Debate highlights, key fact-checks from Tuesday's Trump-Harris debate
The first question put to Vice President Kamala Harris reprised both a frequent attack from Donald Trump and a line that Ronald Reagan rode to victory in 1980: Are voters better off now than they were four years ago?
Harris didn't answer the question. Instead, she discussed a plan for a federal child tax credit and $50,000 tax deductions for small businesses.
She contrasted that with what she branded the “Trump sales tax” — increased costs due to increased tariffs on imported goods, mostly from China.
Trump pointed out he is not proposing any sales tax, but insists the tariff revenue would allow for other tax cuts, though critics note the cost of tariffs is typically passed along to consumers.
“Everybody knows I’m an open book. Everybody knows what I'm going to do: cut taxes very substantially and create a great economy like I did before,” he said.
Harris countered that “Donald Trump has no plan for you,” noting most prominent economists have said increased tariffs are likely to lead to cost increases across the board.
Early attack from Harris on Project 2025
It took Harris about nine minutes to mention Project 2025, the controversial GOP blueprint that Trump has denied being involved with.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said. “I don’t want to read it. I’m not going to read it. I have nothing to do [sic]."
The far-right Heritage Foundation’s 900-page blueprint for the next Republican administration was written and crafted by several former Trump appointees. Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from the project, although Harris is running an ad linking Trump to the project in key battleground states.
False claim on inflation
Trump stretched the truth by claiming there was “no inflation, virtually no inflation” under his White House administration — and falsely claimed the Biden-Harris administration has overseen “the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country.”
Inflation peaked under Biden in June 2022 at more than 9% and has since fallen to 2.9% as of this summer, its lowest point in three years, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Under Trump from 2016-2020, inflation rates before the COVID-19 pandemic hovered around 2%.
Yearly inflation rates hit the double digits under former President Jimmy Carter.
Abortion claim by Trump rebutted by ABC moderator
Trump was asked about his flip-flop on abortion — after he first declined to take a stance on an abortion rights ballot initiative in Florida, then said he’d oppose it.
In a question about abortion, Trump said “voters, they have abortions in the ninth month.” He then cited a “West Virginia governor” who said “the baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”
Trump was referencing a video that showed former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam speaking in support of “after-birth abortions” — although the governor was giving a hypothetical example of what could happen if a mother requested an abortion while in labor.
Abortions in the third trimester are extremely rare. Harris pointed that out, as did ABC’s Linsey Davis.
“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris said shortly after Trump’s remarks. “That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America.”
Trump repeats false claim about migrants eating pets
Trump brought up a debunked far-right claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are stealing pets to eat and killing ducks and geese for food.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating their pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country,” Trump said in response to a question about immigration.
Debate moderator David Muir interjected, “I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals.”
But Trump fought back, that “the people on television [are] saying, my dog was taken and used for food.”
Harris responded with a laugh and said: “Talk about extreme.”
Trump: FBI played games with crime numbers
Trump’s hammered out a series of lies about national crime rates and immigration as part of his most consistent line of attack against Harris: the influx of central American migrants at the southern U.S. border.
“Crime in this country is through the roof, and we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime, and it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible,” Trump says.
Co-host David Muir then corrected Trump’s false claim that “all over the world, crime is down… except here.”
FBI data has shown violence has steadily fallen nationwide after a 2020 spike associated with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nor do any statistics suggest an outsized number of new arrivals to the country are “killing many people,” as Trump repeatedly claimed.
The former president dismissed the FBI stats, claiming they “didn't include the worst cities … the cities with the worst crime.”
Trump didn’t name Chicago or any other Democratic-led cities he typically targets. Chicago police statistics show homicides in the city are down about 9% compared to last year.
Trump claims non-citizens will be voting
There is no indication non-citizens are voting in large numbers, but Trump repeated a false claim that they will flood the polls and vote for Democrats.
“Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote," Trump said. "They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.
Non-citizens aren’t allowed to vote in federal elections, and penalties include deportation and prison time. The conspiracy theories have been amplified by Trump, Elon Musk and others as they discuss border security.
Finger-pointing on Afghanistan
The U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was punctuated by the deaths of 13 American service members and 170 Afghans.
Trump reached a withdrawal deal with the Taliban in 2020, a plan that was carried out by Biden when he took the White House in 2021.
“He calls himself a deal maker. Even his national security adviser said it was a weak, terrible deal,” Harris said adding that she agreed with Biden’s decision to withdraw.
Trump countered that “we would have been out faster than them, but we wouldn't have lost the soldiers. We wouldn't have left many Americans behind.”
A federal evaluation released in 2022 suggested the blame is shared between both administrations. Harris didn’t have a significant role in decision-making, evaluators have said.
More from Trump on Harris’ racial identity
Trump was asked about controversial and false comments he made about the vice president’s race at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference in Chicago in late July.
“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. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump asked at the event. He added, “She was Indian all the way, and all of a sudden she made a turn, and she became a Black person.”
Rachel Scott, a congressional correspondent for ABC News and the event’s moderator, quickly replied, “She’s always been Black.”
At Tuesday's debate, Trump was asked if it was appropriate to weigh in on her racial identity.
“I don’t care what she is. I don’t care. You make a big deal out of something," Trump said. "I couldn’t care less. Whatever she wants to be is OK with me.”
“She was Black, and that’s OK with me,” Trump said. “That’s up to her. That’s up to Vice President Harris.”
Harris has long identified as being both South Asian and Black. She was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian mother and Jamaican father and is the first Black person and first Asian American vice president in U.S. history.
Tuesday, Harris responded to Trump: “I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people.”