Harris, Trump trade barbs in heated, high-stakes debate

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris shake hands before the start of Tuesday night's presidential debate.

, Faith E. Pinho, Kevin Rector, Hailey Branson-Potts, Daniel Miller, James Rainey, Andrea Castillo and Laura J. Nelson

Sept. 10, 2024 Updated 9:08 PM PT

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump squared off Tuesday evening in what may be their only debate before November’s election, answering an array of domestic and foreign policy questions while trading barbs and repeatedly accusing each other of lying.

Harris described “two very different visions for our country.” She said her own vision is forward looking, and Trump’s vision is backward and extreme.

“We’re not going back,” she said.

Harris made a particularly forceful case for women’s reproductive rights, hammering Trump for his successful efforts to dismantle abortion care in states across the country with his appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. She promised an “opportunity economy” to help Americans recover financially, with a $6,000 child tax credit and a $50,000 tax break for small businesses.

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Trump falsely claims Harris’ VP pick “is OK with” babies being killed after birth

Trump cast Harris as a failed liberal leader who has had a chance to make changes to help Americans strapped financially during the current administration of President Biden, and failed.

“Why didn’t she do it? We’re a failing nation,” Trump said.

He said he would create an economy to help Americans and bring down costs, including by forcing other countries like China to pay tariffs, and said Harris “doesn’t have a plan.”

The debate was defined in part by mistruths and bizarre tangents, especially from Trump.

Trump lied in suggesting that Democrats want to allow people to kill babies after being born as part of abortion care, and that everyone — Democrats included — wanted the federal right to abortion under Roe vs. Wade dismantled. Neither is true.

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Trump falsely states immigrants are eating pets

Trump also said immigrants are causing crime to skyrocket across the country, which is not true, and repeated the conspiracy theory that immigrants are eating American pets, a claim for which there is no evidence.

“Talk about extreme!” Harris responded.

What Harris and Trump said in their closing statements

In her closing statement, Vice President Kamala Harris summarized her first — and possibly only — debate with former President Trump as “two very different visions for our country: one that is focused on the future, and the other that is focused on the past and an attempt to take us backward.”

She repeated a line she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, often use on the campaign trail: “We’re not going back.”

Harris said that, as president, she would “create an opportunity economy” by “investing in small business, in new families, in what we can do around protecting seniors,” and “giving hardworking folks a break and bringing down the cost of living.”

The vice president said she wanted to ensure the United States is respected internationally — and that it has “the most lethal fighting force in the world.”

And she said she would “be a president that will protect our fundamental rights and freedoms including the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do.”

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Recap: The first Harris-Trump presidential debate

Her voice caught with emotion when she said: ““As a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness, Arte you a republican or a democrat? The only thing I ever asked them: ‘Are you OK?’”

“That’s the kind of president we need right now,” she said. “Someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first.”

Trump kept the focus of his closing statement on Harris, attacking her record as vice president under Biden and painting a bleak picture of the United States as a laughingstock of the world.

“She just started by saying she’s going to do this, she’s going to do that. She’s going to do all these wonderful things,” Trump said. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years.”

Prior to the debate, Trump won a coin flip and chose to give the final closing statement. He used his time to admonish Harris.

“She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together to do the things you want to do, but you haven’t done it, and you won’t do it.”

He also pointed to wars in the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, saying “We’re not a leader.”

Trump then returned to one of his favored topics, immigration, blasting Harris for allowing migrants to enter the country.

He ended his statement with one final jab at his opponent: “The worst president, the worst vice president in the history of our country.”

Trump on healthcare: ‘I have the concepts of a plan’

Moderator Linsey Davis, who anchors the Sunday edition of ABC World News Tonight, asked Trump what his plan for healthcare would be, saying that he threatened to repeal the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — while he was president, but never did.

“I had a choice to make when I was president: Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot?” Trump said. “And I saved it. I did the right thing.”

Trump said that “if we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money and be better healthcare than Obamacare,” then he would support it.

Davis responded: “Just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?”

