Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump touted policy proposals and traded barbs Tuesday during a presidential debate packed with promises to revive America’s economy and riddled with Trump’s falsehoods about abortion, the 2020 election results and immigration.
The debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia hosted by ABC News just 56 days before the election was also notable as the first exchange between the candidates since President Joe Biden exited the race weeks after his botched debate performance in late June.
It is the only debate the campaigns have agreed to before the November election, although the Harris camp afterward suggested they’re ready for another and Fox News offered to host it in October.
The night began with Democratic nominee Harris crossing the stage to initiate a handshake and introducing herself to Trump, the GOP candidate. The two had never before met.
But the back-and-forth quickly grew contentious, as Trump blasted Harris’ record as vice president under President Joe Biden, and Harris said Trump was unfit to be president for myriad reasons. The two did not shake hands at the close.
Harris portrayed herself as a champion of the middle class. She presented a hopeful vision of the country that she sought to contrast with what she described as Trump’s self-centered vision that included attacks on the country’s democratic traditions and people of color.
“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,” she said. “I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people.”
The vice president lambasted Trump as “extreme” and sought to tie him to the ultraconservative Project 2025, with which he denied an association. Harris also underscored the numerous legal cases Trump continues to face. Trump is the first former president to become a convicted felon.
“Donald Trump actually has no plan for you,” she said. “Because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Trump repeated unverified claims about migrants eating dogs in Ohio, returned time and again to complaints about immigration, defended his plan to raise tariffs, and boasted about campaign rally crowd sizes — after Harris taunted him about his events, saying people left them early.
“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,” Trump said in one of the more jarring moments of the debate, when he repeated baseless claims about Haitian migrants. The rumors have circulated on social media in recent days, and have been amplified by Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.
Trump challenged Harris to use her position in the administration to address inflation and immigration, suggesting that she was not actually able to follow through on her promises.
“She doesn’t have a plan,” he said. “She copied Biden’s plan, and it’s like four sentences like, ‘Run, Spot, run,’ four sentences that are just, ‘Oh, we’ll try and lower taxes.’ She doesn’t have a plan.”
Polls show the race is virtually tied nationally and in seven key states that will decide the Electoral College margin: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. Harris enjoyed a polling bump soon after she became a candidate, but her numbers have dropped in the weeks since and recent polls showed her roughly even with Trump.
Among the top moments of the night touching on policy and politics:
Election integrity
The 2024 presidential election marks a test for the peaceful transfer of power after political violence marred the nation’s tradition when Trump’s refusal to accept his loss sparked a Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump repeated false claims during Tuesday’s debate that he won the 2020 presidential election, even walking back recent public statements that seemed to accept defeat.
Asked by moderator David Muir if recent statements that he “lost by a whisker” and similar sentiments were acknowledgements he’d lost, Trump said the comments were sarcastic.
“I don’t acknowledge that at all,” he said. “That was said sarcastically.”
Harris called Trump’s answer “deeply troubling.”
“You did, in fact, lose that election,” she told him. She added that his continued denial “leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have, in the candidate to my right, the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact. That’s deeply troubling, and the American people deserve better.
When asked if he regretted any of his actions when the U.S. Capitol was violently overrun by his supporters, Trump defended himself and returned to the topic of immigration.
“I had nothing to do with that, other than they asked me to make a speech,” Trump said.
Harris responded: “For everyone watching who remembers what Jan. 6 was, I say ‘We don’t have to go back.’”
Race
Moderators asked Trump about his disparaging comments about Harris’ biracial identity to the National Association of Black Journalists last month. Muir questioned if it was appropriate for Trump to weigh in on his opponent’s race.
Trump said it was not appropriate but seemed to defend the comment that Harris had “turned Black” to promote her political career.
“I don’t care what she is,” he said. “Whatever she wants to be is OK with me. All I can say is that I read where she was not Black, that she put out, and I’ll say that, and then I read that she was Black, and that’s okay. Either one was okay with me. That’s up to her.”
