Must-Watch moments and analysis of Trump and Harris’s first presidential debate
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00:00Let's now welcome the candidates to the stage, Vice President Kamala Harris and President
00:04Donald Trump.
00:12Kamala Harris.
00:13Is that a good debate?
00:14Nice to see you.
00:15Have fun.
00:18Welcome to you both.
00:19It's wonderful to have you.
00:20It's an honor to have you both here tonight.
00:21Vice President Harris, in your last run for president, you said you wanted to ban fracking.
00:25Now you don't.
00:26You wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons.
00:29Now your campaign says you don't.
00:31You supported decriminalizing border crossings.
00:34Now you're taking a harder line.
00:35I know you say that your values have not changed.
00:38So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?
00:42So my values have not changed, and I'm going to discuss every one of the, at least every
00:47point that you've made.
00:48But in particular, let's talk about fracking because we're here in Pennsylvania.
00:50I made that very clear in 2020.
00:52I will not ban fracking.
00:54I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States.
00:57And in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened
01:02new leases for fracking.
01:05My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce
01:12our reliance on foreign oil.
01:14We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach
01:22that recognizes that we cannot over-rely on foreign oil.
01:27As it relates to my values, let me tell you, I grew up a middle-class kid raised by a hard-working
01:32mother who worked and saved and was able to buy our first home when I was a teenager.
01:39The values I bring to the importance of home ownership, knowing not everybody got handed
01:43$400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times, is a value that
01:49I bring to my work to say we are going to work with the private sector and home builders
01:55to increase 3 million homes, increase by 3 million homes, by the end of my first term.
02:00My work that is related to having a friend when I was in high school who was sexually
02:05assaulted by her stepfather, and my focus then on protecting women and children from
02:10violent crime is based on a value that is deeply grounded in the importance of standing
02:16up for those who are most vulnerable.
02:18My work that is about protecting Social Security and Medicare is based on long-standing work
02:24that I have done protecting seniors from scams.
02:27My values have not changed, and what is important is that there is a president who actually
02:34brings values and a perspective that is about lifting people up and not beating people down
02:42and name-calling.
02:44The true measure of the leader is the leader who actually understands the strength is not
02:50in beating people down, it's in lifting people up.
02:53I intend to be that president.
02:56President Trump, your response?
02:57Well, first of all, I wasn't given $400 million.
02:59I wish I was.
03:00My father was a Brooklyn builder, Brooklyn Queens, and a great father, and I learned
03:03a lot from him, but I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction, and I built it into
03:07many, many billions of dollars, many, many billions.
03:11And when people see it, they are even surprised.
03:14So we don't have to talk about that.
03:16Fracking?
03:17She's been against it for 12 years.
03:20Defund the police.
03:21She's been against that forever.
03:22She gave all that stuff up very wrongly, very horribly, and everybody's laughing at it,
03:29okay?
03:30They're all laughing at it.
03:31She gave up at least 12 and probably 14 or 15 different policies.
03:35Like, she was big on defund the police.
03:38In Minnesota, she went out.
03:39Wait a minute, I'm talking now.
03:41If you don't mind, please.
03:43Does that sound familiar?
03:47She went out.
03:49She went out in Minnesota and wanted to let criminals that killed people, that burned
03:55down Minneapolis, she went out and raised money to get them out of jail.
03:59She did things that nobody would ever think of.
04:02Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.
04:07This is a radical left liberal that would do this.
04:11She wants to confiscate your guns, and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.
04:16If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.
04:21Just to finish, one thing, so important in my opinion.
04:24So I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before.
04:28They took, when they took over, they got rid of it, started getting rid of it, and the
04:33prices were going up the roof.
04:36They immediately let these guys go to where they were.
04:40I would have been five times, four times, five times higher, because you're talking
04:45about three and a half years ago.
04:47They got it up to where I was because they had no choice, because the prices of energy
04:51were quadrupling and doubling.
04:54You saw what happened to gasoline.
04:56So they said, let's go back to Trump.
04:57But if she won the election, the day after that election, they'll go back to destroying
05:02our country, and oil will be dead.
05:04Fossil fuel will be dead.
05:05We'll go back to windmills, and we'll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to
05:09get some energy to come out of.
05:11You ever see a solar plant?
05:12By the way, I'm a big fan of solar.
05:14But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil.
