Harris Baits Trump: Inside Their Fiery Debate

from New York Times I'm Michael Boro this is the daily today in their first and possibly only presidential debate kamla Harris dominated and enraged Donald Trump and made a night that could have been about her record instead into a night about his temperament my colleague political correspondent Jonathan Swan walks us through how it unfolded it's Wednesday September 11th Jonathan good evening Michael how are you I'm okay I mean it's late it's very late it is damn near midnight and we appreciate you being willing to stay up with us always happy to be here so Jonathan this debate was described beforehand by you in the paper of record in the times as the most important 90 minutes in American politics in Generations so I just want to ask you why even before it began in your estimation it merited that string of superlatives well now you say it I I think we might have gone a bit overboard on that cu the Biden the Biden debate you know knocked him out and and he dropped out so that probably that one goes down as the you know um no but I'm being a little factious look the reason it was so unusually important is that so rarely these days do you have a candidate that there are so many voters who are still curious about them and haven't made up their minds about them and what more are hungry for more information about them that they're still very malleable in terms of voter opinion as kamla Harris is right now that you cannot find a voter in America who doesn't have an opinion about Donald Trump it's very very hard to anyway but somewhere in the realm of 30% of Voters want to know more about KLA Harris are curious about her want to see if she presents as plausible as a commanderin-chief want to see what her ideas are you know for dealing with inflation and the economy and are generally up for grabs so both sides both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign viewed this debate in almost exactly the same way which was it is an opportunity to Define kamla Harris for that slice of undecided voters in the key Battleground states that are going to decide this election and how in your mind were each of these candidates hoping to do that very specific task Define vice president Harris here well the Trump team had a very clear goal um he spent quite a lot of time preparing for this debate their goal was to force kamla Harris to own her partnership with Joe Biden a very unpopular president and force her to own the most unpopular aspects of his record of their record in office in particular high prices the situation at the southern border chaos around the world what they were trying to avoid is for her to present herself as the change candidate they want her to be seen as the incumbent as someone who is a fixture of the current leadership in this country that undecided voters are very very frustrated with on her side their job was to present the exact opposite was to present herself without you know throwing Joe Biden under the bus completely but a break something new the future an optimistic breath of fresh air Trump is the past a change candidate in a change election and also to present herself as someone that people could see as being a president or a commanderin-chief someone who passes what Trump advis has thought of as the plausibility test MH so that's how each side saw the debate going into it and I wonder who you think accomplished those objectives best she did that's about as short an answer as I've ever received on the show and we're going to make you explain that so let's talk about what actually happened during these 90 minutes of this debate and how those two strategies in her case it seems did play out and his perhaps didn't take us into the debate room so let's now welcome the candidates to the stage vice president KLA Harris and president Donald Trump well the first moment that struck me was was right at the beginning when she walked over to Donald Trump K Harris have a good bate see you have fun thank you and shook his hand welcome to you both it's wonderful to have you it's an honor to have you both here tonight which might seem unremarkable but in the context of trump and debates it was sort of a power move there was all of this discussion behind the scenes before Trump's debate with Biden where Trump was discussing with his advisers should I shake his hand shouldn't I shake his hand I mean Trump is someone who thinks a lot about visuals about Optics about domination things like that so it's definitely something that he would have thought about I don't know what his thinking was going into this particular debate but that was a move that I thought oh interesting she's come here to play and perhaps also come here to try to get under his skin a little bit right from the get-go literally before a word is uttered yeah and then we get the first question I want to begin tonight with the issue that voters repeatedly say is their number one issue and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country the ABC moderator David mure asks kamla Harris the question that Donald Trump really wants or his team going into this wanted it to be the question that defined the whole KN which is and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters are you better off than you were four years ago would you say that voters are better off now than they were four years ago when it comes to the economy do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago so I was raised as a middle- class kid KLA Harris she starts out her voice is sort of a little jittery she sounds nervous we know that we have a a shortage of of homes and housing and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people and she basically avoids the question my passion one of them is small businesses I was actually my mother raised my sister and me but there was a woman who helped raise us we call her our second mother she was a small business owner I love our small businesses she starts with what sounds like a really can remarks about you know I was raised as a middle class kid I believe in the ambition the aspirations the dreams of the American people you know very cliched sort of political rhetoric and that is why I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy and she starts rattling off some of her