Harris gets under Trump’s skin, over and over
Kamala Harris set a hook. And Donald Trump took the bait — over and over again.
In the first face-to-face showdown between the two presidential candidates, she taunted him for his crowd sizes, his past bankruptcies, his inherited wealth and more. Mocking Trump’s stature on the global stage, Harris claimed that world leaders laugh at him — a barb aimed squarely at his personal insecurities.
The result left Trump on the defensive — and struggling to land hits even as the discussion turned to territory friendlier for him like immigration and the economy.
“I’m not signing a ban,” Trump said, as he vacillated between shrugging off Harris’ attacks on abortion and defending the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade. As for Project 2025, the ultra-conservative agenda that Harris has portrayed as a blueprint for a Trump presidency, he said, “I don’t want to read it.”
One of the most striking moments came when the moderators pivoted to Trump’s favorite topic — immigration. Harris hit him for killing the bipartisan border deal and then trolled Trump over his rallies, belittling the size of his crowds and quickly shifting attention off of a central political vulnerability. The Republican — who allies had counseled to remain calm and under control — couldn’t help himself: “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” Trump insisted, as Harris looked on, smirking and shaking her head.
The early exchanges quickly set the tone for the much-anticipated debate, in which Harris moved to take command on a number of topics. While Trump started out measured and collected — reminiscent of his face-off with President Joe Biden — he appeared increasingly frustrated as Harris needled him.
“Talk about extreme,” Harris said, after Trump gave an extended recounting of baseless stories about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating household pets that have circulated in right-wing circles and among conspiracy theorists.
Tuesday marked the first face-to face-meeting for Harris and Trump, in what may be the only time voters will hear from the candidates in a side-by-side match-up before Election Day. The two candidates, battling it out in a race that began just seven weeks ago, remain deadlocked just days before early voting begins in some key states.
The mics were muted Tuesday night when the candidates weren’t speaking, a point of tension in recent weeks as the Harris campaign pushed for mics to be unmuted for the entirety of the debate. Harris aides warned in recent days that the format disadvantaged the vice president, shielding viewers from hearing Trump’s direct exchanges with Harris and denying the former prosecutor the ability to fully cross-examine Trump.
But the muted mics didn’t appear to hamper Harris, who used her response time to briefly fact check Trump and respond to his attacks. Harris’ body language was also notable from the moment she stepped on stage, walking to the former president’s podium to ensure they shook hands. And she often looked at Trump as she spoke, even as the former president avoided eye contact with her.
"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," Harris said at one point, staring directly at Trump as she described individual instances of women who faced health emergencies because they could not access abortion.
Harris’ strategy was effective in putting Trump on the defensive throughout much of the 90-minute faceoff, but it did come at the cost of leaving her with less time to introduce herself to unfamiliar voters and to lay out her policy vision. Trump also continuously managed to get the last word on each topic, often interjecting when the moderators tried to move on.
Just two months from Election Day, the stakes were high for both candidates, as Trump has struggled to calibrate a message against a new opponent. And Harris, who has been forced to introduce herself to voters on a truncated timeline, has mostly avoided unscripted moments on the campaign trail, while coming into Tuesday night’s showdown with far less experience than Trump on a debate stage.
Trump targeted Harris early on over inflation, pointing to the sharp rise in prices for groceries over the last three years, which voters have consistently ranked a top concern. He also tried to lash her to Biden on a range of topics, accusing her at one point of simply taking his agenda and making it her own.
But that strategy eventually backfired, as Trump became more focused on attacking Biden than the opponent right in front of him — often saving his most cutting remarks for a president he denigrated as a poor commander in chief who was now spending "all his time on a beach."
"First of all, it's important to remind the former president, you're not running against Joe Biden," Harris said. "You're running against me."
Harris declined to break with Biden on any substantive policy matters. But she cast herself as the fresh, unifying candidate in the race, in an effort to appeal to an electorate that has signaled it’s eager for change in November. She jumped at opportunities to portray Trump, by contrast, as a symbol of the divisiveness of the past eight years, seizing in particular on past episodes where he questioned her race.
“I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” Harris said. “We don’t want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us — and especially by race.”
The approach often left Trump searching for a counterpunch, abandoning his efforts early on to advance a methodical case against Harris in favor of a rapid succession of one-line attacks on unrelated issues.
“She has a plan to defund the police,” Trump said at one point, attempting to get the last word as the moderators tried to cut him off. “She has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun. She has a plan to not allow fracking In Pennsylvania or anywhere else.”
Harris later batted down the accusations by, in part, asserting that she was a gun owner and emphasizing that she'd already committed not to pursue a fracking ban.
Polling in the run-up to the debate showed Trump and Haris effectively tied, with the race within the margin of error across several battleground states.
Both campaign’s moved quickly to declare victory Tuesday night, with the Trump campaign saying the former president “prosecut[ed] Kamala Harris’ abysmal record of failure that has hurt Americans for the last 4 years.” And the Harris campaign moved quickly to express their interest in a second debate.
“Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” said Harris campaign co-chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.
Emmy Martin contributed to this report.
