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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Chris Stein, Maanvi Singh, Helen Sullivan and Kirsty McEwen

Harris warns of ‘what’s at stake’ for US as vice-president appears to win debate with Trump – as it happened

Donald Trump Kamala Harris Joe Biden RNC Georgia United States Moms Demand Action

Jonathan Freedland and Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone discuss the debate and what happened in our podcast, which you can listen to here:

Here are the video highlights:

And in other news you should know if you’re just tuning in: Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, in a post on Instagram published minutes after the US presidential debate, saying the Democratic candidate would be the “warrior” to fight for the rights and causes she believes in.

“As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can,” Swift wrote on Instagram to her 283 million followers late on Tuesday, adding: “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election”.

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

In her statement, Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote.

Swift also addressed AI-generated images shared by Donald Trump in late August that falsely depicted Swift and her fans endorsing his campaign for president.

Updated

Key takeaways from the debate

If you’re just tuning in: presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Kamala Harris went head to head on Tuesday night in their first – and potentially only – debate before voters head to the polls on 5 November. The candidates went into the event virtually tied in the polls with just weeks to convince a small but mighty minority of unsure voters on how to cast their ballot.

After weeks of arguments over the format and rules, the debate aired live on ABC from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a key swing state, with no audience in attendance and each candidate’s microphone muted while their opponent spoke.

This was the second presidential debate this year for Trump, who also went up against Joe Biden in June. The latter’s devastating performance triggered an upheaval within the Democratic party that would ultimately push Biden to step down and position Harris to head the ticket, an outcome Trump both takes credit for and complains about at his rallies.

With just 55 days until votes are tallied, Harris strived to highlight that she has a plan, and clearly responded to criticisms that she hasn’t shared enough details with voters about her platform and priorities. With focused rhetoric on planning for the future, building the middle class, and reframing her record on everything from immigration to climate, Harris was able to show voters how she hopes to lead.

Analysts, meanwhile, were watching Trump’s demeanor and clarity. The former president repeated frequent rhetoric from his rallies – including widely disputed claims about abortion, crime, and his belief that he won the 2020 election – but shared little about how he would address key problems Americans are facing.

Beyond their differences in policy positions, the candidates also displayed diverging visions of the country. Trump promised his base to restore what he sees as the glory of the past, and Harris heralded the hope of a brighter future.

My colleague Gabrielle Canon has rounded up the key takeaways:

Updated

You may be wondering what happened on the debate stage during the commercial breaks.

According to CBS press pooler Sara Cook, during the second break, Harris made notes while Trump left the stage:

The second the stage hand said they were clear for a 4 minute break, Trump turned towards the exit, gave a big sigh through closed lips, and walked off stage without looking at Harris.

From the time the moderators announced they were going to break, Harris began writing on her notepad. She wrote continuously for the entire first two minutes of the break, occasionally bringing one hand to her chin or brushing hair behind her ear.

She then reviewed what she wrote for the next minute, making a few tweaks, before putting the pen down and looking out around the room with her hands folded in front of her. She took a sip of water from a glass placed under the lectern.

Trump walked back onstage 30 seconds before the end of break. He did not look at Harris, she did not look at him. Harris made small adjustments to her collar. Both candidates looked straight ahead until the program restarted.

Again, no words were spoken.”

Updated

Trump refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to win war against Russia

Donald Trump sidestepped a direct question at Tuesday evening’s presidential debate on whether he wanted Ukraine to win in its war against Russia, underlining concerns that a second Trump administration could suspend military support for Kyiv.

Asked directly by ABC’s David Muir on whether or not he wants Ukraine to win the war, he did not answer the question and said simply: “I want the war to stop.” He focused on the war’s human toll by saying that people were being killed “by the millions,” a number that hasn’t been confirmed by any country or international organisation.

He went on to say that if elected he would negotiate a deal even before becoming president and suggested the United States was “playing with World War three.”

Kamala Harris quickly pounced on his remarks, saying that if Trump had been president during the invasion, then “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe”, and that in such a scenario the Russian president would move on to Poland.

“Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favour and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”

Trump’s remarks will renew concerns in Kyiv that he will cut off military and economic aid toward the country if he is reelected at a crucial moment in the war, when Kyiv is desperate for troops, financial support and for military hardware, much of it supplied by the United States and its Nato allies.

