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On Tuesday night the former president Donald Trump and the current Vice President Kamala Harris faced off in Philadelphia for the first presidential debate since Joe Biden’s disastrous fall from grace earlier this year.
The debate, moderated by ABC, took place over ninety minutes, and saw the candidates clash on immigration, Trump’s rallies and Afghanistan. A snap CNN poll commissioned after the debate saw 63 percent say Harris had won, compared to 37 percent for Trump.
Here are the key moments from the debate:
Kamala Harris goads Trump over his rallies
As the section of the debate on immigration began — arguably one of Kamala Harris’s weakest areas — the current VP abruptly changed topic to the subject of Donald Trump’s rallies. Harris suggested that voters go to Trump’s events, so they can see people leave early because they are bored. And she ended by saying, “the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.”
Trump takes the bait — and says immigrants are eating people’s pets
After being needled by Harris about his rallies, Trump immediately took the bait and used his response on immigration to defend his events. He first quipped that “people don’t go to her rallies — there’s no reason to go,” before arguing that “people don’t leave my rallies.”
He then moved into immigration, suggesting that World War Three was imminent and immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s dogs and cats. (At the end, the moderator said ABC had spoken to the city’s manager, who said there had been no credible reports of immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield.)
Trump though it seemed couldn’t help but keep returning to the dig about his rallies, arguing again that “as far as the rallies are concerned, the reason they go is that they like what I say, they want to bring our country back.”
Trump goes on the attack on Afghanistan
Asked about the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Trump began by recounting his negotiations with “Abdul” from the Taliban (presumably Abdul Ghani Baradar, the current deputy PM of Afghanistan), and said when it came to killings of US soldiers:
“I told Abdul don’t do it anymore. You do it anymore and you’re going to have problems. And he said, ‘Why are you sending me a picture of my house?’ And I said ‘you’re going to have to figure that out Abdul.’”
Before ending with a blow to the Biden-Harris withdrawal:
“These people did the worst withdrawal, and in my opinion the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. And by the way, that’s why Russia attacked Ukraine, because they saw how incompetent she and her boss are.”
Trump quizzed on race
Moderators then asked Trump about his previous comment on Harris, that “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn black. And now she wants to be known as black.”
Trump argued that he couldn’t care less about Harris’s race, saying, “I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.” He continued:
“All I can say is I read where she was not black, that she put out… and then I read that she was black. And that’s OK. Either one was OK with me, that’s up to her.”
Trump finally attacks Harris’s record
It took until the final closing statements for Trump to ask the killer question of his opponent. He pointed out that the vice president has made multiple promises and proposals since becoming the presidential candidate: why hadn’t she done these things in the three and half years she’s been in power?
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
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