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In their first and possibly only debate, Vice President Kamala Harris stayed composed as she made her case to voters, often pivoting her answers to topics that got under former President Donald Trump’s skin. Trump, for his part, stuck to his typical rally fare of incendiary rhetoric about immigrants and false claims, some of which were fact-checked in real time by the debate’s moderators. 

Trump’s demeanor and tone got angrier, more defiant and more rambling after Harris took a dig at the size and energy of his rallies, encouraging Americans to see one for themselves. 

“You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about, ‘windmills cause cancer,’” Harris said. “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.” 

The debate, which took place seven weeks after former President Joe Biden dropped out and 56 days before the 2024 election, was a critical opportunity for both candidates to lay down their markers and make their cases to the American electorate. Trump, who rarely raised his voice during his debate with Biden in June, on Tuesday leaned into the lectern, at times yelling and appearing flustered. 

Harris used some debate answers to discuss her personal biography of growing up in a middle-class household, highlight her past experience as a prosecutor and tout her economic policy agenda. 

At others, she chose key moments to strike a nerve — a notable dynamic as Trump, who has often run on personal insults and employed racist and sexist rhetoric, faced a Black and South Asian woman who currently holds the country’s second highest office. Throughout the debate, Trump struggled to land on a clear line of attack that was different from his attacks on Biden. At one point, he said Harris was “worse” than Biden while at others, he accused her of copying Biden’s policy plans and said, “She is Joe Biden.” 

Harris also sought to pierce Trump’s efforts to project an image of strength on the world stage, slamming his past and current praise for foreign autocratic leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. 

“It is absolutely well-known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear they can manipulate you with flattery and favors,” Harris said. “And that is why so many military leaders who you have worked with have told me you are a disgrace.”

She also dug at Trump’s searing defeat in the 2020 election, which the former president’s refusal to accept led to an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, criminal cases against his associates and ongoing rancor among his followers. 

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let’s be clear about that, and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that,” Harris said. 

Harris has made her past record as a prosecutor central to her campaign’s messaging against Trump, who has repeatedly assailed other Black women prosecutors who have brought cases against him and his businesses — including in the debate. 

Tuesday’s ABC News debate, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, was the first time Trump and Harris met in person. Trump did not attend Biden and Harris’ inauguration in 2021 after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election culminated in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. 

The 2024 election marks the second time in American history that the presidential debate stage has featured a man and a woman candidate — the first was in 2016, when Trump faced off against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Recent polls, including a 19th News/SurveyMonkey survey released Tuesday, show Harris and Trump locked in a tight race for the presidency with Harris’s three-point lead among registered voters, 41 to 44 percent, driven by women. The poll showed that 47 percent of women voters said Harris cared about the problems of people like them, while 35 percent say the same of Trump. The numbers are largely reversed for men — 46 percent for Trump and 36 percent for Harris.

From the start, Harris maintained her gaze on Trump when she wasn’t speaking, at times smirking or nodding. Trump, meanwhile, looked on at the moderators, primarily David Muir, and rarely glanced at Harris. When answering questions lobbed her way, Harris at several points looked into the camera, speaking directly to voters. 

Debate moderators called out on four of the times he made false or misleading claims, compared with zero instances for Harris, which conservative commentators were quick to blame for Trump’s performance. 

Trump took the anti-immigrant messaging that has become a marquee of his campaign to new levels when he made false and dehumanizing claims about undocumented immigrants, saying they are stealing — and eating — people’s pets. 

In Springfield, Ohio, he said, “they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating … 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.” One of the debate moderators told Trump the network had reached out to the city manager of Springfield, who said there had been no reports of any specific pets being harmed by immigrants, a lie that spread in a viral social media post. 

Trump also falsely accused Harris of letting immigrants into the country so that they could vote, saying, “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.” Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, and the path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is extremely narrow, if it exists at all.

Harris, meanwhile, urged voters to turn the page and reject Trump on a number of fronts, including his divisive rhetoric on race and identity. 

At one point, when Trump was asked about his false comments in July that Harris hadn’t always identified as Black, and that he didn’t know what race he was, he responded: “I don’t care what she is.”

Harris, in turn, said it’s “tragic” that Americans have a candidate for the presidency who “is constantly trying to divide us, especially by race.” She recalled how Trump took out a full page ad in The New York Times calling for the execution of the five Black and Latinx men known as the Central Park Five, who as teenagers were wrongly convicted of violently raping a jogger in the iconic park. She also pointed to Trump’s claims that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. 

“I think the American people want better than that — want better than this,” Harris said.“We want someone who understands, as I do, that we see in each other a friend. We see in each other a neighbor.”