Trump said: “I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now, but if we come up with something, I would only change it if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive.”

Davis asked Harris what her plan would be for healthcare, noting that when she was in the Senate in 2017, she supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to do away with private insurance and create a government run health care system -- but two years later, proposed a plan that included a private insurance option.

Harris responded that: “The plan has to be to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, not get rid of it.”

Harris said that during her time as vice president, the Biden administration capped the cost of insulin at $35 per month, allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices and capped out-of-pocket medical costs for seniors at $2,000 per year starting in 2025.

All were made possible through the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed in 2022.

Trump assails Harris on fracking. She says she does not support a ban

Fracking — and Vice President Kamala Harris’ changing position on it — was among the early topics she and Donald Trump sparred over during Tuesday’s debate.

Asked about her shifting policy positions, Harris reiterated what she said earlier in the campaign: she would not ban fracking, the hydraulic fracturing of stores of natural gas or oil.

In 2019, Harris came out against fracking while competing in the Democratic presidential primary, saying that “there was no question” she was in favor of banning it. Harris has said that since 2020 — the year after she ended her run for the presidency and became Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate — she has not supported a ban.

She reiterated that stance on Tuesday, while noting, “We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.”

Harris then pivoted to a lengthier touting of her values, citing her middle-class upbringing, and, more broadly, her record. “My values have not changed,” she said.

But Trump pounced on the issue of fracking, saying Harris had been against it “for 12 years.”

Fracking is a major issue in Pennsylvania, arguably the most significant battleground state. Over the last few decades, there has been a boom in energy resources extraction there, creating jobs and giving a boost to the state’s economy.

“If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one,” Trump said of Harris.

The comment was in line with others from Trump over the summer, in which he erroneously said that Harris would ban fracking if elected.

As far as his stance on fracking, Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” supports the use of the resource extraction method. Just ahead of the 2020 election, the then-president signed a memo voicing his support for it.

Harris: ‘Tim Walz and I are both gun owners’

In a fact check to Trump’s claim that she “wants to confiscate your guns,” Harris said that she is a gun owner, a little-known fact that she rarely mentions.

“Tim Walz and I are both gun owners, we’re not taking anyone’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,” she said.

As a veteran and a hunter, Walz said he had a familiar relationship with guns. But he reconsidered his position on gun policy after mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland, Fla.

Harris has backed many gun control measures, including an assault weapons ban, universal background checks, safe storage laws, enhanced red flag laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals, and the repeal of a law shielding gun manufacturers from liability for gun violence using their weapons.

In 2022, President Biden signed the most sweeping gun legislation in decades. The bill, which garnered bipartisan support, toughened background checks for the youngest gun buyers, allowed for firearms to be withheld from more domestic violence offenders, and assisted states in standing up red flag laws.

However, Republicans have largely stood in the way of more meaningful gun control measures. They have instead maintained strong support for Americans’ right to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment, and rejected restrictions on it.

Trump has also backed gun rights — and the expansion of those rights is a major part of his legacy. Trump during his first term appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, each of whom backed a 2022 ruling that sharply reduced the ability of individual states to restrict access to guns.

Harris defends Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan

Asked during Tuesday night’s presidential debate whether she had any responsibility for the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s withdrawal.

“I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan,” Harris said. “Four presidents said they would and Joe Biden did and as a result, America’s taxpayers are not paying the $300 million a day we were paying for that endless war, and as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world the first time this century.”

Trump responded that his administration negotiated the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the Biden administration blundered the execution.

“We were getting out. We would have been out faster than that, but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers. We wouldn’t have left many Americans behind, and we wouldn’t have left … $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind,” Trump said. “And just to finish, they blew it.

The United States’ chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan has become a foreign-policy flashpoint in this year’s presidential election.

Republicans blame Harris, who in an April 2021 interview said she was the last person in the room before Biden decided to pull U.S. forces from the nation, for the flawed evacuation that resulted in 13 American service members and scores of Afghans being killed in a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport.

