Takeaways from the ABC presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris baited ex-president Donald Trump for nearly all of the 1 hour and 45 minutes of their first and potentially only presidential election debate on Tuesday night – and Trump took every bit of it, CNN reports.

The vice president had prepared extensively for their debate, and peppered nearly every answer with a comment designed to enrage the former president. She told Trump that world leaders were laughing at him, and military leaders called him a “disgrace.” She called Trump “weak” and “wrong.” She said Trump was fired by 81 million voters – the number that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020.

“Clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that,” she said.

Trump was often out of control. He loudly and repeatedly insisted that a whole host of falsehoods were true. The former president repeated lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. He parroted a conspiracy theory about immigrants eating pets, and lied about Democrats supporting abortions after babies are born – which is murder, and illegal everywhere.

He painted a dire picture of the United States, reminiscent of the “American carnage” he’d warned of when he was inaugurated in 2017.

“We have a nation that is dying,” Trump said Tuesday night.

As the debate ended, Harris got another boost: Musician and pop culture icon Taylor Swift posted on Instagram that she was backing the Democratic ticket. She signed her post “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady” — a reference to controversial comments by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, that have alienated many women.

CNN provided some quick takeaways from the first portion of the debate:

Harris came onstage with a clear plan: Throw Trump off his game.

It was, by any measure, a dramatic success. When the vice president mentioned Trump’s criminal conviction and outstanding legal issues, he bit. When she called him out for sinking a bipartisan immigration bill, he bit harder. And when Harris suggested Trump’s rallies were boring, he nearly choked on the bait.

Rather than engage on the issues raised by the moderators, including a few that Trump considers some of his political strengths, the former president went on at length about the entertainment value of his rallies, claims the Biden administration was legally targeting him and, in a long, bizarre spell, insisted – against all available evidence, that migrants were eating Americans’ pets.

“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,” Trump said, after Harris criticized him for tanking the immigration bill.

Harris looked on as though she was puzzled, but rarely returned to the claims, apparently content to allow Trump go off.

Trump seemed especially aggrieved by the vice president’s aside about his campaign events. Even after Muir sought to redirect the debate to immigration – again, one of Trump’s preferred topics – the former president refused to let it go.

“First, let me respond as to the rallies,” Trump said, mocking Harris’ crowds before returning to his own. “People don’t leave my rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

The first hour of the debate then ended much like it began – with Trump off on a long, narrowcast tangent about the 2020 election, which he claimed, falsely once again, was stolen from him.

Despite signals from even his running mate, Trump did not refrain from repeating the conspiracy theory du jour during the debate.

The former president brought up the unfounded conspiracy theory that migrants from Haiti living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s cats and dogs.

The former president brought up the unfounded conspiracy theory that migrants from Haiti living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s cats and dogs. He said at one point “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of people who live there.”

When ABC News moderator David Muir pointed out that city officials denied any evidence that migrants in Springfield were actually eating pets, Trump doubled down, saying “the people on television” were saying it. When pressed, Trump just said, “We’ll find out.”

When the debate moved to crime, Trump claimed that crime was up in the United States contrary to the rest of the world. There too Muir pointed out that, according to FBI data, crime had actually declined in the past few years.

Trump, again, deferred to a different conspiracy theory that the FBI is deeply corrupt and issuing “defrauding statements.” He argued “it was a fraud.”

Later in the debate, Trump argued that US elections are “a mess” and claimed that Democrats are trying to get undocumented immigrants to vote in elections.