Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump squared off Tuesday evening in what may be their only debate before November’s election, answering an array of domestic and foreign policy questions while trading barbs and repeatedly accusing each other of lying.
Harris described “two very different visions for our country.” She said her own vision is forward looking, and Trump’s vision is backward and extreme.
“We’re not going back,” she said.
Harris made a particularly forceful case for women’s reproductive rights, hammering Trump for his successful efforts to dismantle abortion care in states across the country with his appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. She promised an ” to help Americans recover financially, with a $6,000 child tax credit and a $50,000 tax break for small businesses.
Trump cast Harris as a failed liberal leader who has had a chance to make changes to help Americans strapped financially during the current administration of President Biden, and failed.
“Why didn’t she do it? We’re a failing nation,” Trump said.
He said he would create an economy to help Americans and bring down costs, including by forcing other countries like China to pay tariffs, and said Harris “doesn’t have a plan.”
The debate was defined in part by mistruths and bizarre tangents, especially from Trump.
Trump lied in suggesting that Democrats want to allow people to kill babies after being born as part of abortion care, and that everyone — Democrats included — wanted the federal right to abortion under Roe vs. Wade dismantled. Neither is true.
Trump also said to skyrocket across the country, which is not true, and repeated the conspiracy theory that immigrants are eating American pets, a claim for which there is no evidence.
“Talk about extreme!” Harris responded.
What Harris and Trump said in their closing statements
In her closing statement, Vice President Kamala Harris summarized her first — and possibly only — debate with former President Trump as “two very different visions for our country: one that is focused on the future, and the other that is focused on the past and an attempt to take us backward.”
She repeated a line she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, often use on the campaign trail: “We’re not going back.”
Harris said that, as president, she would “create an opportunity economy” by “investing in small business, in new families, in what we can do around protecting seniors,” and “giving hardworking folks a break and bringing down the cost of living.”
The vice president said she wanted to ensure the United States is respected internationally — and that it has “the most lethal fighting force in the world.”
And she said she would “be a president that will protect our fundamental rights and freedoms including the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do.”
Her voice caught with emotion when she said: ““As a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness, Arte you a republican or a democrat? The only thing I ever asked them: ‘Are you OK?’”
“That’s the kind of president we need right now,” she said. “Someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first.”
Trump kept the focus of his closing statement on Harris, attacking her record as vice president under Biden and painting a bleak picture of the United States as a laughingstock of the world.
“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,” Trump said. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years.”
Prior to the debate, Trump won a coin flip and chose to give the final closing statement. He used his time to admonish Harris.
“She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together to do the things you want to do, but you haven’t done it, and you won’t do it.”
He also pointed to wars in the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, saying “We’re not a leader.”