Democrats say Trump’s decision in early 2020, after negotiating with the Taliban, to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan predicated what unfolded in the South Asian nation and that the Vice President’s role has been grossly exaggerated.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has had a presence in Afghanistan. After the Taliban took control of the nation, more than 120,000 people were airlifted out by America.

But the effort was deeply criticized as haphazard and left behind so many Afghan allies who had risked their lives for the United States. Administration officials note they inherited from Trump a huge backlog of Afghans needing visas to be able to leave the country.

Trump declines to say he wants Ukraine to win war with Russia

Asked on Tuesday night if he wants Ukraine to win its war with Russia, former President Trump repeatedly said he just wanted the war to end.

He said he would get Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He also complained about the amount of money the U.S. has spent to help Ukraine defend itself, which he said was too much compared to what other European countries have contributed to that effort.

“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win, when I’m president-elect, and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”

He then said President Biden “doesn’t know he’s alive.”

Asked again if he thought it was in the U.S.’s best interest for Ukraine to win the war, he said it was in the country’s best interest to just “get it done.”

Vice President Kamala Harris said Trump would hand the war to Russia.

“I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up. And that’s not who we are as Americans.”

Harris said she spoke with Zelensky days before Russia invaded and provided him American intelligence about ways to defend his country. She then went to Poland and Romania and helped bring together a coalition of nation’s supporting Ukraine “in its righteous defense.”

“And because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the Javelins, and Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country,” Harris said.

“If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” Harris said, of Ukraine’s capital.

And from there, she said, Putin would have “his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”

Trump dodges question on regrets about Jan. 6 actions

Moderator David Muir, the anchor of ABC World News Tonight, asked former President Trump whether he regretted any of his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, shattering windows, beating police officers and temporarily halting the certification of the results of the 2020 election.

Trump repeatedly dodged answering the question, telling Muir at first that Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by police but that “nobody on the other side was killed.”

“It’s a disgrace,” Trump said. He then pivoted to questioning why the U.S. wasn’t prosecuting the “people who burned down Minneapolis,” or the protestors who “took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle” during the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020.

Muir pressed: “You were the president. You were watching it unfold on television. It’s a very simple question, as we move forward toward another election: Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?”

Trump responded: “I had nothing to do with that, other than they asked me to make a speech. I showed up for a speech.”

He said he asked for 10,000 members of the National Guard during the rally from the mayor of Washington, D.C. and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who “didn’t do her job.”

Vice President Kamala Harris described Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 as inciting “a violent mob to attack our nation’s capitol, to desecrate our nation’s capitol,” which she said was “not an isolated incident.”

She cited the aftermath of the violent 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., when Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.” She also mentioned the 2020 presidential debate, when Trump was given the opportunity to tell white supremacists to “stand down,” and instead said a far-right hate group, the Proud Boys, should “stand back and stand by.”

“So for everyone watching who remembers what January 6 was, I say: We don’t have to go back,” Harris said. “Let’s not go back.”

Harris and Trump clash on Israel, Gaza

Former President Trump declared that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hates Israel and Arabs, while the vice president stood up for Israel’s right to defend itself in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on the Jewish state nearly a year ago, but also called for protecting the lives of innocent Palestinians.

“What we know is that this war must end. It must end immediately,” Harris said, calling for a ceasefire agreement, the release of the hostages and a two-state solution. “There must be security for the Israeli people and Israel, and an equal measure for the Palestinians. But the one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself.”

Trump responded that if he remained in office, Hamas would not have attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

“If I were president, it would have never started,” Trump said, before castigating Harris for not attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. “She hates Israel.”

Harris and Trump are sharply divided about how to deal with the crisis in the Middle East in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the terrorist group’s rape and murder of hostages and Israel’s military response in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Harris has repeatedly spoken about Israel’s right to defend itself and has supported the United States sending the nation weapons. But she has also been the most prominent member of President Biden’s administration to speak about the plight of innocent Palistinians. The vice president also supports a two-state solution to the dispute.

Trump has positioned himself more firmly in support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu.He moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and ended long-standing American opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Last week, the former president declared that if Harris is elected president, the Jewish state is doomed.

