On the night of September 10, 2024, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris participated in their first (and likely only) debate of the 2024 presidential election. In sharp contrast to the last debate where the sitting President of the United States struggled to form coherent answers and rebuttals, this time around it was a lively debate featuring a livelier Democratic nominee. Here are some of the main takeaways from the debate:
Source: Getty Images
Harris Goes on the Offensive
Kamala Harris was headset on setting an aggressive tone for the night. Unlike the last debate, where President Biden purposely did not shake hands with Trump, Harris shook the former president’s hand, asserting a show of dominance that would be on display for nearly the entire debate.
What was notable about the debate was her facial expressions. On the split screen, she would be observed facing her opponent directly, smirking, laughing, or shaking her head while Trump usually looked straight ahead as he spoke.
Harris provoked the former president on multiple occasions, in contrast to President Biden’s weak and pathetic performance at the debate in June. She jabbed at the size of his rallies, claiming that people left them early due to the long and rambling speeches the former president would make. Even as the moderators attempted to shift the debate towards the discussion of immigration, Trump’s preferred topic, Trump instead used part of that time to mock Harris’s rallies and call his rallies the “most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” Harris also referenced the former president’s criminal convictions as Trump went on a tangent about crime in the country. Harris also referenced the former president’s election defeat, saying that he was “fired by 81 million people.”
Perhaps Kamala Harris’s strongest moment was the segment on abortion. As Trump defended the Supreme Court’s decision overriding Roe v. Wade, Harris highlighted cases where women who miscarried or were raped were not able to get abortions.
Considering that this was Kamala Harris’s first presidential debate performance, it was her chance to introduce herself to the country and not portray herself as a carbon copy of President Biden. She emphasized the latter, reminding Trump at one point after he criticized Joe Biden’s replacement in July that he was not debating Biden. She highlighted her middle-class upbringing, her career as a prosecutor, and that she was present at the Capitol when pro-Trump rioters stormed it on January 6, 2021. When Trump claimed she would take guns away, she pointed out that she and her running mate Tim Walz were both gun owners.
While she did not go deep into policy specifics, Harris emphasized herself as a “breath of fresh air”, portraying herself as a “new generation of leadership for our country.”
Source: NYT/Getty Images
Trump’s Performance
If one were to remember Trump’s debate performance tonight, one would probably remember one memorable line. Trump brought up the bizarre right-wing conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating people’s pets, saying that “they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of people who live there.” When David Muir, one of the debate moderators, pointed out that city officials had denied it happened, Trump doubled down and said that the “people on television” were saying it.
Trump doubled down on more common conspiracy theories. He claimed that crime was up, when in fact it was down. In response to the fact check, Trump claimed that the FBI was “deeply corrupt” and that they were issuing “defrauding statements.” Later on, Trump claimed that he did not lose the 2020 election.
One of the former president’s main attack strategies was tying Harris to the unpopular President Biden, saying that they were essentially the same. He attacked the current administration’s record on immigration and the economy, claiming that today’s economy was the worst economy ever.
There were other notable moments of his debate performance. During a segment on foreign, Trump claimed that Harris “hates Israel and Arabs” in reference to the current administration’s handling of the war in Gaza and said that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been president. In response, Harris attacked Trump’s well-documented soft spot for dictators and claimed every world leader laughs at him. Trump fired back by claiming that Viktor Orban, the current autocrat in charge of Hungary, respects him.
Another notable moment was when Trump was asked about his specific plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, a main goal of Republicans since the law’s passage in 2009. Trump said that he had “concepts of a plan.”
Overall, Trump’s performance was lacking due to Harris’s preparation and zingers. He lost focus multiple times in attempting to answer the vice president’s zingers, failing to answer questions directly more frequently than Kamala Harris did. Republicans have pointed fingers at Laura Loomer – a far-right influencer and agitator – for possibly influencing Trump. She had been on Trump’s plane on the day of the debate and the following day.
The Verdict
It is clear that Kamala Harris won this debate by a landslide. She was very well prepared and easily outmaneuvered Trump in most of the debate’s segments. The Harris campaign should be happy with the debate preparations they carried out. She certainly exceeded expectations with her performance; pre-debate polls were often tied in whether or not Trump or Harris would win the debate. Harris later scored another win shortly after the debate’s end with the endorsement of Taylor Swift; her post on Instagram encouraging people to vote would lead to hundreds of thousands of people visiting the voter registration site Vote.gov. However, Harris did not effectively convey that she would represent a change from the Biden administration, in part due to her being the current vice president.
The moderators did a good job with the live fact-checking, something that was less prominent at the debate in June between Biden and Trump. Republicans and Trump himself later claimed that the moderators were biased against him, which may be true – ABC News does lie on the left side of the political spectrum according to the Media Bias Chart. However, the moderators also did fact-check Harris – particularly when she claimed that Trump left the Biden administration with the “worst unemployment since the Great Depression” and when she said that “there is not one member of the United States military who is an active duty in a combat zone”, when in fact the U.S. military was engaged with Houthi militants in Yemen. It just so happened that Trump made more false statements than Harris did.
Harris has tried to double down on the success of the debate by calling for a second one. That will probably not happen, after Trump proclaimed he would not be inclined to debate another time. At the end of the day, this debate did little to change anyone’s mind. Harris’s supporters will still vote for her and Trump’s supporters will still vote for him. The race is still as tight as ever.
Emil Ordonez, a rising college freshman, is the founder and editor-in-chief of Polinsights. He has been deeply passionate about politics and history since learning every U.S. President at the age of five. He was compelled to start this blog after meeting many people who were misinformed or had become apathetic about how society worked. He hopes to provide factual knowledge and insights that will encourage people, especially the young, to get more engaged in their respective communities. In his free time, he edits for Wikipedia and makes maps for elections. He aspires to work in Congress or even the White House in the future.
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