Harris called it “a tragedy” that Trump continued “to use race to divide the American people.”
She invoked allegations that he refused to rent his residential properties to Black families, spread conspiracy theories that the first Black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States, and supported the execution of Black and Latino boys accused of murder in New York’s Central Park. The suspects were later exonerated.
“The American people want better than that, want better than this,” she said, adding that voters wanted a conversation about how candidates could improve their lives. “Regardless of people’s color or the language their grandmother speaks, we all have the same dreams and aspirations, and want a president who invests in those, not in hate and division.”
Abortion and IVF
The 2024 presidential election is the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
While Trump told debate moderators that he would not sign a nationwide abortion bill into law, he refused to give a yes or no answer when asked if he would veto one.
Moderator Linsey Davis corrected Trump after he claimed that some states allow abortion “in the ninth month,” but he continued to repeat it throughout the debate.
Trump hailed the Supreme Court justices — three of whom he appointed — for giving full control of abortion laws to state governments.
“What I did is something, for 52 years, they have been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states, and through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that,” Trump said, adding that he “strongly” believes in exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
Harris said she would “proudly” sign a bill into law that restored the federal right to an abortion.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said.
She attacked what she dubbed “Donald Trump’s abortion bans” and said his actions resulted in a reality where couples “who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments.”
In vitro fertilization, or IVF, has become a lightning rod for debate on the right after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in early 2024 that frozen embryos counted as children. Legislators in the state have since passed a law to restore IVF access.
Trump said Harris was telling “another lie.”
“I have been a leader on IVF, with which is fertilization, the IVF. I have been a leader,” he said.
Taxes, the economy, health care
With Trump’s signature 2017 tax law expiring at the end of 2025, tax policy has been front and center of the 2024 presidential race.
Harris trumpeted her plans for an “opportunity economy” and panned Trump’s proposal to raise tariffs and “provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations.”
“Donald Trump has no plan for you, and when you look at his economic plan, it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people,” Harris said on the debate stage.
Harris’ proposals include increasing the corporate tax rate to 28%, permanently expanding the child tax credit to pandemic levels and extending up to $6,000 to new parents, providing up to $50,000 in tax relief for business start-up costs, and offering new homebuyers a $25,000 tax credit.
A large part of Trump’s economic plan is to impose universal tariffs of at least 10% on all U.S. imports, with tariffs on Chinese goods at 60%. When asked by Muir if the approach could cause consumer prices to increase, Trump denied the possibility.
“We’re not going to have higher prices. What’s going to happen, who’s going to have higher prices is China, and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years,” Trump said.
Trump has promised, at minimum, to extend his tax policies, which cut individual income tax rates, lowered the corporate tax rate to 21%, loosened business expensing and deductions, and doubled the child tax credit to $2,000.
Economists warn that if extended, the Trump-era tax cuts would add trillions to the deficit. That total could reach between $4 trillion and $5.8 trillion over the next decade, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model. In a separate model, the Tax Foundation estimated the policies could reduce federal revenue up to $6.1 trillion over a 10-year window.
The Penn Wharton model estimates Harris’ proposals would increase the deficit by up to $2 trillion over 10 years. Modeling from the Tax Foundation released Tuesday predicts the vice president’s plan would increase taxes by $4.1 trillion over the next decade but, after accounting for various tax cuts and credits, the projected revenue drops to $1.7 trillion, and even further if slowed economic growth is considered.
On health care, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan” to overhaul the Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama in 2010.
“I would only change it if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive,” he said. “And there are concepts and options we have to do that, and you’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future.”
Harris defended the law known as “Obamacare.”
Immigration and border security
Trump tried several times to steer the conversation to immigration, his signature issue since he began his first White House run in 2015.
He referenced viral — but unverified — stories of sensational disruptions caused by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado, and blamed Harris and Biden for the supposed episodes.
“These are the people that she and Biden let into our country,” he said.