05:20President Trump, we have a lot of issues that we have to get to.
05:21These are not good things for the environment, as she understands.
05:22We're out of time.
05:24We have an election in just 56 days, and I want to talk about the peaceful transfer of
05:28power, which, of course, we all know is a cornerstone of our democracy and the role
05:32of a president in a moment of crisis.
05:35Mr. President, on January 6th, you told your supporters to march to the Capitol.
05:38You said you would be right there with them.
05:40The country and the world saw what played out at the Capitol that day, the officers
05:44coming under attack.
05:45Aides in the West Wing say you watched it unfold on television off the Oval Office.
05:50You did send out tweets, but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message
05:54telling your supporters to go home.
05:56Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?
06:00You just said a thing that isn't covered.
06:04Peacefully and patriotically, I said during my speech, not later on.
06:09Peacefully and patriotically.
06:11And nobody on the other side was killed.
06:13Ashley Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever
06:19shot her.
06:21It's a disgrace.
06:22But we didn't do this group of people that have been treated so badly.
06:27I ask, what about all the people that are pouring into our country and killing people
06:31that she allowed to pour in?
06:32She was the Bordezar.
06:33Remember that.
06:34She was the Bordezar.
06:36She doesn't want to be called the Bordezar because she's embarrassed by the Bordezar.
06:39In fact, she said at the beginning, oh, I'm surprised you're not talking about the Bordezar
06:42yet.
06:43That's because she knows what a bad job they've done.
06:46What about those people?
06:47When are they going to be prosecuted?
06:49When are these people from countries all over the world, not just South America, they're
06:53coming in from all over the world, David, all over the world.
06:59And crime rates are down all over the world because of it.
07:01But let me just ask you.
07:02David, when are those people going to be prosecuted?
07:05When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted?
07:08Or in Seattle, they went into Seattle, they took over a big percentage of the city of
07:13Seattle.
07:14When are those people going to be prosecuted?
07:16But let me just ask you.
07:17You might ask her that question.
07:18You were the president.
07:19You were watching it unfold on television.
07:20It's a very simple question.
07:21As we move forward toward another election.
07:24Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?
07:27Yes, sir.
07:28I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech.
07:31I showed up for a speech.
07:32I said, I think it's going to be big.
07:34I went to Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington, D.C. and the mayor put it back in writing.
07:40As you know, I said, you know, this is going to be a very big rally or whatever you want
07:45to call it.
07:46And again, it wasn't done by me.
07:48It was done by others.
07:49I said, I'd like to give you 10,000 National Guard or soldiers.
07:53They rejected me.
07:54Nancy Pelosi rejected me.
07:56It was just two weeks ago.
07:58Her daughter has a tape of her saying she is fully responsible for what happened.
08:02They want to get rid of that tape.
08:04It would have never happened if Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington did their jobs.
08:09I wasn't responsible for security.
08:11Nancy Pelosi was responsible.
08:14She didn't do her job.
08:15The question was about you as president, not about former Speaker Pelosi.
08:18But I do want Vice President Harris to respond here.
08:22I was at the Capitol on January 6th.
08:24I was the vice president elect.
08:26I was also an acting senator.
08:28I was there.
08:30And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our
08:38nation's Capitol, to desecrate our nation's Capitol.
08:43On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured.
08:47And some died.
08:49And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.
08:57But this is not an isolated situation.
09:00Let's remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches,
09:07spewing anti-Semitic hate.
09:11And what did the president then at the time say?
09:14There were fine people on each side.
09:17Let's remember that when it came to the Proud Boys, a militia, the president said, the
09:24former president said, stand back and stand by.
09:28So for everyone watching who remembers what January 6th was, I say, we don't have to go
09:34back.
09:36Let's not go back.
09:37We're not going back.
09:39It's time to turn the page.
09:41And if that was a bridge too far for you, well, there is a place in our campaign for
09:47you to stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law, and to
09:56end the chaos and to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our
10:03democracy because you don't like the outcome.
10:06And be clear on that point, Donald Trump, the candidate, has said in this election there
10:12will be a bloodbath if this and the outcome of this election is not to his liking.
10:19Let's turn the page on this.
10:21Let's not go back.
10:22Let's chart a course for the future and not go backwards to the past.
10:28Let me just follow up here.