Back to the map shared earlier of Google trends during the debate. The only state where abortion was not the top search term was Ohio where the top term was “immigration”.

Moderator David Muir had asked about immigration – Trump’s favourite topic – but when Harris wrapped her remark with a jab about Trump’s crowd sizes, the former president could not help but take the bait. First, Trump claimed without evidence that Harris paid people to attend her rallies. Clearly wound up, he began to ramble – about immigrants eating people’s pets.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” said Trump. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Trump’s claims about immigrants allegedly killing and eating the pets of US citizens originated, apparently, with a viral video of a resident of Springfield, Ohio, claiming before the town’s council that immigrants in the community had killed ducks from a local park for food. The unsubstantiated and inflammatory video was shared widely on rightwing accounts, evolving quickly into a viral meme featuring AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by cats and dogs, appearing to protect them.

Here is that graphic again:

Updated

In his response on abortion, Trump made extremely erroneous claims, including that “the plan is, as you know, the vote is, they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who’s doing an excellent job, but the governor before. He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”

Trump was resurfacing a claim he made in October 2020, based on comments made in 2019.

Here is Reuters’ fact check from the time:

A meme shared by over 70,766 on Facebook misrepresents comments made by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam in 2019 when he was asked about a bill that, among other things, aimed to ease restrictions for third trimester abortions in the state. The meme falsely suggests that Northam is in favor of legalizing infanticide by leaving out some key contextual references in his remarks.

Northam was referring to “third-trimester abortions” that are done in cases “where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s non viable” he said. “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” Northam stated.

The Guardian’s Nick Miller has taken a look at how google searches by US state changed during the debate – almost universally, the top search turned to abortion as the candidates spoke:

Harris appears to win debate

Statistician Nate Silver has written on his blog that there is “a strong consensus that Harris won the night.”

He notes that Bitcoin prices are down, “which also implies a loss for Trump.”

He adds:

Even the Fox News panel that I caught at the tail end of the evening seemed to concede that it was a win for Harris.

Harris won the CNN snap poll of debate-watchers 63-37. You can find polling on past debates here. On average, the winner of the debate has led in this poll by 18 points, so Harris’s 26-point win is toward the higher end of the range.

The majority of voters participating in a CNN focus group at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, also said they thought Harris has won.

“The group was made up of 13 voters who had not yet made a decision on who to vote for before the debate. When CNN’s Phil Mattingly asked the group who won the debate, eight of the voters said Harris won the showdown. Mattingly noted that Erie is “the swingiest county” in the battleground state,” CNN reports.

Some conservatives, including Chris Rufo and Rod Drehrer conceded – with caveats –a win for Harris, too, posting on Twitter/X:

Updated

Harris appeared to address 'hero voters'

Harris also appeared to address what British political strategists termed “hero voters”, or voters who once voted Democrat but have since switched to the Republicans, or who might be lured from a party that they feel has veered too far to the right.

Keir Starmer’s former pollster, Deborah Mattinson, is to meet Kamala Harris’s campaign team in Washington this week to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”.

Writing in the Observer, Mattinson said many of the concerns of crucial undecided voters will be similar on both of sides of the Atlantic.

“These voters – often past Labour voters – had rejected the party because they believed that it had rejected them. Often Tory voters in 2019, they made up nearly 20% of the electorate. Labour’s focus on economic concerns, from affordable housing to job security, won them back.

During the debate, in response to Trump stating, falsely, that Harris wanted to take guns away, Harris said that both she and Walz were gun owners.

Harris said in 2019 that she owned a gun for personal safety reasons. At the time, CNN reported that an aide has said she kept the handgun safely locked up.

Toward the end of the debate, Harris said, “I don’t ask if you’re a democrat, I ask if you’re ok.”

Earlier, she said:

So for everyone watching who remembers what January 6th was, I say we don’t have to go back. Let’s not go back. We’re not going back. It’s time to turn the page. And if that was a bridge too far for you, well, there is a place in our campaign for you. To stand for country. To stand for our democracy. To stand for rule of law. And to end the chaos. And to end the approach that is about attacking the foundations of our democracy ‘cause you don’t like the outcome.

Fox news proposes second debate in October

Meanwhile Fox News said it proposed to hold a second presidential debate in October, adding it sent letters to the campaigns for both Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican rival Donald Trump before Tuesday night’s debate.

