Donald Trump and Kamala Harris met for the first time on the presidential debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.
They may have shaken hands, but they did not hit it off.
In a fiery 90 minutes, Harris frequently rattled the former president with personal attacks that threw him off message and raised the temperature of this highly-anticipated contest.
Her pointed digs on the size of his rally crowds, his conduct during the Capitol riot, and on the officials who served in his administration who have since become outspoken critics of his campaign repeatedly left Trump on the back foot.
The pattern for much of this debate was Harris goading her Republican rival into making extended defences of his past conduct and comments. He gladly obliged, raising his voice at times and shaking his head.
Americans should go to a Trump rally, Harris said during an early question about immigration, because they were illuminating. “People start leaving the rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” she said.
That barb clearly rattled the former president, as he then spent most of his answer – on a topic that should have been one of his main areas of strength – defending his rally sizes and belittling hers.
Trump went from there to an extended riff on a debunked report that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating their neighbours’ pets.
Republicans are already complaining about what they say was the favouritism the ABC moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, showed toward Harris. Both of them pushed back and fact-checked assertions made by Trump on several occasions.
In the end, however, it was Trump’s responses and eagerness to take and devour whatever bait Harris set out for him that was the story of the evening.
Read more at BBC.com
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