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Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
Donald Trump repeated false claims about abortion, amplified conspiracy theories and grew frustrated and defensive over discussion of his rally crowd sizes in a series of flailing responses in the first, and potentially last, presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
The former president repeated discredited claims about immigrants stealing and eating pets, falsely stated that abortion patients are killing their children after they are born, and steamed over Harris’s accusations that his supporters are leaving his long-winded rallies “exhausted and bored.”
The first-ever face-to-face meeting between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates on Tuesday night presented starkly different visions of America’s future, with Harris pitching to voters an opportunity to leave Trump in the past and to instead “build on the aspirations and hopes of the American people.”
“Let’s talk about what Donald Trump left us,” said Harris, listing the “worst unemployment since the Great Depression,” the “worst public health epidemic in a century,” and “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” following a Trump-fueled mob’s attempt to overturn 2020’s election results.
“What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess,” she said.
His debate appearance pulls from the “same old tired playbook — a bunch of lies, grievances and name calling,” Harris said.
Trump, meanwhile, raged against inflation that he characterized as “the worst in our nation’s history” while baselessly asserting millions of immigrants are “pouring in” and “coming in and taking jobs that are occupied now by African Americans” and union workers.
He said immigrants are “taking over buildings ... violently.”
“We have to get them out, and we have to get them out fast,” he said.
Asked whether there was anything he regretted about his response to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump said he “had nothing to do with that” and pivoted to demanding the prosecution of people crossing the US-Mexico border.
“For everyone watching who remembers January 6, I say, ‘We don’t have to go back,’” said Harris, who was a senator inside the Capitol that day. “It’s time to turn the page. And if that was a bridge too far for you, there is a place in our campaign for you.”
Asked whether his recent statements that he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker” are his years-delayed admission of defeat, Trump said he was speaking “sarcastically.”
He pointed to the millions of voters he received in 2016 and 2020, failing to mention that Biden received more. Harris, borrowing a line from her opponent, said that Trump was “fired by 81 million people.”
The presidential candidates shook hands on the stage in Philadelphia ahead of their highly anticipated and potentially final debate, arriving less than two months before Election Day, and just seven weeks after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed the vice president as the Democratic nominee.
ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir have been tasked with directing what could be a chaotic 90-minute matchup between the two candidates, both of whom have agreed to the same guidelines from June’s debate between Trump and Biden.
There is no audience, prewritten notes are not allowed, the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, and they cannot ask each other questions.
Trump, the first criminally convicted former president, is running for office a third time on his “Make America Great Again” agenda, with a retribution-fueled campaign painting an apocalyptic vision of the nation overrun by illegal immigration and violent crime and dogged by a flailing economy under Biden’s administration. Trump has now pinned the blame for all of the above on the vice president.
Harris has embraced a “we’re not going back” slogan, opting for optimism and the promise of an “opportunity economy” that would build off Biden’s platform.
After Biden left the race, Harris quickly rallied party officials and delegates around her nascent campaign, and formally accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention on August 22, marking an extraordinary turn of events that have compressed the typically months-long election cycle into a few crucial months. Tuesday’s debate begins the sprint to Election Day.
The candidates entered Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center neck and neck in the polls, with the most recent New York Times/Siena College survey putting Trump one percentage point ahead of his Democratic rival, within the poll’s three-point margin of error. Harris, however, is leading slightly in most swing states, where the presidential race is likely to be won.
Harris’s campaign launched a statewide voter drive across the battleground state of Pennsylvania ahead of the debate, while Trump heads to Phoenix on Thursday followed by a press conference in Los Angeles and rally in Las Vegas on Friday.
Voters are still hungry for more information about the vice president, yet 40 percent of American adults believe debates between candidates are rarely if ever based on facts, according to a recent poll from AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research for USAFacts. Only 29 percent of adults said the same in 2020.
This is a developing story
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