A spokesperson for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign said on Tuesday night that Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump should do a second debate in October.

In the spin room shortly after the debate, Trump wouldn’t commit to the rematch the Harris campaign has already offered, saying, “I have to think about it” and that he might do it “if it was on a fair network.”

“The reason you do a second debate is if you lose, and they lost,” he told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “But I’ll think about it.”

Updated

Appearing nervous at first, Harris gained momentum when she was asked about abortion.

Trump, who appeared calm at first, grew more irate as he again and again turned questions back onto the topic of immigration.

Here is Harris on abortion, a topic on which she has been notably strong. Much of her response was delivered while looking into the camera, as she did often during the debate, so that it appeared that she was speaking directly to voters:

Let’s understand how we got here. Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe V. Wade. And they did exactly as he intended. And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest. Which understand what that means. A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

…

I have talked with women around our country. You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12 or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that. And I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe V. Wade as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. But understand, if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban. Understand in his project 2025 there would be a national abortion ban. Understand in his project 2025 there would be a national abortion -- a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages. I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government.

Back to the debate. Harris and Trump debated for 90 minutes on a sombrely blue-lit stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Their mics were muted between responses, and they were given two minutes to respond to questions from ABC moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir.

Tuesday’s debate was the first time that Harris and Trump had met. As the two candidates took to the stage, she walked over to Trump and shook his hand before returning to the podium.

The first question asked of Harris was whether the American people were better off now than they were four years ago, and she failed to answer it directly. Instead, she talked about the future, and what she calls the “opportunity economy”.

That said, her answer sought instead to explain some of her policies for the future – something voters have been saying they want more of. A New York Times/Siena poll found that 28% of likely voters “felt they needed to know more about Ms. Harris, while only 9% said they needed to know more about Mr. Trump.”

“Two-thirds of those who want to know more said they were eager to learn about her policies, specifically.”

Updated

Do celebrity endorsements matter?

In 2012, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland tried to establish the correlation, if any, between celebrity endorsements and votes. They used Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama ahead of the 2008 Democrat primary to examine whether it had any effect on the polls.

The researchers concluded that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement was worth about a million votes for Obama, who beat his main primary challenger, Hillary Clinton, by about 270,000 votes in the states used in the sample.

Swift is a popular figure nationwide; especially among Democrats. An October 2023 Fox News poll found that 55% of voters overall, including 68% of Democrats, said they had a favourable view of Swift. Republicans were divided, with 43% having a favourable opinion and 45% an unfavourable one.

Cayce Myers, a professor of public relations at Virginia Tech said, Swift’s endorsement “may have an impact on the election because it may encourage younger Gen. Z fans to vote.”

While Celebrity endorsements do not necessarily translate into meaningful turnout,” he said, Swift’s endorsement was going out to particularly large fan base, was focussed on women’s rights, an issue that favours Democrats, and that the post, “has the potential to raise awareness among younger voters who might be paying less attention to the presidential election.”

This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US elections coverage after the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

I’ll bring you analysis, news, responses to that celebrity endorsement (Taylor’s version) for the next while.

Harris tells supporters: 'We have a lot of work to do'

Speaking to supporters after the debate, Kamala Harris appeared to be in her stride.

“But we have a lot of work to do,” she said. “And tonight I think highlighted for the American people what’s at stake.”

California governor Gavin Newsom called Harris’s performance a “masterclass”.

“It’s daylight and darkness, competency versus chaos, right versus wrong, illiberal versus liberal,” he said.

Republicans meanwhile offered qualified praise, and bashed the moderators for fact-checking Trump.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential hopeful turned Trump surrogate and harsh Harris critic, conceded that the vice-president had had a good night, perhaps even a better night. But he insisted that Trump won on the policy.

“We heard a lot of words better delivered than usual, I will admit, from Kamala Harris, but actions speak louder than words,” he said, before mustering a very qualified assessment of Trump’s performance.

“The sad truth is, we only had a portion of this debate that was focused on policy, but for the portion of the debate that was focused on policy, which is the most important part of a presidential debate, I think in that area of it, I’m not going to make an overall claim with respect to the policy aspect of this debate, Donald Trump won hands-down,” he said.

