Trump War Room on X
CV NEWS FEED // Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debated each other for the first time at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Tuesday night.
The back-and-forth showdown hosted by ABC also marked the first time Trump and Harris met in person.
ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis served as the moderators. During the debate, a chorus of critics scrutinized the pair for perceived bias in favor of Harris and against Trump both in the questions asked and in the “fact-checking” of the candidates’ responses.
While the clash was the second general election debate of the 2024 election cycle, it was the first to feature Harris.
On June 27, Trump and President Joe Biden – then the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee – faced off in a debate in Atlanta. Analysts widely agree that Biden’s heavily panned performance that evening was a key factor in the Democratic Party’s eventual decision to remove the president from the 2024 race and put up Harris as an alternative less than a month later.
Muir asked Harris the first question of the night: “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”
“So,” the Democratic nominee replied, “I was raised as a middle-class kid. And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle-class and working people of America.”
Harris went on to discuss her plan to build what she called “an opportunity economy,” but did not appear to answer Muir’s question as to whether the country was better or worse off under the incumbent Biden-Harris administration.
On the topic of the economy, Trump stated that under the current administration “we have inflation like very few people have ever seen before,” adding that inflation is a “country buster, it breaks up countries.”
“This has been a disaster for people – for the middle class,” Trump added.
“On top of that,” the Republican nominee continued, “we have millions of people pouring into our country, from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and they’re coming in and they’re taking jobs.”
“These are the people that she and Biden let into our country,” Trump said. “And they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous, they’re at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out.”
“I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country,” Trump emphasized. “I’ll do it again and even better.”
Harris fired back at Trump’s assertion that the state of the nation was stronger under his administration.
“Let’s talk about what Donald Trump left us,” said the sitting vice president. “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century.”
Harris was referring to the unemployment rate following the COVID outbreak at the tail-end of Trump’s term. The unemployment rate was significantly lower during the first three years of Trump’s presidency.
Until COVID came to the country in early 2020, the unemployment rate had been steadily declining since Trump first took office.
“Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” Harris added, referring to January 6, 2021. The debate was held on the day before the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.
Trump eventually chimed in: “We had the greatest economy. We got hit by a pandemic.”
“The only jobs they got were bounceback jobs,” the former president added, referring to post-COVID unemployment gains for which the Biden-Harris administration has taken credit.
“These were jobs [that] bounced back … and it went to their benefit, but I was the one that created them,” Trump added. “They know it and so does everybody else.”
Trump later confronted Harris for apparently changing her positions on various issues.
“She has no policy,” Trump stated. “Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window.”
“She’s going to my philosophy now,” Trump joked. “In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.”
Harris’ campaign is widely accused of co-opting its purported policies on child tax credits and not taxing tips from Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-OH. Observers across the political spectrum have also noted that Harris is currently presenting herself as a moderate, while in the past her policy positions have been drawn from the far-left wing of the Democratic Party.
“But if she ever got elected she’d change it,” Trump said, predicting Haris would shift her policy positions back to the left if she were elected.
>> CNN SEGMENT SCRUTINIZES HARRIS’ PAST RECORD DURING HER TIME IN THE SENATE <<
“When you look at what she’s done to our country, and when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country … that’s bad for our economy too,” Trump noted, again bringing up the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“They have and she has destroyed our country with policy that’s insane,” he added.
Trump also called out the Democratic Party’s extreme positions on abortion, pointing to the example of former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam who in 2019 appeared to endorse full-term abortion during a radio interview.
Northam stated at the time:
If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.
“We want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions,” the Democratic then-governor added.
Davis asked Harris if she would support “any restrictions” on abortion.
“I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris replied. “And as you rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion.”
“That is not happening,” she claimed. “It’s insulting to the women of America.”
Critics held that Harris “dodged the question.”
Later in the debate, Trump challenged the popular Democratic Party talking point that he and his supporters are a “threat to democracy.” In doing this, Trump referred to the July 13 assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” Trump stressed. “They talk about democracy … they’re the threat to democracy.”
During an exchange about the border, Trump indicated that crime in Venezuela and other countries with large numbers of migrants coming to the United States is “way down.”
“Because they’ve taken their criminals off the street and given them to her to put into our country,” he went on, referring to Harris.
“This will be one of the greatest mistakes in history,” he said. “And I think they probably did it because they think they’re going to get votes. But it’s not worth it.”
“They are destroying the fabric of our country,” Trump said. “Crime in this country is through the roof.”
He added that migrant crime is “happening at levels that nobody thought possible.”
Trump later called the Biden-Harris administration “the most divisive presidency in the history of our country.”
In her closing statement, Harris repeated her oft-used phrases “We’re not going back” and “We can chart a new way forward.”
“I will be a president who protects our fundamental rights and freedoms, including a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body,” she said.
As Trump had the debate’s “last word,” he gave his closing statement second.
“So, she just started by saying, she’s going to do this, she’s going to do that. She’s going to do all these wonderful things,” he stated:
Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years. They’ve had three and a half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and a half years to create jobs – all the things we’ve talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?
She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together and do the things you want to do.
“But you haven’t done it,” Trump told Harris. “And you won’t do it.”
