Kamala Harris’s and Donald Trump’s best and worst debate moments

Vice President Harris had a strong night in her big clash with former President Trump on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

A poised and focused Harris seemed to get the better of Trump in numerous exchanges at the debate, which was hosted by ABC News. At times, she baited him into an irritated or peevish tone. Frequently, he was pushed onto the defensive.

ABC’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, were far more aggressive in fact-checking Trump than their counterparts, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, had been in the now-infamous debate between Trump and President Biden in June.

Trump’s bad night got worse just moments after the debate ended, when music megastar Taylor Swift endorsed Harris. 

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post.

But even in a debate that looked like a lop-sided victory for Harris, each candidate had their good and bad moments. Here are some of the biggest ones.

Kamala Harris’s Best Moments

Reproductive rights

Abortion could be the single best political issue for Harris and her party. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the GOP has struggled on the topic as voters have recoiled from hardline bans.

Harris pressed the point home in an extended exchange on the subject, where Trump meandered, his meaning often opaque.

“Now in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans,” Harris asserted, tying Trump to the kind of restrictive policies he wants to distance himself from.

“The government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she added.

January 6

The Capitol riot is another obvious centerpiece of Harris’s election campaign. Trump was impeached, and later criminally charged, over a dark day that left more than 100 law enforcement officers injured.

But Harris was particularly deft in speaking about those events in a way that characterized Trump as, simultaneously, authoritarian and deeply insecure.

“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, referring to the approximate number of votes cast for President Biden.

The phrasing, with its implication of psychological weakness, seemed calculated to get under Trump’s skin.

Harris followed up by arguing that Trump’s attempts to rationalize his role suggested he did not have “the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact. That’s deeply troubling and the American people deserve better.”

Casting Trump as selfish

Harris often interwove answers on specific topics with her bigger campaign argument — namely, that Trump is just out for himself.

Early on, she told the audience that Trump would take refuge in “the same, old, tired playbook — a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”

On the economy, she said Trump “is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”

Regarding international affairs, she told him that other leaders can “manipulate you with flattery and favors.”

Every such moment reinforced her central critique of the former president.

Kamala Harris’s worst moments

Fracking and her changes of position

Harris has been bedeviled for years by questions over her authenticity.

Those questions have resurfaced again now that she has abandoned her previous support for a ban on fracking, and has eased off support for Medicare for All and for decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

Pressed by Davis on how her values could have remained unchanged while her policies had shifted, Harris did not have any particularly compelling answer.

Instead, she appeared evasive and eager to get off the subject — even though she must have known the question was coming.

Gaza

Harris is trying to thread a needle on Gaza — perhaps the single most divisive issue within the Democratic Party.

The danger in that approach is that it can end up pleasing no-one.

On Tuesday, she repeated her position that “Israel has a right to defend itself” but that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

She did say that Palestinians should have “an equal measure” of security as Israelis as well as “self-determination.”

But a big question-mark still hangs over the question of whether Harris would actually do anything different from Biden on policy if she is elected in November.

Donald Trump’s best moments

Inflation and the economy

The economy routinely tops voters’ lists of concerns in opinion polls. 

Neither Biden nor Harris have fully healed the political wound they suffered when inflation peaked at its highest levels in a generation in 2022.

Trump exaggerated the rate of inflation, suggesting falsely that it had reached “21 percent.” It peaked at 9.1 percent on an annualized basis.

But Trump did tap into popular discontent arguing the issue, contending, “I’ve never seen a worse period of time” and that people were struggling to “go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else.”

More broadly, Trump argued that he had a strong economy as president, only to be undone by the COVID-19 pandemic — a claim that has some substance to it, despite his critics’ scoffing.

Ukraine

One of the topics on which there is the deepest chasm between Trump and Harris — and between Trump and some Republicans — is the war in Ukraine.

But American aid to Kyiv is a divisive issue in American society at large. A Gallup poll earlier this year found 36 percent of Americans believing the U.S. was doing too much to help Ukraine.

Trump’s argument that he merely wants “the war to stop” could have some appeal to hard-pressed Americans who feel the money directed toward Ukraine could be better spent at home.

“Look, we’re in for 250 billion [dollars] or more because they don’t ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are,” Trump added.

Donald Trump’s worst moments

“They’re eating the cats”

A nation that has become accustomed to Trump making wild claims can still be startled by some of his flights of fancy — as on Tuesday when he repeated unfounded rumors about immigrants eating domestic animals.

“In Springfield 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,” he insisted.

Muir noted that ABC News had reached out to the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, and “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 dug himself deeper with his riposte.

“I’ve seen people on television,” he said. “People on television say my dog was taken and used for food.”

Harris and race

Trump has been unable to put to rest an ill-advised comment he made in late July during an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists.

On that occasion, he suggested, falsely, that Harris had only adopted a Black identity recently.

Asked on Tuesday why he thought it was appropriate to weigh in on the topic, Trump replied, “I don’t. And I don’t care what she is.”

But pressed further he added, “All I can say is I read where she was not Black — that she put out — and I’ll say that. And then I read that she was Black, and that’s okay.”

The controversy seems the rare one for Trump that won’t go away.

A “concept of a plan”

Perhaps the most substantively damaging moment for Trump came relatively late in the debate, on the topic of healthcare.

Davis challenged Trump on his failure to produce a plan that would replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, despite pledging to repeal that law for nine years.

Trump failed to provide any specifics. But the more damaging soundbite came when Davis pressed further.

“So, just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?” she asked the former president.

“I have concepts of a plan,” he replied.

The phrase seems almost tailor-made for Democratic attack ads on a topic that is of searing personal interest to millions of Americans.