policies my plan is to give a $50,000 tax deduction to Startup small businesses knowing they are part of the backbone of America's economy and you sort of think okay where's she going with this and then she sort of pivots to this attack against Trump at the end my opponent on the other hand his plan is to do what he has done before which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations as you know the guy who's only out for rich people who wants to cut taxes for billionaires and that's where her first answer ends economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result for middle class families in about $4,000 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires I mean what she's trying to do here is she's trying to present Donald Trump as a guy who's fighting for only himself and his rich friends and contrast herself as someone who grew up middle class who's fighting for the middle class and who cares about you the voter mhm and as you said this is her objective in this debate to begin to clearly Define herself on her own terms exactly which in this case also means not wanting to talk about whether the economy is better now than it was four years ago what she's doing is tap dancing she's tap dancing around it and trying to find an Ang to turn this back on offense and what about Trump's answer on this key issue of the economy what does he have to say Trump started out fine it was a rambling answer but he basically hit her on the things that we've come to expect him to attack her on we've had a terrible economy because inflation has which is really known as a country Buster it breaks up countries it t her on inflation he defended his tariffs being tough on China cases I took in billions and billions of dollars as you know from China in fact they never took the Tariff off because it was so much money they can't and then he pivoted to immigration on top of that we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails from mental institutions and insane asylums started attacking her yes with hyperbolic claims about criminality and you know the dangers of undocumented migrants they are taking over the towns they're taking over buildings they're going in violently and also hyperbolic claims about his own economic record I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country I'll do it again and even better but it was delivered in a fairly calm Manner and exactly the kind of messages that his team you know has been hoping that he would make and then we get to the issue of abortion I want to turn to the issue of abortion president Trump you've often touted that you were able to kill roie Wade this was the first turning point in the debate Trump gets the first question on abortion vice president Harris says that women shouldn't trust you on the issue of of abortion because you've changed your position so many times therefore why should they trust you well the reason I'm doing that vote is because the plan is as you know the vote is they have abortion in the ninth month and you can see he's very uncomfortable with it they even have and you can look at the governor of West Virginia the previous governor of West Virginia not the current governor is doing an excellent job but the governor before it's an issue that he's told people privately he thinks could cost him the election and he starts pivoting around talking about he said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby in other words we'll execute the baby baby's being executed after they're born then he sort of rolls back around into a states rights argument now Ohio the vote was somewhat Liberal Kansas the vote was somewhat liberal much more liberal than people would have thought but individual state is voting he's kind of all over the place and then the follow-up question goes to kamla Harris there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born Madame vice president I want to get your response to president Trump Donald Trump hand selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of roie Wade and they did exactly as he intended and now in over 20 States there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide Health Care in one state it provides prison for life at this point in the debate I sort of started to think okay she's really finding her footing you could see the confidence come through in her voice you want to talk about this is what people wanted pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage being denied care in an emergency room because the healthare providers are afraid they might go to jail and she's bleeding out in a car and she pretty quickly went to personal stories she was not talking in an academic way about this issue a 12 or 13-year-old Survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term they don't want that she was emotional in the way she talked about it talking about a government that would be monitoring your miscarriages understand his project 2025 there would be a National Abortion a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies your miscarriages and she reframed the issue as an issue of freedom I think the American people believe that certain freedoms in particular the freedom to make decisions about one's own body should not be made by the government which is another word that the Democrats have been trying to reclaim for themselves from Republicans would you veto a National Abortion if well I won't have to because again two things number one she said the other thing that happened here that was really notable is Trump is asked a direct question whether he would veto a National Abortion ban if it came to his desk and the question of lindsy Davis says you know but if I could just get a yes or no because your running mate J JD Vance has said that you would veto if you did come to your death your running mate JD Vance said that you would veto it if it came to your desk well I didn't discuss it with JD in all fairness and Trump says well well wait a second I didn't discuss it with JD and I I don't mind if he has a certain view but I think he was speaking for me but I really didn't look we don't have to discuss it because sort of starts wriggling around and suddenly it's Trump that's uncomfortable and the dynamic seems to have shifted right so this is the moment when it feels