Donald Trump v Kamala Harris: US Presidential Debate highlights

Kamala Harris stunned viewers when she attacked Donald Trump and tried to rattle him before she called for a second debate. See how it unfolded.

Kamala Harris triggered and trolled Donald Trump in a fiery election debate in which the former president inconsistently landed his attacks and resorted to outlandish conspiracies.

With 56 days until the election, the Vice President managed to get under her opponent’s skin in what was the first – and possibly only – head-to-head contest between the candidates who are locked in a neck-and-neck race to November.

While the Republican blasted his Democratic opponent for her role in soaring inflation and a record influx of illegal immigrants, he was also undisciplined in the face of the former prosecutor’s efforts to bait him into angry responses on controversial issues.

Moments after the debate, Ms Harris’s team confidently called for a second round next month, and she received a further boost with the endorsement of pop megastar Taylor Swift.

But Mr Trump claimed she only wanted a rematch because “she lost tonight very badly”, telling reporters it was his “best debate” even though he thought the moderators from US TV network ABC News were “very unfair” by fact-checking him.

The Vice President opened the debate by crossing the stage to shake Mr Trump’s hand – in what was the first time they had met – before trying to rattle him by jabbing at the size of his crowds, his criminal record and the foreign and military leaders who called him a “disgrace”.

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

“I have travelled the world as the Vice President … and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump,” she said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin “would eat you for lunch”.

Ms Harris repeatedly accused Mr Trump of lying as she criticised his “same old tired playbook”, telling tens of millions of voters watching the debate: “It’s time to turn the page.”

The former president sought to brand his opponent with the failures of President Joe Biden, his opponent until their debate in June in which the 81-year-old performed so poorly that he was forced to drop out, thrusting Ms Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket.

“They threw him out of the campaign like a dog … We have a president who doesn’t even know he’s alive,” Mr Trump said.

She retorted: “You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me.”

Mr Trump’s sharper lines tying her to Mr Biden’s record only came later in the debate, as his earlier efforts to divert unrelated questions to immigration came unstuck when Ms Harris riled him up by saying his supporters left his rallies “out of exhaustion and boredom”.

“People don’t leave my rallies,” he replied, describing them as “the most incredible rallies in the history of politics”, before throwing out a false claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating their neighbours’ pets.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Mr Trump said, despite local officials saying there were “no credible reports” to match the rumours spread online by his running mate JD Vance.

Mr Trump also came under pressure on key policy questions, as he refused to say whether he would veto a national abortion ban, sidestepped whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, and offered only “a concept” of a plan to overhaul health insurance.

He expressed no regrets about the January 6 riot sparked by his refusal to accept his defeat in 2020, instead attacking a police officer who shot a protester at the US Capitol.

Pressed on whether he would acknowledge the results, having recently said he “lost by a whisker”, Mr Trump said that was sarcasm and there was “so much proof” he beat Mr Biden.

Ms Harris hit back by saying: “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people … Clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

When Ms Harris criticised his legal problems, including his hush money conviction in New York, the former president accused her of weaponising the justice system and claimed he “probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they said about me”.

Authorities are yet to determine the motive for the attempt to assassinate him in July.

Ms Harris was forced to defend her flip-flops on key issues, including her move to abandon her opposition to fracking, but she maintained her “values have not changed”.

Mr Trump accused her of copying his policies and jokingly said he was “going to send her a (Make America Great Again) hat”.

On the war in Gaza, another vulnerability for her among young voters, Ms Harris pushed for a ceasefire that would free Hamas’s hostages. But Mr Trump claimed Israel was “going to get blown up” and would not exist if she entered the Oval Office.

After the debate, Ms Harris told her supporters they were “still the underdogs in this race”.

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Originally published as Donald Trump v Kamala Harris: US Presidential Debate highlights