Continuing Biden’s immigration policies would turn the country into “Venezuela on steroids,” he said.
Harris laughed after Trump pressed unverified claims about immigration. “Talk about extreme,” she said.
Harris promoted a bipartisan immigration and border security bill this year that included measures Republicans sought to strengthen enforcement. But the bill fell apart, she said, under opposition from Trump, who preferred campaigning on the issue to solving the problem.
When moderators then asked Trump about the bill, he began his answer by bragging about crowds at his campaign rallies, responding to a comment Harris had made.
Rally attendance remained high, he said, “because people want to take their country back.”
“Our country is being lost,” he said. “We’re a failing nation, and it happened three-and-a-half years ago. And what? What’s going on here? … What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States.”
He did not answer the question about the bill.
Energy and climate
Moderators asked Harris about her position on hydraulic fracturing, a technique for extracting natural gas better known as fracking.
The process is controversial among environmentalists, but a major industry in gas-rich Pennsylvania. During her unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in 2020, Harris told a climate activist during a televised town hall that she favored banning fracking but has said this year that is not her position.
Asked by Davis to explain the change Tuesday night, she said she’s also made clear in 2020 that she did not want to ban fracking.
She also noted her tie-breaking vote in the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive energy, taxes, and domestic policy law Democrats passed along party lines in 2022 that included expanded leases for natural gas production.
Trump urged voters not to believe Harris.
“If she becomes president, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one,” he said.
The last question before closing statements was on climate change.
Harris called it a threat and touted the Biden administration’s work to expand the clean energy industry, while preserving natural gas jobs.
Trump declined to answer the question, instead focusing on the work of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, with a Ukrainian energy company. Trump called the Biden administration “corrupt.”
Foreign policy
As the humanitarian crisis continues in the Gaza Strip with deaths mounting 40,000, according to Gaza health officials, Davis asked Harris how she could break through a stalemate on a proposed cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas militants.
The vice president offered little detail on how to finally broker a deal, but said, “What we know is this war must end.”
“It must end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal, and we need the hostages out, and so we will continue to work around the clock on that — work around the clock — also understanding that we must chart a course for a two-state solution,” she said.
Harris added that she will “always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran.”
Trump lashed back with accusations that Harris “hates” Israel and the “Arab population,” and repeated his refrain that “if I were president, [the war] would have never started.”
“I will get that settled and fast, and I’ll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I’m president-elect, I’ll get it done before even becoming president,” Trump said.
He did not directly answer if he wanted Ukraine to win the war.
“I think it’s in the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiate a deal, because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed,” Trump said when asked whether a Ukraine victory is in the U.S.’s best interest.
Harris said she would continue to stand with NATO allies on defending Ukraine.
“I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up. And that’s not who we are as Americans,” she rebutted.
Another foreign policy topic was on display at the U.S. Capitol hours before the debate when congressional leaders held a ceremony honoring 13 service members who were killed during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Trump and Republican lawmakers have ratcheted up criticism of Harris — implicating her hundreds of times in a damning report released Monday — for the Biden administration’s handling of the August 2021 exit from Afghanistan after two decades of war.
“I will tell you I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan. Four presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did,” Harris told Muir when asked if she bears any responsibility for the deadly withdrawal.
Harris criticized Trump for “negotiating directly with a terrorist organization” when he struck a deal with the Taliban before he left office.
Trump defended himself saying “I got involved with the Taliban because the Taliban was doing the killing” and said he achieved a “very good agreement.”
Trump made waves on the recent third anniversary of the 13 service members’ deaths when his staffers pushed an Arlington National Cemetery official aside to take photos in a restricted area, according to the U.S. Army and reporting by NPR.
Swift endorsement
Shortly after the debate’s close, mega star Taylor Swift said in an Instagram post she would vote for Harris.
Part of Swift’s exuberant fan base had called on her to endorse Harris, following her support for Biden and Harris four years ago.