PHILADELPHIA — Sparring on politics and personality, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump showcased their starkly different visions for the country as they met for the first time Tuesday for perhaps their only debate before November’s presidential election, a high-pressure opportunity for the candidates after a tumultuous campaign summer.
The matchup offered Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. Harris immediately pressed the Democratic case better than President Joe Biden did, hitting the former president’s proposed tax cuts and tariffs and linking him to the conservative Project 2025 blueprint for a Republican administration and GOP efforts to restrict abortion access. Trump in turn tried to link Harris to Biden, questioning why she hadn’t acted on her proposed ideas while serving as vice president.
Harris sharply criticized Trump for the state of the economy and democracy when he left office, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the nation and after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess,” Harris said. She opened her answer by saying she expects voters to hear “a bunch of lies, grievances and name calling” from her GOP opponent during their 90-minute debate.
Trump, meanwhile, quickly went after Harris for abandoning some of her past liberal positions and said: “She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.” Harris smiled broadly and laughed.
Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.”
As the debate opened, Harris walked up to Trump’s lectern to introduce herself, marking the first time the two had ever met. “Kamala Harris,” she said, extending her hand to Trump, who received it in a handshake — the first presidential debate handshake since the 2016 campaign.
Harris, in zeroing in on one of Trump’s biggest electoral vulnerabilities, laid the end of national abortion rights at Trump’s feet for his role in appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving more than 20 states in the country with what she called “Trump abortion bans.”
Harris gave one of her most impassioned answers as she described the ways women have been denied abortion care and other emergency care and said Trump would assign a national abortion ban if he wins.
Trump declared it “a lie,” and said, “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”
The Republican has said he wants the issue left to the states.
Harris used a question about her plans to improve the economy by saying she would extend the tax cut for families with children and a tax deduction for small businesses while attacking Trump’s plans to impose broad tariffs as a “sales tax” on goods that the American people will ultimately pay.
Trump was stone-faced during her answer but retorted: “I have no sales tax. That’s in incorrect statement. She knows that.”
Trump continued to call Harris a “Marxist,” and said “Everyone knows she’s a Marxist.” Harris’ eyebrows shot up and she made an amused face, cupping her hand on her chin and stared at him.
Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House.
Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.
The vice president, for her part, is trying to claim a share of credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments while also addressing its low moments and explaining her shifts away from more liberal positions she took in the past.
The debate is subjecting Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, speaking Tuesday to donors in Las Vegas, highlighted Trump’s experience debating after three White House runs.
“No one in modern times has done more of these,” he said. “The good news is that this is his seventh debate, and we know exactly what to expect.”
The first early ballots of the presidential race will go out just hours after the debate, hosted by ABC News. Absentee ballots are set to be sent out beginning Wednesday in Alabama.
The candidates met in a small, blue-lit amphitheater converted into a television studio, with no live audience, meaning there would be no rowdy applause, cheers or jeers.
The intimate setting — with the candidates’ lecterns positioned less than 10 feet from each other — belied the contentious debate to follow.
Trump and his campaign have spotlighted far-left positions Harris took during her failed 2020 presidential bid. He had been assisted in his informal debate prep sessions by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who tore into Harris during their primary debates.
Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.” Her campaign on Monday published a page on its website listing her positions on key issues.
The vice president, who has been the Biden administration’s most outspoken supporter of abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, was expected to focus on calling out Trump’s inconsistencies around women’s reproductive care, including his announcement that he will vote to protect Florida’s six-week abortion ban in a statewide referendum this fall.
She is likely to warn that Trump presents a threat to democracy, from his attempts in 2020 to overturn his loss in the presidential election, spurring his angry supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through comments he made as recently as last weekend. Trump on social media issued yet another message of retribution, threatening that if he wins he will jail “those involved in unscrupulous behavior,” including lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.
While Tuesday’s meeting might be the last time the candidates cross paths on the debate stage, they may cross paths again Wednesday when they both mark the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Harris will join Biden
Harris, Trump and Biden plan to all be at ground zero in lower Manhattan and the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on Wednesday. Harris and Biden will also visit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia later in the day for a ceremony there.
Price and Miller reported from Washington. AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.