10:30It was a different term and it was a term that related to energy because they have destroyed
10:35our energy business.
10:36That was where bloodbath was also on Charlottesville.
10:40That story has been, as you would say, debunked.
10:42Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, Jesse, all of these people, they covered it.
10:48If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect.
10:51It was debunked in almost every newspaper, but they still bring it up just like they
10:56bring 2025 up.
10:57They bring all of this stuff up.
10:59I ask you this.
11:00You talk about the Capitol.
11:02Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border?
11:07How come she's not doing anything?
11:08And I'll tell you what I would do, and I would be very proud to do it.
11:11I would say we would both leave this debate right now.
11:15I'd like to see her go down to Washington, D.C. during this debate because we're wasting
11:20a lot of time.
11:21Go down to, because she's been so bad, it's so ridiculous.
11:24Go down to Washington, D.C. and let her sign a bill to close up the border because they
11:29have the right to do it.
11:31They don't need bills.
11:32They have the right to do it.
11:33The president of the United States, you'll get him out of bed.
11:36You'll wake him up at four o'clock in the afternoon.
11:38You'll say, come on.
11:39Come on down to the office.
11:40Let's sign a bill.
11:41If he if he signs a bill that the border is closed, all he has to do is say it to the
11:45Border Patrol, who are phenomenal.
11:48If they do that, the border is closed.
11:50Those people are killing many people, unlike J6.
11:53I want to turn to Afghanistan.
11:55It came up in the first hour of the debate, and we witnessed a poignant moment today on
11:58Capitol Hill honoring the soldiers who died in the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
12:02I do want to ask the vice president, do you believe you bear any responsibility in the
12:07way that withdrawal played out?
12:09Well, I will tell you, I agreed with President Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan.
12:15Four presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did.
12:19And as a result, America's taxpayers are not paying the 300 million dollars a day we were
12:24paying for that endless war.
12:27And as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active
12:33duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world the first time this century.
12:39But let's understand how we got to where we are.
12:43Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine.
12:48He calls himself a dealmaker.
12:51Even his national security adviser said it was a weak, terrible deal.
12:55And here's how it went down.
12:57He bypassed the Afghan government.
13:00He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban.
13:04The negotiation involved the Taliban getting 5,000 terrorists, Taliban terrorists, released.
13:11And get this.
13:12No, get this.
13:13And the president at the time invited the Taliban to Camp David, a place of storied
13:21significance for us as Americans, a place where we honor the importance of American
13:27diplomacy, where we invite and receive respected world leaders.
13:33And this former president, as president, invited them to Camp David because he does not again
13:43appreciate the role and responsibility of the president of the United States to be
13:50commander in chief with a level of respect.
13:54And this gets back to the point of how he has consistently disparaged and demeaned members
13:59of our military, fallen soldiers, and the work that we must do to uphold the strength
14:06and the respect of the United States of America around the world.
14:10Vice President Harris, thank you.
14:11Mr. Trump, your response to her saying that you began the negotiations with the Taliban.
14:14So if you take a look at that period of time, the Taliban was killing our soldiers, a lot
14:22of them with snipers.
14:25And I got involved with the Taliban because the Taliban was doing the killing.
14:29That's the fighting force within Afghanistan.
14:31They don't bother doing that because, you know, they deal with the wrong people all
14:34the time.
14:35But I got involved.
14:37And Abdul is the head of the Taliban.
14:40He is still the head of the Taliban.
14:42And I told Abdul, don't do it anymore.
14:44You do it anymore.
14:45You're going to have problems.
14:46And he said, why do you send me a picture of my house?
14:48I said, you're going to have to figure that out, Abdul.
14:51And for 18 months, we had nobody killed.
14:54We did have an agreement negotiated by Mike Pompeo.
14:57It was a very good agreement.
14:59The reason it was good, it was we were getting out.
15:02We would have been out faster than them, but we wouldn't have lost the soldiers.
15:05We wouldn't have left many Americans behind.
15:07And we wouldn't have left we wouldn't have left eighty five billion dollars worth of
15:12brand new, beautiful military equipment behind.
15:15And just to finish, they blew it.
15:18The agreement said you have to do this, this, this, this, this.
15:22And they didn't do it.
15:23They didn't do it.
15:24The agreement was was terminated by us because they didn't do what they were supposed to
15:31do.
15:32I want to move on.
