the ABC News presidential debate between K Harris and Donald Trump the first debate but perhaps the only saw fiery exchanges between the two candidates here it is I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy I had no inflation virtually no inflation they had the highest inflation she is Biden you know she's trying to get away from Biden I am not Joe Biden and I am certainly not Donald Trump and what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country well this showdown marked the seventh time that Trump has debated on the big stage but was the first real test of kamla Harris Jackson Prasco has been following this he's outside the debate Hall in Philadelphia Jackson great to see you so given all that 90 minutes a lot of clips of course that people can choose from who came out ahead do you think well Anthony I think what's so remarkable about last night is the performance of kamla Harris and how she managed to flip the and that seems to be what really stands out here she is effectively the incumbent she's the current Vice President part of the current Administration what she did last night though was put Donald Trump on the defensive and almost make it seem like he is the incumbent forcing him to defend his record and many of his policy positions and time and time again she was effectively able to bait him into veering off course veering into personal attacks not talking about his key policy positions just one example of that for example was the issue of immigration and Harris was asked about her record on the issue and her policies on the issue she finished her answer by talking about people leaving Donald Trump's rallies and when the question was turned over to Donald Trump instead of trump talking about his favorite issue the thing he loves to talk about immigration he then was on the defensive talking about his rallies and talking about a conspiracy theory about people eating pets in a small town in Minnesota something that has been completely debunked that gives you a sense of how the night went off the rails but also about how kamla Harris as the former prosecutor was effectively able to lead Donald Trump like a hostile witness and get him to do and say exactly the kind of things she wanted him to say but ultimately the big test is in November how could last night's debate impact voters so heading into last night polls suggested that seven in 10 Americans were going to be watching and as many as 30% of those voters were looking at last night as something that would help them decide who they would ultimately vote for kamla Harris in particular faces a lot of questions about who she is and what she stands for yes she's the current vice president but let's be honest people don't pay attention to vice presidents regardless of who they are so she entered the campaign historically late she has to introduce herself to American voters and last night was just the beginning of that process and polls ahead of the debate suggest that about 30% of Voters said they wanted to know more about where KLA Harris stands on the issues she used last night to outline some of her policy positions but Anthony I think you can make the argument that she still has a long way to go and so last night was the beginning perhaps of making voters comfortable with who she is and where she stands on the issues I think the debate though left a lot of Voters looking for more questions and you certainly saw Harris's Team come out immediately after the debate and say we will do another debate with Donald Trump in October remains to be seen if Trump will accept that he had proposed another debate in September and it's not really clear where that stands at this point all right you mentioned a long way to go but not a long uh period of time before the election of course and you wonder if this interesting tidbit will have any influence on this there was a major endorsement last night talk about that and if that will have any significance yeah the endorsement came from Taylor Swift the moment the debate concluded and this is no small thing she has 283 million followers on Instagram she speaks specifically to younger voters gen Z voters uh and younger millennials and this is a group of Voters that typically don't turn out in the same levels that older voters do so if she can convince them to sign up and vote and get out in vote that is no small thing we should point out that Taylor Swift's uh sort of brought up two things in her endorsement of Harris one is that she referred to herself as a childless cat lady in reference to controversial comments made by Trump's running mate JD Vance where he has sort of disparaged women who do not have children the other thing she addressed though were these fake AI generated images of her that Trump has been circulating where it tried to make it look like she was endorsing Donald Trump so she came out last night set the record straight and said she is firmly behind kamla Harris and Tim Walls interesting stuff it's going to be an interesting what eight weeks give or take until the election and I know you'll be following very closely we'll be uh keeping tabs with you uh as this progresses thank you so much Jackson that is Jackson prco joining us from Philadelphia