergency care and said Trump would assign a national abortion ban if he wins.<\/p>\n
Trump declared it \u201ca lie,\u201d and said, \u201cI\u2019m not signing a ban and there\u2019s no reason to sign a ban.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republican has said he wants the issue left to the states.<\/p>\n
Harris used a question about her plans to improve the economy by saying she would extend the tax cut for families with children and a tax deduction for small businesses while attacking Trump\u2019s plans to impose broad tariffs as a \u201csales tax\u201d on goods that the American people will ultimately pay.<\/p>\n
Trump was stone-faced during her answer but retorted: \u201cI have no sales tax. That\u2019s in incorrect statement. She knows that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, who is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House continued to call Harris a \u201cMarxist,\u201d and said \u201cEveryone knows she\u2019s a Marxist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI read where she was not Black,\u201d Trump said when asked about comments questioning Harris\u2019 race, and then he added a minute later, \u201cand then I read that she was Black.\u201d He seemed to suggest her race was a choice, saying twice, \u201cThat\u2019s up to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,\u201d Harris responded.<\/p>\n
Harris said Trump has a long history of racial division, going back to when his family\u2019s company was investigated for refusing to rent to black people decades ago. She also mentioned that he called for the death penalty for the \u201cCentral Park Five,\u201d who were falsely accused of rape, and spread false \u201cbirther\u201d theories about President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the American people want better than that, want better than this,\u201d she said, nodding toward Trump.<\/p>\n
Harris hit Trump on one of his biggest sources of pride, his freewheeling campaign rallies. Harris noted how at the events, Trump, as he meanders through subjects, will sometimes muse on \u201cfictional characters like Hannibal Lecter\u201d and whether \u201cwindmills cause cancer,\u201d and then said that if you watch his events \u201cyou will also notice that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. Your needs, your dreams and your desires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump tried to use his next question to respond by accusing Harris of having no one attending her rallies except the people that he claimed, without evidence, that she has bused in and paid to be there.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe can\u2019t talk about that. People don\u2019t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In rapid fashion after the June 27 debate between Trump and Biden, the incumbent bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.<\/p>\n
The debate subjected Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.<\/p>\n
Trump at one point launched into an attack on Biden, questioning his mental acuity by making the claim that Biden \u201cdoesn\u2019t even know he\u2019s alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris quickly tried to turn it around to make Trump look less than sharp.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, I think it\u2019s important to remind the former president, you\u2019re not running against Joe Biden. You\u2019re running against me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Price and Miller reported from Washington. AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n