like vice president Harris's debate prep has been very extensive and is starting to kind of emerge on the stage yeah and and you really see this in the next line of questioning we're going to turn now to immigration and border security we know it's an issue that's Harris has asked a tough question about immigration which is obviously one of the most unpopular aspects of the Biden and Harris Administration this past June President Biden imposed tough new Asylum restrictions we know the numbers since then have dropped significantly but my question to you tonight is why did the administration wait until 6 months before the election to act and would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this so I'm the only person on this stage who has she does two things very quickly she goes straight onto offense she you know talks about how she's you know the only person on this stage who's prosecuted transnational criminal organizations then she attacks Trump for getting Republicans to kill an immigration bill that would have put more border agents On the Border Donald Trump got on the phone called up some folks in Congress and said kill the bill and you know why because he'd prefer to run run on a problem instead of fixing a problem and understand and then she introduces this very interesting line where she talks about Trump's rallies and some of the strange things he mentions at his rallies like he talks about Hannibal lecor and windmills causing cancer and she she drops this line which is just a clear blatant Troll and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom she says people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom and you can see Trump sort of twitching Trump is I've covered him since 2015 he's not exactly a sort of psychologically complicated character it takes about 2 minutes of observing him to know that one of the things he cares most about are his crowd sizes right and he just takes the bait just takes the bait well there's a follow-up question that's put to him about why he tried to kill the Border bill first let me respond us to the rallies she said people start leaving people don't go to her rallies there's no reason to go and the first thing he says is will let me respond on the rallies and he says people don't go to her rallies and they like going to my rallies and we have the biggest and the most incredible but from that moment on he starts just to go into another on this rant what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country infused with anger and irritation a lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it and it leads him into undisciplined territory in Springfield they're eating the dogs the people that came in they're eating the cats they're eating they're eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame so in that same answer he starts talking about how Haitian migrants in Springfield Ohio are eating dogs and cats which is a debunked Facebook rumor that has been flying around right-wing circles and he actually gets fact checked I just want to clarify here you bring up Springfield Ohio and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there uh he told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed injured or AB doubles down on it people on television say my dog was taken and used for food so maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager one of the key goals of the Harris team was to get under Trump's skin and to bring out the more unhinged version of himself to remind voters why they voted him out in 2020 and this moment was the first time in debate where I thought oh she's actually succeeding right I mean and it's worth noting that he's become derailed at a time when he's being offered a chance to talk about one of the strongest issues for him in this campaign immigration and in the process ends up doing the very thing Harris has warned the audience that he does at his rallies which is make these completely outlandish unfounded claims about migrants eating domestic pets it is an extraordinary moment because on an where Trump should be dominant she has managed to get under his skin and he ends up doing great damage to himself and she sees the moment you talk about extreme um and she says talk about extreme Reas this is perfectly teed up moment for her to say look how extreme this guy is and what's clear at this still fairly early point in the debate is that she's gotten under his in and she's running the debate on her terms we'll be right back Jonathan it really feels like this theme of kamla Harris trying to and succeeding in getting under Donald Trump's skin really ends up kind of permeating the rest of this debate yeah so they continue on the theme of immigration let me continue on immigration it was what you wanted to talk about earlier so let's get back to your deportation proposal and David mure asks Trump about what he's called the largest domestic deportation operation in American history uh how would you Deport 11 million undocumented immigrants I know you you basically ask him how are you going to do this you know you say you're going to deport 11 million people look like will authorities be going door to door in this country yeah it is much higher because of them they allowed criminals many many millions of criminals ter doesn't really ask the question says you know it's this really huge number of migrants many many millions more than anyone thinks and then he starts talking about how crime is through the roof and then he gets fact checked again possible president Trump as you know the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country but excuse me the FBI defra they were defrauding statements they gets derailed a little here he says that the FBI figures are fraudulent and then kamla Harris seizes the opportunity she's clearly prepared for this well I think this is so rich coming from someone who has been prosecuted for National Security crimes economic crimes election interference has been found liable for sexual assault and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing she seizes the opportunity to bring up all of Trump's indictments M now this is something that Trump had prepared for in his private sessions he'd been doing them with some of his AIDS Matt Gates the Florida Congressman had been