“Israel will no longer exist,” he told the Jewish Republican Coalition on Thursday.

Trump says his 2020 election ‘lost by a whisker’ comment was ‘sarcastic’

One of the moderators, ABC anchor David Muir, asked Trump about his stance on whether the 2020 election was legitimate. Trump has famously denied that Biden won, repeatedly claiming without evidence that the election was stolen. Despite several lawsuits about the integrity of the election, no courts deemed the election as illegitimate.

In a podcast last week, Trump told host Lex Friedman that he “lost by a whisker.” When Muir asked about his comment, Trump dismissed it as sarcastic.

“I said that?” he said in response to Muir, before reiterating familiar attacks on the 2020 election results in Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let’s be clear about that,” Harris said. “And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that. But we cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election.”

Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results are the subject of criminal prosecution. In a now-famous phone call from 2020, Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help him win Georgia, despite losing it to Biden.

“I need 11,000 votes, give me a break,” he said in the recording which is now the subject of a criminal prosecution.

‘People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom’

Vice President Harris, after criticizing former President Trump for pressuring House Republicans this year to abandon support for a bipartisan border security agreement, took to trolling her opponent on a matter he’s always been sensitive about: The size of the crowds he draws.

“I’m actually going to do something really unusual, and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said with a grin.

During Trump’s rallies, she said, he talks about “fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” and makes baseless claims, including that wind turbines cause cancer.

“What you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” Harris said.

Trump, who had been listening with his eyes squinted, raised his eyebrows at that line.

“And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you,” Harris continued. “You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your desires and I’ll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.”

Trump then interrupted ABC News anchor David Muir as he tried to ask Trump why he helped to scuttle the border security agreement.

“First, let me respond just to the rallies,” Trump said.

“She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there,” he said.

Harris smiled broadly and put her hand to her chin, nodding in mock astonishment at that claim.

“People don’t leave my rallies,” Trump said. “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

‘I’m speaking now. Sound familiar?’

In one heated moment during the debate, Trump borrowed a phrase that has become symbolic of Harris’ forceful speech.

“I’m speaking now. Sound familiar?” Trump said.

Harris first famously used the phrase during a 2020 vice presidential debate against Trump’s then-running mate, Mike Pence. Pence had interrupted Harris’ answer to a question, and Harris shot back, “I’m speaking.”

The phrase instantly went viral, landing in memes and sweatshirts.

Harris recently said something similar when a pro-Palestinian protester interrupted her rally in Michigan.

“I’m here because we believe in democracy. Everyone’s voice matters,” she said, according to NBC News. “But I am speaking now. I am speaking now.”

When Trump threw the phrase back at her Tuesday, she reacted with a smirk.

Trump repeats baseless claim that immigrants ate pets

Former President Trump repeated a bizarre and baseless claim that immigrants are eating people’s pets during the Tuesday’s presidential debate.

“Talk about extreme!” Vice President Kamala Harris responded after.

Trump repeated a standard stump speech message that “millions and millions of people” are being allowed into the country by the Biden administration to destroy American towns. He then repeated a baseless claim spreading online that immigrants have been eating American pets, including in Springfield, Ohio.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

David Muir, one of ABC’s moderators, said ABC News reached out to the city manager in Springfield, who told the news agency that there had been “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

Trump said he had seen people on TV claim their dog had been eaten.

Harris, asked to respond, made her “extreme” comment with a laugh. She then said, “This is, I think, one of the reasons why, in this election, I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans,” including prominent Republicans and people who have worked for them and for Trump.

After the handshake, 30 minutes of combative debate

Roughly 30 minutes into a presidential debate that began with an awkward handshake, the candidates settled into a combative back and forth that produced several intense moments.

In many of Harris’ responses — especially those related to abortion — the vice president turned to Trump and spoke directly to him, sometimes gesturing forcefully with a finger in his direction.

Trump was largely stone-faced while Harris spoke, though he raised his eyebrows in surprise when she brought up a point of pride for the former president: his rallies. Harris invited viewers to attend a Trump rally in order to find out what he was really about, and noted that attendees often leave early out of “exhaustion and boredom.”

