Harris-Trump: Fierce debate highlights candidates' contrasting visions

2024-09-11 20:54:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump had not met before Tuesday's presidential debate, but immediately began their political duel at the important event for the Nov. 5 election.

The two candidates first shook hands, took their seats at the podiums set up at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and then began attacking each other. They clashed over the US economy, abortion rights, immigration at the Mexican border, Israel's war against Hamas militants in Gaza, Russia's attack on Ukraine, as well as the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress certified defeat. of former President Trump in the 2020 election.

Referring to his loss to President Joe Biden, Vice President Harris said that “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. He has a hard time accepting this."

President Trump recently said he lost the election by a narrow margin, but during Tuesday's debate, he said it was a sarcastic comment and refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 election result.

"We are a failing country," said former President Trump. "We are in serious decline and we are laughed at all over the world." In a poll taken after the 90-minute debate, CNN said the results showed Ms. Harris had won the debate 63 percent to 37 percent.

Pop superstar Taylor Swift threw her support behind the Democratic candidate as the debate drew to a close.

Standing a close distance from each other, the two candidates shook their heads in response to each other's comments, while Ms. Harris reacted with laughter to some of Mr. Trump's comments. ABC News reporters David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly tried to keep the flow of the debate under control, not always succeeding.

President Biden made a poor showing in the June debate with former President Trump and within a month withdrew from the race and endorsed the candidacy of his deputy, Vice President Harris.

On Tuesday, Ms. Harris, a former San Francisco prosecutor and California attorney general accustomed to heated courtroom exchanges with defense lawyers, repeatedly goaded former President Trump.

At one point, she told him that his staunchest supporters at his political rallies often left early because they were tired of his speeches.

He described her as a Marxist, saying she had been well trained by her father, a left-wing economist. "She's a radical left-wing liberal," former President Trump said of Vice President Harris.

Ms. Harris mentioned growing up in a middle-class family where her mother saved money for years so she could buy a house when she was a teenager.

Meanwhile, Ms Harris said Mr Trump was bequeathed $400 million by his father "on a silver platter and then he filed for bankruptcy six times".

Former President Trump attacked President Biden and Vice President Harris' management of the US economy, the largest economy in the world, saying the US is becoming "a Venezuela on a larger scale." Vice President Harris said his plan to impose tariffs of up to 20% on imported foreign goods would amount to a "Trump product tax" that would be imposed on American consumers.

She blamed former President Trump for ending the constitutional right to abortion by appointing three conservative justices to the United States Supreme Court. He said that with the 2022 decision, voters in individual states now have the opportunity to decide on the issue. "The government and Trump shouldn't be telling" women what to do with their bodies, Ms Harris said.

Former President Trump blamed Vice President Harris as part of President Biden's administration's failure to control the waves of immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border. Mr Trump has said he plans to deport the 11 million or more undocumented immigrants living in the US, but twice dodged a question from reporter Muir about how the people would be arrested and returned to their countries.

The former president repeatedly answered questions with out-of-context comments about the handling of the border issue by Ms. Harris, who Republicans have said was given responsibility for border issues after President Biden tasked her with helping determining the root causes of why people leave their countries in Central America to travel to the United States.

Former President Trump made the outlandish claim that Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing their neighbors' cats and dogs and killing them for food.

Journalist Muir contradicted former President Trump and said the city administrator had assured ABC News that the claim was not true.

Former President Trump stated that neither Russia's attack on Ukraine nor Hamas's October 7 shock attack on Israel would have happened if he had been president. He said that if he wins the election, he would resolve both conflicts before taking office next January, but did not say how he would do that. Ms Harris replied: "If Donald Trump was president, Putin would be sitting in Kiev right now, with his eyes on the rest of Europe."

Former President Trump twice refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war. He said only that he wants the war to end to prevent more bloodshed.

Tens of millions of Americans likely watched this election debate that may be the only debate for this year's election. The showdown came just eight weeks before Election Day and just days before early voting began in some of the 50 US states.

On the debate stage, the rules were the same as those that applied to former President Trump's debate with President Biden in June.

The microphones were muted when one of them spoke and they were not allowed to ask each other questions.

But that didn't stop them from interrupting each other. There was also no audience following the debate in the hall.

This was the first presidential debate for Ms. Harris. For Mr. Trump, it was the seventh in three presidential election cycles since 2016.

Speaking to reporters after the debate, Republican Senator Tom Cotton asked why Ms. Harris had not worked to implement her policy proposals during her term as vice president. "Kamala Harris didn't answer questions about what she's going to do for the American people and kept trying to move on to other topics. Granted, Donald Trump defended himself, but what he did better was explain that things were fine when he was president and they have not been good for the last four years".

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said former President Trump failed to explain what he would bring to a new term in office. "The real question is what does Donald Trump stand for? We can talk about how some of Kamala Harris' positions have changed, as all of our positions have changed over the years based on new information. Or we can ask did donald trump even present a single plan tonight to help the american people other than repeating his opinion that we should build a wall with mexico i don't think he even talked about a single plan -- no plan on health care, no housing plan, no plan to raise wages."

Democratic lawmaker Ted Lieu told VOA's Khmer service that former President Trump is weaker on foreign policy than Vice President Harris and that former President Trump is "friendly to dictators." "Donald Trump has a strange relationship with Putin. When Putin flatters Donald Trump, Donald Trump makes concessions to Vladimir Putin. In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration built an entire coalition to stop Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and the Biden-Harris administration has created an extraordinary alliance of countries in the Indo-Pacific to counter aggression," said Legislator Lieu.

Republican lawmaker Matt Gaetz told VOA's Khmer service that former President Trump won the debate, highlighting Vice President Harris' "dangerous liberal policies." "President Trump did his job to show people that he is a force for change in this election. President Trump reflected the economic anxiety of the American people, the concern that the American people have about their security and about being able to live in a world that will not enter World War III," said Legislator Gaetz.

National polls show the race to be close, adding to the importance of the debate and making it crucial for both candidates to make their best appearance to sway the small number of undecided voters. Voters will determine whether Donald Trump will return to the White House, after losing the opportunity to be re-elected in 2020 against Joe Biden, or whether Kamala Harris, President Biden's deputy, will ascend to this position.

Democrats rallied in support of Vice President Harris' candidacy when President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Mrs. Harris as his successor. Although President Biden was trailing former President Trump in the polls when he ended his run, Vice President Harris has surpassed former President Trump in some national polls by 2 or 3 percentage points.

But a poll by The New York Times and Siena College published Sunday showed former President Trump leading nationally, with 48% support to Vice President Harris' 47%. The paper, however, noted that Ms. Harris was easily ahead in several polls in three key battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The two candidates ended up with equal support in four other key states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

These seven states are expected to play a large role in determining the outcome of the election, as the United States does not elect the president and vice president by direct popular vote.

In reality, elections in the United States take place in 50 separate races state by state, when electors are selected to represent their votes in the Electoral College. The number of Electoral College votes for each state is based on population, so the most populous states have the most influence.

The New York Times and Siena College poll showed that the importance of the debate was particularly high for Ms. Harris in her presentation to the American public, with 28% of respondents saying they needed to know more about it, while only 9% said the same about Mr. Trump.

Former President Trump, 78, seemed at times to miss running in the election campaign against President Biden, 81. Mr. Trump has yet to develop a sustained line of attack on Ms. Harris, 59, although during the debate he attacked Ms. Harris for every question asked by the debate's moderators, ABC television reporters.

If elected, Ms. Harris will be the first woman and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as president of the United States, as well as the second black person to hold the position after Barack Obama./ Voa