needling Trump bringing up his criminal convictions doing exactly what she does here but you can see I think I mean I don't want to get too much inside Trump's head but just watching him he was still so angry about the crowds siiz comment and everything that had come before he was basically angry Trump but those are cases it's called weaponization never happened in this country they weaponized the justice department every and he then says well no this is all a weaponization of Justice Biden and and Harris a responsible for every single prosecution against him which we should say is factually inaccurate right there's no evidence whatsoever that they've had any involvement in any of the cases this is the one that weaponized not me she weaponized I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me he ends this section by basically blaming Biden and Harris for the assassination attempt against him a pretty extraordinary completely unsubstantiated claim right and there's no evidence that the shooter was motivated by by any Democratic claims that he heard about Donald Trump and so he's kind of at this point angry Trump as you have labeled him he's kind of lost the plot here in his effort to Define her yeah he's lashing out but nowhere in this section of questioning has he made a coherent case that she owns the Biden record that she's responsible for inflation he's getting trapped in all of these little CER sacks that she keeps drawing for him and the moderators would seem to do Trump a favor in this section of the debate they ask her about her history of changing positions vice president Harris in your last run for president you said you wanted to ban fracking now you don't you wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons now your campaign says you don't you criminalizing once again she doesn't really answer the question line I know you say that your values have not changed so then why have so many of your policy positions changed so my values have not changed and I'm going to KL Harris has come up with this very sort of Gauzy cliched answer my values haven't changed and at no time has she actually explained why she changed those positions and instead of really pressing this issue on her Trump gets caught up in something that she slipped into that answer again to get under his skin the values I bring to the importance of home ownership knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times she talks about how Trump was given all this money by his father on a silver platter and you know whatever and of course that's the thing that Trump opens his answer with President Trump your well first of all I wasn't given $400 million I wish I was my father was a Brooklyn Builder Brooklyn Queens and a great father and I learned a lot from him but I was given a fraction of that a tiny fraction and it takes him four or five sentences to even get to fracking even surprised so we don't have to talk about that fracking she's been against it for 12 years uh so again she's just putting these little nuggets in her answers which are just designed to trigger Trump and time and time again it's working H Lindsay thank you we have an election in just 56 days and and I want to talk about the peaceful transfer of power which of course this Anger from Trump really permeates the rest of the debate in particular he gets asked about January 6th is there anything you regret about what you did on that day yes or I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech I showed up for a speech I said is pressed on whether he regrets anything about that day he doesn't say that it would never happened if Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington did their jobs he sort of rewrites the history of January 6 he then gets caught up on an issue where his AIDS never want him to talk about Mr President for three and a half years after you lost the 2020 election you repeatedly falsely claim that you won many times saying you won in a landslide in the past couple of weeks leading up to this debate uh you have said quote you lost by a whisker which is re litigating the results of the 2020 election are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020 I don't acknowledge that at all I said that sarcastically you know that it was said oh we lost by a whisker that was said sarcastically look there's so much proof all you have to do is look at it and they should have sent it back to the legislatures foring that he lost and it culminates in this moment you talk about a threat to democracy he got 14 million votes and they threw him out of office where he accuses her of being a threat to democracy by overthrowing Biden and you know what I'll give you a little secret he hates her he can't stand her he makes this wild assertion that Biden hates her it sort of comes out of nowhere but it's been building for a while and it sort of reaches a I guess a point of absurdity at that moment right and it's here at the peak of Trump's kind of personal Fury at Harris that he's given a chance to change this approach Mr President you recently said a vice president Harris quote I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black the moderators ask him about remarks he has made in the past which everyone understands to be problematic about her racial identity I want to ask a bigger picture question here tonight why do you believe it's appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent yeah so he he gets asked this question by David mure and Trump knows this question's coming I mean I was at a press conference with him in marago a few weeks ago and I asked him this question and he was irritated by it and he knows it's bad politically so he quickly moved on and here tonight in the debate he starts out by sort of brushing it off I don't care what she is I don't care uh you make a big deal out of something I couldn't care less whatever she wants to be is okay with me you're making a deal about it I don't and then heps up I don't know I mean all I can say is I read where she was not black that she put out he falls back into it and he says I read somewhere she was not black and then I read that she was black and that's okay either one was okay with me that's up to her so even in this moment where it's perfectly teed up for him he just goes back into these