Five big takeaways from the Harris-Trump debate

Tuesday night’s debate was another major milestone in a historic American election year that has already seen the sitting president of the United States announce he won’t seek reelection, and the former president hit with a conviction for 34 felonies, and then survive an assassination attempt.

Tens of millions of voters watched the high-stakes showdown in Philadelphia, which was the first — and potentially only — debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in this election cycle. Election Day is now less than two months away. Mail-in ballots go out in a month in many states, including California. Five big takeaways from the debate:

1) Trump was rattled

A key part of Harris’ strategy was clearly to try and rattle Trump, and make him angry. It worked. Early on, she mocked the size of the crowds at his rallies, an issue that he has been obsessed about since he began campaigning in 2015. In an unusual move, Harris invited people to attend Trump’s rallies, saying: “He talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He talks about how windmills cause cancer.” Then she said “people leave early.” Clearly annoyed, Trump said: “My rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” She proceeded throughout the night to push buttons, from highlighting his 34 felony convictions, to claiming that other world leaders laugh at Trump behind his back. For much of the night, he came across as angry, scowling and shaking his head.

2) Harris scored big on the abortion issue

Harris also put Trump on the defensive on abortion. She called the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago “the Trump abortion ban” and in an impassioned moment, mentioned incest victims as young as 12 who have been forced to give birth. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, are being denied care in emergency rooms because health care providers are afraid they might go to jail. And she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot. She didn’t want that,” Harris said. Trump claimed that abortions were being performed on babies in the ninth month of pregnancy, something that ABC moderator Linsey Davis corrected: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill the baby after it’s born,” she said.

3) Both candidates tried to establish themselves as the agent of change

Trump hammered Harris on illegal immigration and inflation, saying he would reverse course. “They’ve had three-and-a-half years to fix the border and create jobs and all the things we’ve talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?” he said. Harris mentioned President Biden only a few times in passing. She sharply criticized Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, his claim that there were “fine people on both sides” when Nazi and KKK members marched in Charlottesville, North Carolina in 2017, and for trying to divide the country rather than bring people together. “We don’t have to go back,” she said. “Let’s not go back. We’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page.”

4) Trump embraced conspiracy theories

At times he seemed to be speaking to the kind of audiences he is used to being around on Fox News, or at his rallies, or in conservative social media sites, not a nationwide audience of more than 50 million people from all backgrounds. As a character reference for his leadership, he cited Victor Orban, the strongman leader of Hungary. He continued to insist that the 2020 election was stolen from him by voter fraud, a claim that was dismissed by more than 60 court cases, including some of them overseen by judges he appointed. He repeated debunked misinformation from social media this week that Haitian immigrants have been eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump claimed, as Harris shook her head and smiled. ABC moderator David Muir said the station had called the city manager in Springfield, and he said the conspiracy was not true. Trump doubled down, likely leaving many viewers scratching their heads. “Well, I’ve seen people on television,” he said. Harris pivoted. “This is, I think, one of the reasons why I actually have the endorsement of 200 republicans who had formerly worked with George Bush, Mitt Romney and John McCain, including the endorsement of former vice president Dick Cheney and Congress member Liz Cheney.”

5) Surprisingly, California didn’t come up

Many political observers expected Trump to bash Harris, a native of Oakland, one of America’s most liberal cities, for being a “Bay Area liberal,” or to attack the state’s failure to make progress on homelessness, or its generous policies toward immigrants, or its tough environmental rules. He didn’t. And Harris didn’t bring up Silicon Valley, Hollywood, or her home state either. In the end, she portrayed herself as a uniter for the whole country, saying in her closing remarks: “We all have so much more in common than what separates us.” Trump, by contrast, used grievance as a theme, summed up in his closing remarks: “Were a failing nation. We’re a nation that’s in serious decline. We’re laughed at all over the world.” As Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barack Obama showed, voters more often than not gravitate toward the happy warrior in presidential elections. Many analysts, including Republicans like pollster Frank Luntz, say Harris won the debate. “Harris isn’t just winning. Trump is losing,” he said on X (formerly Twitter) toward the end of the 90-minute contest.

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