At times, it was hard to separate his responses from the bizarre, angry musings he posts on Truth Social, his social media platform. At one point, Trump even floated a debunked racist conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants were eating people’s pets — a claim so pervasive online that it’s likely few Americans knew they had a dog in the fight.

“Let me first respond to the rallies, she said, people are starting to leave, people are not going to her rallies, there’s no reason to go,” Trump said, before adding: “We’re having the largest rallies in the history of politics.”

The topic at hand was immigration.

Neither candidate could afford to squander this moment. Harris built a small national lead over the summer, but her momentum appears to have stalled. Polls are even closer in the smaller number of swing states that will decide the election, including Pennsylvania, where the debate was held.

Harris baited Trump by first distracting him from his pet topic: immigration, by having him agonize over the size of the crowd.

By the end of the night, Trump was furious, quadrupling his false claim that he had won the 2020 election, pushing the bizarre conspiracy theory that migrants in Ohio are eating cats, and complaining about his own former government officials who had written exposé books.

“If somebody does a bad job, I fire them. You get a guy like Esper, he was a lousy guy, I fired him, so he writes a book,” Trump said of one of his defense secretaries, Mark Esper. “Someone else writes a book, because with me they can write a book. They can’t write a book with anybody else.”

The vice president’s trolling tactics weren’t subtle. Harris recounted how the Wharton School of Finance, Trump’s beloved alma mater, has published research questioning his economic plans. She combined a strong Republican appeal with the endorsement of Dick and Liz Cheney, the latter a longtime object of Trump’s ire.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said, connecting the thread that made Trump a reality TV star to the 2020 election results. “Let’s be clear about that and it’s clear he’s having a very hard time processing that.”

Harris wasn’t the only one who got Trump talking. He seemed clearly irritated by the ABC News debate moderators who repeatedly interrupted the debate to fact-check his false claims. At one point, Trump interrupted moderator David Muir when he correctly pointed out that judges had dismissed more than 60 cases making various claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Trump even rejected Muir’s fact-checking of the claim that migrants eat pets.

“Well, I’ve seen people on television,” Trump responded. “People on television are saying my dog ​​was taken and used for food.”

Trump’s team confirmed these claims online, arguing that the former president was pitted against Harris, Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis.

“3 to 1, just as expected,” Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, wrote on X.

Both candidates have been pushing for a new debate, but so far they have not agreed on one. If Harris and Trump meet again, it will be after Americans have gone to vote. Mail-in ballots will begin soon in North Carolina, while Pennsylvania begins early voting on September 16.