self-destructive patterns vice president Harris your thoughts on this I think it's I mean honestly I think it's a a tragedy that we have um someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people I thought Harris's answer here was really interesting because until tonight when she's asked about this she has this canned line where she brushes it off she says oh it's just the same tired Playbook from Trump but tonight she actually sees the moment to make another point a different point which was it's a tragedy that he's tried to use race to divide the American people he was investigated because he refused to rent property to black families and she brought up the doj case against the Trump business for refusing to rent property to black families she brings up his full page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of the five young black and Latino boys who are innocent the Central Park 5 this is the same individual who spread bir or lies about the first black president of the United States she brings up the Bera claims about Barack Obama and she kind of closes with this idea we don't want a leader who is constantly trying to have Americans Point their fingers at each other a very sort of Barack Obama type message about we all have the same dreams aspirations and tries to present herself as the unifier there so what are you thinking at this point well I was sort of thinking that at this point she she sort of pulled off a coup which is that she's avoided basically answering any substantive questions about her own policy backflips about her association with Biden about you know their economic record she's gone on offense on every issue and she's managed to catch Trump in a trap on pretty much every question pretty much every response she's embedded something in there a sentence or a line that has unraveled Trump and got him on an angry tear and so you get to basically the end of the debate I built one of the greatest economies in the history of the world and I'm going to build it again it's going to bigger better you see Donald Trump sort of remember why he was there in the first place but they're destroying our econ they have no idea what a good economy is which is oh whoops I have to actually remind people that this is kamla Harris's administration too and remember this she is Biden you know she's trying to get away from Biden I don't know the gentleman she says she is Biden you know so he makes this last ditch effort where he says she is Biden she is Biden he repeats it right and you know at this last moment remembers to tie her to Joe Biden and all these other parts of the Biden Administration that are unpopular but at this point it's kind of late in the game for Trump to figure out what as you said he was originally supposed to be up to from the start it is the worst president the worst vice president in the history of our country president Trump thank you and that is our ABC News presidential debate from here in Philadelphia at the national Constitution Center I'm Lind Davis and I'm David mure thank you for watching here in the US and all over the world and from all of us here at ABC News good night and you know when you look at the debate overall he was fine for the first 15 minutes he was angry and unraveling for let's call it the middle 40 at least and then sort of got his footing back at the end I think there'll be a lot of analysis saying how catastrophic it was really that word do you think will be used I think you were already seeing a lot of commentary to that effect I don't see it quite like that I see it as basically a huge missed opportunity for Trump this was Trump's chance to Define kamla Harris might be his only chance by the way we still don't know if the Harrison Trump teams will agree on the terms of another debate so it was a huge missed opportunity for Donald Trump and even Trump allies privately I don't think this I know this will acknowledge that she passed that minimum test that she needed to present herself as a plausible president and he missed the opportunity to Define her as a radical leftist as someone who owns every bit of the Biden record that you don't like H I guess this explains why you so crisply assessed this very early on as a debate where she achieved her goal and he not so much I'd spent so much time talking to particularly the Trump people before the debate I knew how they thought about this debate and I could tell within probably half an hour that this was not going how they wanted it to [Music] go just think about it from there perspective there's 8 weeks left in this race it's an absolute tossup of a race and there's a huge number of undecided voters who are up for being shaped about their view of kamla Harris they're never going to have potentially another opportunity like this at best they'll get one more close to the election but this was their opportunity before a huge audience to to Define her and he flopped [Music] it what Jonathan thank you very much thank you [Music] Michael we'll be right back [Music] here's what else you need to know day moments after Tuesday night's debate kamla Harris was endorsed by one of the country's most celebrated and influential pop culture icons Taylor Swift swift called Harris A Gifted leader and in a jab at Trump's running name Senator JD Vance signed her endorsement as quote childless cat lady a reference to comments made by Vance about women without children and the European Union's highest court has delivered a major defeat to both Apple and Google it ordered Apple to pay more than $14 billion in unpaid taxes to the government of Ireland and ordered Google to pay a fine of more than 2 billion ion doll for giving preferential treatment to its own products over that of its Rivals the rulings were a victory for European governments in a yearslong campaign to regulate big Tech a battle that American Regulators are just beginning to [Music] wage today's episode was produced by Carlos PR Stella H mu Z and Michael Simon Johnson it was edited by Devin Taylor contains original music by Maran Lozano Rowan nisto and Dan Powell and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley and Chris Wood our theme music is by Jim brunberg and Ben lansburg of [Music] wonderlake that's it for the daily I'm Michael B tomorrow see you tomorrow [Music]