15:33Mike Pompeo did the worst withdrawal and, in my opinion, the most embarrassing moment
15:38in the history of our country.
15:39And by the way, that's why Russia attacked Ukraine, because they saw how incompetent
15:44she and her boss are.
15:47This was a staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former President Trump.
15:51Just lie after lie on subject after subject.
15:54By my preliminary count, Jake, Trump made at least 33 false claims, 33.
15:59By contrast, by, again, a preliminary count, Vice President Harris made at least one false
16:04claim, though she added at least a few misleading claims and a few more that lack key context.
16:09I think a lot of Americans say, well, all politicians lie.
16:11No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency.
16:16A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true.
16:19And this wasn't like little exaggeration political spin.
16:21A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality.
16:24On abortion, saying every Democrat wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, though actually more
16:28than 80% of Democrats supported Roe.
16:30On crime, saying it's through the roof, though it's actually sharply down since early 2023.
16:35It's now lower than it was since Trump left office.
16:37On health care, saying he's the one who saved Obamacare, the law he actually repeatedly
16:41tried to overturn.
16:42On Kamala Harris herself, saying that a Howard University grad, Black Law Students Association
16:47president had claimed that she wasn't black at one point.
16:50Frankly, I don't have enough time here to run through each specific Trump false claim.
16:54I urge people to go to our CNN website or our app to read our team's detailed fact checks
16:58on this and a whole bunch more.
17:00For now, though, let's dive into one false claim Trump made, an egregious claim about
17:04migrants supposedly eating people's pets.
17:09In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats,
17:15they're eating, they're eating the pets of the people that live there.
17:22This is not only false, I think it's fair to call this odious.
17:26For people who have not been online in the last couple of days, this claim about Haitian
17:31migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people's pets, originated with a Facebook post that
17:36attributed the claim to a neighbor's friend's daughter.
17:40So a third hand, broken telephone kind of thing.
17:43The city of Springfield and the Springfield police say there are no credible reports of
17:46this happening.
17:47And even JD Vance, the vice presidential candidate who himself had promoted these claims, acknowledged
17:52this morning that the, quote, rumors might turn out false, although he still encouraged
17:57people to spread these cat memes.
17:59Now, I'll note that Trump himself added dogs to the equation.
18:02They had not even been part of these viral nonsense rumors before.
18:05Now, let's look at a one false claim that Vice President Harris did make about the economic
18:09situation that the Biden-Harris administration was left by Trump.
18:15Let's talk about what Donald Trump left us.
18:19Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.
18:24And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess.
18:29So the Biden-Harris administration was not actually left the worst unemployment since
18:32the Great Depression.
18:33They were left a 6.4 percent unemployment rate in January 2021.
18:37That was certainly elevated by recent standards, pretty high, but it was significantly down
18:42from the 14.8 percent level it reached early in the pandemic.
18:46So it was already improving at the time the Biden-Harris administration took office.
18:50And that 6.4 percent level was the highest since the Great Recession.
18:54So in the last 20 years, not going back decades further.
18:57The first results of our instant poll of debate watchers have just come in.
19:01And David Chalian is going to join us now to break it all down.
19:05David, tell us more.
19:08Yeah, Jake, and as you noted, this is a poll of debate watchers.
19:13This is not a poll that represents the overall population, although in partisan breakdown,
19:20it is pretty close to what the overall registered voter population looks like in the country.
19:25But it is a poll of those people that watched the debate.
19:28So just keep that in mind as we get to these results.
19:31Our first results here in our exclusive flash poll, who won the debate?
19:35The overall number here, overwhelmingly, Kamala Harris did.
19:39I'm going to look at my email here.
19:4163 percent, you see there on your screen, say Kamala Harris won the debate.
19:45Only 37 percent say Donald Trump won the debate.
19:49And that is quite different than the expectations going into this among this group of debate
19:53watchers in this poll.
19:55We asked folks going into the debate, who do you expect to win the debate?
19:59Well, it was 50-50, 50 percent expected Harris, 50 percent expected Trump to win the debate.
20:06That was before the debate.
20:07And we just showed you where it ended up afterwards, 63 percent to 37 percent.
20:12And take a look at this, Jake.
20:14This is a complete reversal from what we saw in June.
20:19Compare these numbers to Biden in in June.
