Trump, Harris Trade Sharp Barbs On Race And Policy

I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president, who has consistently, throughout his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people - Kamala Harris, Democratic presidential nominee

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, like others, had sensed the weakness of Kamala Harris’ administration and invaded Ukraine - Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate

New York: On the all-blue stage with lines from the Constitution imprinted on the background, the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was an exercise in evasions, subtle and not-so-subtle insults, and name-calling.

There were two moments when the presidential candidates made telling statements during Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia. Although the microphones were turned off to prevent interruptions, at one point Harris raised her voice while it was Trump’s turn to speak.

“Wait a minute please, I’m talking now,” Trump said, adding, “Does that sound familiar”? That was a throwback to Harris cutting off former Vice President Mike Pence at their 2020 debate when he interrupted her, and that remark was widely promoted as a sign of her strength. For her almost four years as President Joe Biden’s vice president, Trump taunted her saying of policies he claimed she would follow, “She is Joe Biden.”

Harris retorted, “I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump.” It was both an evasion and a declaration of her break from Biden, whose inflationary economic policies and the Afghan debacle are turning into an electoral burden

for her.

When the two adversaries took the stage, Harris walked up to Trump, extending her hand. “Let’s have a good debate”, she told him, and Trump replied, “Good to see you. Have fun.” But insults were galore, sometimes sounding like a schoolyard brawl.

Harris prefaced the debate with a warning to be prepared to listen to lies. Trump called her a Marxist, adding that her father, Donald Harris the Stanford economist, was a Marxist, too. He also accused her of copying his policies as she tried to move to the centre and said that he would send her a “MAGA” hat, the red headgear worn by the supporters of his “Make America Great Again” platform. “World leaders are laughing at you,” Harris said. Trump shot back that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, like others, had sensed the weakness of her administration and invaded Ukraine.

That’s why, he said, “Putin endorses her; I think he means it,” referring to what is considered a joke by the Russians. Taunted by Harris for the criminal case he has been convicted in, the others, including on national security, pending, he blamed it on the “weaponisation” of the justice system by Democrats and pointed to the refusal to prosecute President Joe Biden on the national secrets charge he had faced, describing him as a “pathetic old man”.

One of the moderators, ABC News anchor David Muir, asked Trump about his comments asserting that Harris had always claimed to be Indian but only recently began identifying as Black.