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Live Updates: Trump, Harris Debate Reaction and Analysis
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Live Updates: Trump, Harris Debate Reaction and Analysis

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will debate on Tuesday.

Kamala Harris spent nearly the entire 1 hour and 45 minutes of their first and possibly only debate on Tuesday night — and the former president took full advantage.

The vice president had prepared extensively for their debate, peppering nearly every answer with a comment designed to infuriate the former president. Trump was often out of control, loudly and repeatedly insisting that a litany of lies were true. The former president repeated lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. He parroted a conspiracy theory about immigrants eating pets and lied about Democrats supporting abortions after babies are born — which is murder and illegal everywhere.

Here are some conclusions from the debate:

A turning point comes when Harris attacks Trump on the size of the crowd at his rally: Harris took the stage with a clear plan: throw Trump off his game. By any measure, it was a dramatic success. When the vice president raised Trump’s conviction and outstanding legal issues, he bit. When she pressed him on sinking a bipartisan immigration bill, he bit even harder. And when Harris suggested that Trump’s rallies were boring, he nearly choked on the bait.

Rather than address the issues the moderators raised, including some that Trump sees as his political strengths, the former president waxed eloquent on the entertainment value of his rallies, claimed the Biden administration was targeting him legally and, for an extended, bizarre period, insisted — against all available evidence — that migrants eat Americans’ pets.

Trump engages in conspiracy theories: Despite signals from even his running mate, Trump didn’t hold back from rehashing the conspiracy theory du jour during the debate. The former president brought up the baseless conspiracy theory that immigrants from Haiti living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s cats and dogs. He said at one point that “in Springfield, they eat the dogs. They eat the cats. They eat the pets of people who live there.”

When ABC host David Muir pointed out that city officials denied any evidence that migrants in Springfield were eating pets, Trump doubled down, saying that “the people on TV” said it. When pressed, Trump said only, “We’ll find out.” When the debate turned to crime, Trump claimed that crime in the United States had increased, unlike the rest of the world. Again, Muir pointed out that, according to FBI data, crime had decreased in recent years.

Intense debate about abortion, an important issue for both candidates: The vice president, who has long been one of the administration’s leading advocates for reproductive rights, was able to respond to the former president’s defense of abortion policy in a way that Joe Biden was unable to.

The former president, who appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down federal abortion protections, has attempted to moderate his stance on the issue, criticizing six-week abortion bans and reiterating his support for exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. But he has also defended the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Reading more takeaway meals from the first debate between Harris and Trump.