20:22You see that it was 67 percent to 33 percent, two thirds thinking Trump won, only a third
20:28thinking Biden won.
20:30A complete reversal in just a few months as this race has completely changed.
20:36So too has the assessment of debate watchers about the Democrat and Republican debate
20:41performances this 2024 presidential election, Jake.
20:45All right, David Chalian, and while no doubt this debate will not be quite as consequential
20:52as the last one, it does seem as though, Dana Bash, that at least according to the instant
20:59polls of debate watchers, people think that Kamala Harris resoundingly won.
21:04And defied expectations based on what people thought beforehand and afterwards.
21:11As David was saying, we have to be careful with instant polls.
21:15And what is really going to matter is how this sinks in and ripples through the pool,
21:21very small but important pool of undecided voters.
21:24But I think the only thing that you need to know about how Donald Trump realizes that
21:31this went was to see his behavior and performance.
21:37The fact that he came into this spin room and he was not very happy.
21:41And citing a bunch of numbers of polls that he said he won, no clue where those numbers
21:48came from.
21:49And he was asked about it at the spin room and didn't give an answer.
21:51But I also think, you know, Harris, there were some risks here for her tonight.
21:57And she had a lot of work to do.
21:59And I'm thinking about earlier when we were talking and I was struck recently in the last
22:07couple of weeks just watching Trump in his normal campaign world, on the stump, in interviews.
22:15And he is progressively slowing down.
22:18He's progressively not able to really even make his own normal kind of cases that he
22:26would make about all sorts of issues.
22:28And that was on display tonight.
22:29I mean, she was really helped by Trump just not really being able to kind of take it to
22:36her on virtually anything.
22:39And in a way, her biggest weakness might have been that when you give her something that
22:44she's not prepared for, she may or may not be able to address it.
22:48But Trump never did that.
22:50He only gave her things that would be very obvious that he would say on the debate stage.
22:56And I think that's one of the main reasons that she was able to just kind of quite impressively
23:02actually take a lot of preparation and just spit it right out on that debate stage, almost
23:07exactly probably the way her advisers wanted her to.
23:11And Trump just wasn't nimble enough to even respond to that.
23:15He dove into his little pit of grievance.
23:19And he's aging and it shows.
23:21It's showing on the debate stage.
23:22It's showing on the campaign.
23:24One of the things that that presidential debates have done over the years is that at times
23:30when people have had doubts about a candidate, usually the challenger in this race, you could
23:36argue they're both incumbents or both challengers.
23:39And it has erased the stature gap.
23:41In 1960, Nixon was the vice president.
23:45The criticism of John Kennedy was that he was too young, too callow, too inexperienced.
23:50After that first debate, that went away because people thought at the very least that Kennedy
23:56showed that he stood up and was Nixon's equal and perhaps his superior.
24:011980, Jimmy Carter, a lot of concern.
24:05Was Ronald Reagan too big a risk?
24:08And after that debate, people were reassured.
24:10They didn't like Carter particularly and they were reassured we can take this jump into
24:16Reagan.
24:18In the New York Times poll over the weekend, three times as many people said they needed
24:23to know more about Kamala Harris than said that about Donald Trump.
24:28And I got to think for a lot of that 28 percent of Americans that they were reassured by what
24:34they saw tonight.
24:35So I think that it gives permission to support for people that had doubts.
24:40Well, there's two things I noticed.
24:42One was the word that Senator J.D. Vance used, the word platitudes.
24:45When he talked to Caitlyn Collins about how he describes the ability of Vice President
24:50Harris to articulate her platforms, it's what is demanded of the incumbent versus what was
24:56actually provided by a former incumbent.
24:59She's expected to talk in very granular detail.
25:02Trump had very many bald assertions, and yet he believes that he was successful in that
25:06endeavor nonetheless.
25:07The other issue is this important idea of managing expectations.
25:12She has described herself from the very get-go, since she's actually taken the top of the
25:16ticket, as the underdog, in part because Democrats do not want a performance like this to have
25:21people believing there's no reason to lean in, they can lean out, everything's in the
25:25bag.
25:26They know there is still the uphill battle of trying to overcome a number of factors.
25:29So I think in many ways, these polls show you that even though this was a successful
25:35endeavor, I think arguably and objectively, for the vice president, she still has to overcome
25:41this.
25:42I can't tell what the language and coding it is to have her define herself still.