The deadline was highly anticipated and kept its promises without necessarily changing the situation: Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump clashed fiercely on Tuesday evening during a televised debate with high stakes, two months before the presidential election on November 5.
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Here are five key takeaways from the first, and perhaps last, televised debate between the two White House candidates, which took place in Philadelphia, in the key state of Pennsylvania.
“I speak!”
“It’s my turn to speak if you want me to,” Donald Trump told his Democratic rival. The 90-minute debate on ABC was conducted according to strict rules, with the candidates’ microphones being cut off once their speaking time expired. That didn’t stop both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump from interrupting each other several times.
Against a blue backdrop, under the banner of the preamble to the American Constitution “We the people”, Mr. Trump appeared with a serious air, his face closed and his gaze fixed on the camera without ever looking at his adversary.
In contrast, Mme Harris frequently turned his head towards him, with a doubtful, sometimes even mocking, expression, pushing him several times into his entrenchments.
“Trump has sometimes appeared to be freewheeling, even more so than usual,” political scientist Larry Sabato told AFP.
Abortion Clash
Kamala Harris went on the attack against the former Republican president, who appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, which abolished the federal guarantee of voluntary termination of pregnancy in 2022.
“I warned that we were going to hear a tissue of lies,” she said, after Donald Trump had just said that Democrats allowed babies to be executed after birth.
“Nowhere in America does a woman go to term and ask for an abortion. It never happens. It’s insulting to the women of America,” she continued, listing the distressing situations in which women living in states that have severely restricted abortion rights have found themselves.
Donald Trump has been blowing hot and cold lately on this highly sensitive issue, with American public opinion overwhelmingly in favor of abortion rights. By referring the issue to the states, “I have done a huge favor” to the United States, he assured.
Omnivorous
“In Springfield, they eat dogs, the people who come (migrants, editor’s note), they eat cats. They eat the pets of the inhabitants,” said the former president, repeating the false accusation that is spreading like wildfire on social networks about migrants in this city in Ohio (northeast).
Under the horrified gaze of her rival and the moderator, journalist David Muir, who repeated several times that no evidence had come to support this information.
Republican leaders, including Donald Trump’s running mate, as well as billionaire Elon Musk, have been peddling this theory for several days, which has been denied by the authorities.
Just a “bite”
As is customary in these presidential debates, foreign policy hardly dominated the conversation. But in a few killer sentences, the two candidates put forward radically opposed worldviews.
Russian President Vladimir Putin would “make short work” of Donald Trump and would already be settled in Kyiv if the Republican candidate were in the White House, accused Kamala Harris, stressing, moreover, that the Republican was “the laughing stock” of international leaders.
Donald Trump was not far behind, accusing Kamala Harris of “hating Israel.”
“If she becomes president, I believe Israel will no longer exist within two years,” the former president added.
Biden avenged?
Some feared that Kamala Harris would get bogged down in a speech that was sometimes a bit muddled, jostled by Donald Trump’s impetuous attacks, but the Democrat, visibly well prepared, managed to clearly present her arguments and put her opponent on the defensive, according to analysts.
“Trump was bad and Harris won hands down,” Sabato said. “She avenged (Joe) Biden’s defeat in the first debate” in June, which led to her throwing in the towel.
“Precision and program (for Harris) versus chaos, anger and disinformation (for Trump),” summarizes political expert Julian Zelizer.
“She remained calm and focused, clearly showing how she would be as president,” he added.