Harris also couldn’t suppress her emotions when Trump said that one of her plans amounted to “Run, Spot. Run,” jerking her head back sharply. And later, when Trump said he’d considered sending Harris a MAGA hat, the line generated what appeared to be a genuine laugh from the vice president.

The opening moments didn’t seem to augur the intense back-and-forth of the actual debate. The proceedings began with Harris walking across the stage toward Trump’s lectern, where she extended a hand and introduced herself. (The two had never met.)

“Have fun,” Trump told the vice president.

Trump says he ‘didn’t discuss’ abortion ban stand with Vance

Trump and Harris’ running mates received brief airtime during the debate. Trump included an attack on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, calling him “a horrible pick.” He also falsely claimed that Walz allowed abortion in the ninth month.

Walz was attending a debate watch party in Arizona, where he is stumping for the campaign.

Later, when asked if he supported a national abortion ban, moderator Linsey Davis noted that Trump’s running mate JD Vance said he did not believe Trump would sign one into law. Trump acknowledged that he had not discussed his support for the issue with Vance.

“I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump said. “I don’t mind if he has a certain view.”

Trumps claims he hasn’t read Project 2025

Former President Trump claimed he had not read Project 2025, the more than 900-page playbook for a second Trump presidency that was published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

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Harris and Trump debate Project 2025

Trump was responding to a statement by Vice President Kamala Harris, who said that “what you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again.”

In a meandering retort that veered into discussion of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump said: “I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposefully. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people, that got together, they came up with some ideas, I guess some good, some bad, but it makes no difference. I have nothing to do — 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. We had the greatest economy. We got hit with a pandemic. And the pandemic was — not since 1917 where a hundred million people died has there anything like it. We did a phenomenal job with the pandemic.”

As he spoke, Harris smiled and shook her head.

Trump’s campaign has been trying for months to distance the candidate from the plan.

“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you,” said Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, two senior campaign advisors, the day Paul Dans, who oversaw Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation, stepped down.

Democrats, who have described Project 2025 as a far-right agenda that threatens basic American freedoms, have scoffed at Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the plan — noting that much of it was written by past Trump advisors or appointees.

Economy, tax cuts, Haitian immigrants

Harris went on the offensive with the first question of the debate from moderator David Muir: whether Americans are better off financially than they were four years ago.

The vice president did not answer that question directly, focusing on what she would do going forward and not on the record of the Biden administration. She said she would enact policies that would create “an opportunity economy” — including a $6,000 child tax credit and a $50,000 tax break for small businesses.

She contrasted this with Trump’s proposals, including a tax cut which she said would benefit billionaires at the expense of ordinary Americans.

She said that Trump’s proposals would add $5 trillion to America’s and that his tariffs on foreign goods coming into America would rise prices on products so much that middle class families would pay a “tax” of $4,000 more a year.

Harris said she was framing her policies as someone who “was raised as a middle class kid,” adding: “I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America.”

Trump responded that Harris and President Biden had “been a disaster for people, for the middle class, but for every class” with some items had increased as much as 80%. He also rejected Harris’s claims about the tariffs saying that the burden of those levies had been borne by foreign countries, particularly the Chinese.

The former president quickly shifted the discussion to another of his favorite topics — immigration. He reiterated an unfounded charge he has repeated many times: that other nations have emptied jails and mental institutions and sent those individuals to the U.S.

Referring to Haitian immigrants who have come to Springfield, Ohio, and to other migrants in Aurora, Colo., Trump charged “they are taking over the towns; they’re taking over buildings; they’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they’re destroying our country.”

Of those immigrants, Trump said: “We have to get them out fast.”

Sparring over the economy

Within the first 10 minutes of the debate, the candidates sparred over who had a better economic plan for the country.

Vice President Kamala Harris pinned former President Trump to Project 2025, a massive policy book created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization whose leaders have close ties to Trump. The former president has repeatedly distanced himself from the document.

