Kamala Harris repeatedly got under Donald Trump’s skin during explosive first debate

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris repeatedly got under the skin of convicted felon Donald Trump in their first and possibly only presidential debate, goading him into several unhinged rants about his rally crowd sizes and love of dictators. The debate moderators fact-checked Trump’s racist lies about immigrants eating house pets and West Virginians executing newborn children while Harris used non-verbal facial reactions to alternately laugh at Trump and shake her head in concerned disagreement with his many false claims.

The only mention of LGBTQ+ issues occurred when Trump deployed a racist and transphobic attack line, accusing Harris of supporting “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” — a crude restatement of her 2019 ACLU questionnaire answer that all federal prisoners, including trans immigrants detained by border agents, deserve medically necessary care.

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Donald Trump is getting so desperate his campaign is spreading racist lies about cats

Yesterday it was schools operating on students, today it’s Haitian immigrants eating cats. They just can’t win with the truth.

While the debate co-moderators frequently gave Trump the last word — speaking nearly 42 minutes compared to Harris’ 37 — she still managed to present herself as a calm, poised contrast to his constant negativity and lies. Here are several times she especially rattled him.

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Early into the debate, Harris tied Trump to Project 2025

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At the start of the debate, Harris walked directly up to Trump’s lectern and shook hands with him, something that didn’t occur during his first debate with President Joe Biden.

Then, during the debate’s first segment on the economy, Harris told viewers that they would hear “the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling” from Trump, adding, “What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again.”

Project 2025 is a Christian Nationalist plan to dismantle the federal government, install Trump loyalists, and repeal civil rights under a second Trump presidency.

Trump replied, “I have nothing to do with Project 2025…. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it. Purposely, I’m not going to read it.” He then called the Heritage Foundation “a group of people” who “got together” and “came up with some ideas… some good, some bad.”

In reality, at least 140 of the authors behind Project 2025 are former Trump aides and advisors, Trump’s “Agenda 47” shares many of the project’s policy aims, and his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has repeatedly praised the project’s founder, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, even writing the foreword to Roberts’ upcoming book which champions several of the project’s aims.

Harris repeatedly baited Trump into self-damaging rants

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When asked how she would differ from President Biden on immigration, Harris went on a tangent and said, “I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. You will see, during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like [murderous cannibal] Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about [how] windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom…. And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams … and your desires.”

While Trump could have hammered Harris on immigration, a topic considered one of her biggest political weaknesses, he took her bait, saying, “Let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there… We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

He then said his rally attendees “want to take their country back” because “millions and millions” of immigrants have illegally entered the country under Biden. He added, “In Springfield[, Ohio], they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

His bizarre claim repeated a right-wing conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Springfield have been eating pets. The untrue and racist statement originated from a local resident who claimed at an August city commission meeting that Haitian immigrants were slaughtering ducks at local parks for food, a Facebook post baselessly claiming that Haitian immigrants killed a local cat, and a news report about a woman (of unknown nationality) being arrested for killing and eating a cat.

Debate co-moderator David Muir fact-checked Trump during the debate, saying, “ABC News did reach out to the city manager [in Springfield]. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

Trump responded, “Well, I’ve seen people on television. The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food so maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager. People on television say their dog was eaten by the people who went there.”

Muir replied, “I’m not taking this from television.”

Soon after, Harris baited Trump again by noting that his former chief of staff, former defense secretary, and former national security advisor have all said he is “dangerous and unfit for the presidency.” In response, Trump said, “I fired most of those people, not so graciously. They did bad things or a bad job. I fired them” — a tacit admission that he hired ineffective and untrustworthy high-level advisors.

Later on, when asked about Trump’s repeated and ongoing denials that he lost the 2020 presidential election, Harris said, “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” adding, “Clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

"Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people" — Kamala Harris

(watch Trump — this one stung him) pic.twitter.com/ct2haparKk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2024

She then accused Trump of trying to “upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election” with his repeated claims of fraud as well as his incitement of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, something she called “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

Trump claimed that, on that day, he merely “showed up to make a speech” organized by others and added that he told his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” protest the election’s certification at the Capitol building. Debate co-moderator David Muir noted that Trump watched the riots from the Oval Office television and didn’t issue a video message telling rioters to stop until it had already gone on for two hours. Trump didn’t deny either fact.

Trump says an anti-LGBTQ+ dictator supports him

Harris continued, “I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States, and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you’re a disgrace.” She reminded him that he repeatedly lost court cases about the election because “You did, in fact, lose that election.”

“It 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,” she said. “That’s deeply troubling, and the American people deserve better.”

To counter her assertion, Trump then said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wants him back as president to help end global conflicts. Trump has repeatedly praised Orbán in the past, and Orbán has made demonizing LGBTQ+ people a prominent part of his anti-democratic campaign. Trump then claimed that he could quickly end the current Isreal-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine conflicts before even being seated as president.

Walz on MSNBC: "He was asked for one world leader who is with him, and it was Orban. My God." pic.twitter.com/e1CI1JrzLw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 11, 2024

Harris then said of Trump, “It is well known that he admires dictators — wants to be a dictator on day one. It is well known that he said of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that he can do ‘whatever the hell he wants’ in going to Ukraine…. It is well known he exchanged love letters with [North Korean Supreme Leader] Kim Jong Un, and it is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear that they can manipulate you with flattery and favors. And that is why so many military leaders who you have worked with have told me you are a disgrace.”

She later said, that, if it were up to Trump, Putin would be sitting in Ukraine’s capital, “Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland,” adding, “What you think is a friendship with [Putin — he] is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”

Her line effectively deflated Trump’s self-promotion as a strongman who prides himself on meeting with authoritarian world leaders who have long been isolated and uninvited by past presidents from both parties.

Harris delivers knockout response on Trump abortion bans

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Within the first half of the debate, debate co-moderator Linsey Davis asked Trump why women should trust his repeatedly changing position on abortion, noting that he has proudly announced himself as “the most pro-life president in American history” and bragged about ending Roe v Wade while also saying he’s both for and against Florida’s ban on abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy (a time before which many women even realize that they’re pregnant).

In response, Trump claimed that “the previous governor of West Virginia”, Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, expressed support for executing newborns. Debate co-moderator Linsey Davis fact-checked Trump’s claim, noting, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

Trump then gave “tremendous credit” to the Supreme Court’s “great courage” in overturning Roe and allowing individual states to vote on the issue saying, it’s what “everyone wanted.” Voters in seven states — including conservative ones like Kentucky, Montana and Ohio — have chosen to protect abortion access since Roe fell; the issue will be on 10 state ballots this November.

Trump later claimed “it doesn’t matter” whether he would sign a national abortion ban as president. Comparatively, Harris spoke passionately about how Trump’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has endangered innocent pregnant women who are unable to receive lifesaving care under Trump-era abortion bans.

“Let’s understand how we got here,” Harris said. “Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v Wade, and they did exactly as he intended. And now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans, which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state, it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans make no exception, even for rape and incest, which understand what that means: A survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body — that is immoral, and 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.”

“I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about ‘This is what people wanted’? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the 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. Her husband didn’t want that,” Harris said. “A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. They don’t want that…. Understand, in his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages.”

She then pledged to sign legislation to reinstate national abortion protections, saying, ” I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular, the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government.”

Trump didn’t fight back against her true assertions, though he later said she would never be able to get enough votes in a closely divided Congress to pass national abortion protections.

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