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Andrew Feinberg
White Home Correspondent
Donald Trump repeated false claims about abortion, amplified conspiracy theories and grew annoyed and defensive over dialogue of his rally crowd sizes in a collection of flailing responses within the first, and doubtlessly final, presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
Of their extremely anticipated matchup in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the previous president repeated discredited claims about immigrants stealing and consuming pets, falsely said that abortion sufferers are killing their youngsters after they’re born, and steamed over Harris’s accusations that his supporters are leaving his long-winded rallies “exhausted and bored.”
The primary-ever face-to-face assembly between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates on Tuesday evening introduced starkly totally different visions of America’s future, with Harris pitching to voters a possibility to depart Trump prior to now and as an alternative “construct on the aspirations and hopes of the American individuals.”
“Let’s discuss what Donald Trump left us,” mentioned Harris, itemizing the “worst unemployment for the reason that Nice Despair,” the “worst public well being epidemic in a century,” and “the worst assault on our democracy for the reason that Civil Battle” following a Trump-fueled mob’s try to overturn 2020’s election outcomes.
“What now we have carried out is clear up Donald Trump’s mess,” she mentioned.
His debate look pulls from the “usual drained playbook — a bunch of lies, grievances and identify calling,” Harris mentioned.
Trump, in the meantime, raged towards inflation that he characterised as “the worst in our nation’s historical past” whereas baselessly asserting thousands and thousands of immigrants are “pouring in” and “coming in and taking jobs which might be occupied now by African Individuals” and union staff.
He mentioned immigrants are “taking on buildings … violently.”
“We now have to get them out, and now we have to get them out quick,” he mentioned.
Requested whether or not there was something he regretted about his response to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump mentioned he “had nothing to do with that” and pivoted to demanding the prosecution of individuals crossing the US-Mexico border.
“For everybody watching who remembers January 6, I say, ‘We don’t have to return,’” mentioned Harris, who was a senator contained in the Capitol that day. “It’s time to show the web page. And if that was a bridge too far for you, there’s a place in our marketing campaign for you.”
Requested whether or not his current statements that he misplaced the 2020 election “by a whisker” are his years-delayed admission of defeat, Trump mentioned he was talking “sarcastically.”
He pointed to the thousands and thousands of voters he obtained in 2016 and 2020, failing to say that Biden obtained extra. Harris, borrowing a line from her opponent, mentioned that Trump was “fired by 81 million individuals.”
The presidential candidates shook arms on the stage forward of their extremely anticipated and doubtlessly closing debate, arriving lower than two months earlier than Election Day, and simply seven weeks after President Joe Biden ended his re-election marketing campaign and endorsed the vp because the Democratic nominee.
ABC Information moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir have been tasked with directing what could possibly be a chaotic 90-minute matchup between the 2 candidates, each of whom have agreed to the identical pointers from June’s debate between Trump and Biden.
There is no such thing as a viewers, prewritten notes will not be allowed, the candidates’ microphones will likely be muted when it isn’t their flip to talk, they usually can’t ask one another questions.
Trump, the primary criminally convicted former president, is working for workplace a 3rd time on his “Make America Nice Once more” agenda, with a retribution-fueled marketing campaign portray an apocalyptic imaginative and prescient of the nation overrun by unlawful immigration and violent crime and dogged by a flailing economic system underneath Biden’s administration. Trump has now pinned the blame for all the above on the vp.
Harris has embraced a “we’re not going again” slogan, choosing optimism and the promise of an “alternative economic system” that will construct off Biden’s platform.
After Biden left the race, Harris shortly rallied celebration officers and delegates round her nascent marketing campaign, and formally accepted the nomination on the Democratic Nationwide Conference on August 22, marking a unprecedented flip of occasions which have compressed the sometimes months-long election cycle into a couple of essential months. Tuesday’s debate begins the dash to Election Day.
The candidates entered Philadelphia’s Nationwide Structure Middle neck and neck within the polls, with the latest New York Occasions/Siena School survey placing Trump one share level forward of his Democratic rival, inside the ballot’s three-point margin of error. Harris, nonetheless, is main barely in most swing states, the place the presidential race is more likely to be gained.
Harris’s marketing campaign launched a statewide voter drive throughout the battleground state of Pennsylvania forward of the talk, whereas Trump heads to Phoenix on Thursday adopted by a press convention in Los Angeles and rally in Las Vegas on Friday.
Voters are nonetheless hungry for extra details about the vp, but 40 p.c of American adults imagine debates between candidates are hardly ever if ever based mostly on info, in keeping with a current ballot from AP-NORC Middle for Public Affairs Analysis for USAFacts. Solely 29 p.c of adults mentioned the identical in 2020.
It is a growing story