“I have nothing to do with Project 2025 that’s out there,” Trump said. “I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely.”

Trump, in turn, immediately took aim at Harris’ new policy platforms, released on her website Tuesday.

“She copied Biden’s plan, and it’s like four sentences like, run Spot Run,” Trump said. “She doesn’t have a plan.”

Stakes are high as Harris and Trump meet

President Obama liked to say that “elections have consequences.” He might have added the same about presidential debates.

That’s seldom felt more true than today, 51 days after President Biden’s foggy, faltering debate performance against former President Trump helped end the incumbent’s bid for a second term.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris prepare to meet for the first and potentially only time at 6 p.m. PDT Tuesday, in a debate that could again change the course of what has been an excruciatingly close contest.

The stakes of the 90-minute debate, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, appear even greater than in past elections in the television era, in which the candidates typically agreed to at least two — and usually three — debates in the general election.

The showdown will be broadcast by ABC News and several other outlets, with ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis moderating.

Whether the past is prologue, and what the past even means, will animate the contest.

Harris, 59, is expected to depict Trump’s four years in office as a time of turmoil, divisiveness (particularly toward immigrants) and constraint of personal freedoms — most notably a woman’s once-constitutionally-protected right to have an abortion.

Trump, 78, has argued that that his four years as chief executive were a halcyon time in America, when both unemployment and inflation were low and foreign wars had not exploded, siphoning billions of dollars away from the U.S.

The tables will reverse when it comes to assessing the era from 2021 until the present, when Biden and Harris have occupied the White House.

Trump will depict the last four years as a time of chaos and uncertainty, with inflation spiraling upward during the first years of the Democrats’ tenure and unauthorized crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border also spiking.

Expect the Republican nominee to borrow a line from a GOP predecessor, Ronald Reagan. In the second of two debates with President Carter, just one week before election day in 1980, Reagan faced the camera and asked Americans if they felt “better off” than they did four years earlier.

Harris supporters expect her to walk a challenging line — simultaneously touting accomplishments of the last four years and suggesting that as president she will be in a better position to respond on two issues many voters say are top-of-mind: economic distress and immigration.

In making that case, the vice president almost certainly will talk about the Democratic initiatives to bring down the prices of drugs, particularly insulin, and other pocketbook policies — like forgiving debt on student loans.

Trump and his advisors have tried to tie Harris to all of Biden’s shortcomings; going so far as to suggest that the vice president has been the shadow power running the Democratic administration. Harris can be expected to counter that she was in the room for important discussions, but not the one making the final decisions.

If Trump pushes hard in that direction, the vice president might counter: Was Vice President Mike Pence the real power in the Trump White House?

The candidates’ many differences include the way they have prepared for the debate. Harris hunkered down in Pittsburgh beginning late last week and went through formal preparation, with mock questions and answers.

Democratic operative Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, portrayed Trump in the run-throughs.

“We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth,” Harris said in a radio interview for the “Rickey Smiley Morning Show.” “He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that’s going to come out during the course of the debate.”

Trump said in an interview with his friend Fox News host Sean Hannity that he had no particular strategy and would “sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place.” Trump quoted former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

True to form, Trump has been complaining that he won’t be treated fairly by the ABC anchors. He has belittled the network, suggesting it’s a tool of the Democratic Party. Before the June 27 debate with Biden, he launched a similar preemptive strike, chiding CNN as “fake news” and moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as biased.

But after Biden stumbled, Trump’s handlers opted to keep the focus on the incumbent, saying that CNN and its hosts had been fair. It was Biden’s team that groused — saying Bash and Tapper should have called out the former president for his many lies.

Trump’s falsehoods in the June debate included his unsubstantiated claim that Biden had directed the criminal prosecutions against him and his assertion — debunked in multiple polls — that the American people wanted Roe vs. Wade overturned so the states could set abortion policy.

CNN’s hosts left it almost entirely to the candidates to call out each other’s falsehoods in June. No one knows whether ABC’s Muir and Davis will intervene, or let the vice president and former president perform their own truth-squadding.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.