Updated

Tim Walz welcomes 'eloquent' Swift endorsement 'as a fellow cat owner'

Tim Walz reacted to Taylor Swift’s endorsement in the middle of an interview with MSNBC:

The Minnesota governor said her post on Instagram was “eloquent” and called on Swifties, as her fans are known, to get on board with Harris’s campaign.

Updated

Trump cheers debate performance, but says: 'I don't know if we're going to do another one'

Donald Trump has made a surprise appearance in the spin room at the debate venue in Philadelphia, where he told reporters he felt good about his performance against Kamala Harris, but might not debate her again.

“It was my best debate ever, I think,” the former president said. “It showed how weak they are, how pathetic they are, and what they’re doing to destroy our country, on the border, with foreign trade, with everything.”

But it wasn’t good enough to do again, he said: “Now she wants to do another one, because she got beaten tonight, but I don’t know if we’re going to do another one.”

Updated

Asked about Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris, even Matt Gaetz, the far-right Florida representative, knew better than to attack the pop star.

“I love her songs, but I want to live in a world where liberals make my art and conservatives make my laws and policies,” he replied.

Updated

Harris 'ready for a second debate', campaign team says

Kamala Harris is “ready for a second debate” in October, her campaign said.

“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice-president Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”

This second debate would come in addition to an October face-off between vice-presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance.

Updated

In her post announcing her support for Kamala Harris, Taylor Swift said that she had been spurred to act after the Trump campaign implied that she supported him, and also was not pleased with a certain remark made by his running mate, JD Vance.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” Swift wrote.

She signed her post, in which she posed with a long-haired cat, “Childless Cat Lady”. That’s something Vance once said, and which is not going away:

Updated

Fact check: 2020 election lawsuits

Donald Trump repeated misinformation about the result of lawsuits contesting the 2020 election results.

The former president said that “no judge looked at” lawsuits he and allies filed about irregularities in the election. “They said we didn’t have standing. A technicality. Can you imagine a system where a person in an election doesn’t have standing? The president of the United States doesn’t have standing. That’s how we lost,” Trump said.

That’s misleading – some lawsuits were dismissed due to a lack of standing, meaning that those who brought the lawsuits didn’t have a stake in the results. Others were decided on merit. Judges found in some cases that evidence provided was speculative, or failed to show fraud.

Updated

Taylor Swift says she will vote for Harris

Taylor Swift, the world-famous pop superstar, just announced on Instagram that she will vote for Kamala Harris, giving the vice-president perhaps her biggest celebrity endorsement yet.

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades,” she wrote.

Updated

Vance clears up Trump's abortion position and says Harris focused on 'echoing platitude after platitude'

ABC News then heard from JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is Donald Trump’s running mate, and asked him for clarity on whether the former president supported national restrictions on abortion.

The debate’s moderators tried to get an answer out of Trump, but he instead talked about how he was proud that states were deciding the issue, while falsely claiming that Democrats supported infanticide.

“I think the president’s been very clear that he doesn’t want a national abortion ban. I think in some ways he finds the question a little bit ridiculous, because why are we asking him about legislation that’s never going to actually happen, and why he would veto it or not veto it, when he says very explicitly that he doesn’t support a national abortion ban and he wants these policies to be made by the states,” Vance said.

He then criticized Harris for debate rhetoric he described as empty, saying:

You had Kamala Harris effectively echoing platitude after platitude after platitude. The American people can’t pay their grocery bills on platitudes. They can’t put their kids in a house on platitudes. And Kamala Harris had a lot to say but very little actual substance behind it for how she’s going to lower grocery prices, secure the border and make housing more affordable in this country.

She’s been the vice-president for three-and-a-half years. She can’t run on a record, and she apparently can’t run on much of her plans either, because it’s just a lot of slogans and not a whole lot of substance.

Updated

Walz says Trump's performance reminds him of 'an old man yelling at the clouds'

In an interview with ABC News after the debate, Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice-president, said Donald Trump came off as unhinged.

“I have to tell you, if it weren’t so dangerous, it reminds you of an old man yelling at the clouds. That was his thing: ‘Get off my yard,’” said Walz, the governor of Minnesota.

“So, I think country can see what happened tonight. We’ll keep pushing forward. That’s the way that the country wants to see our politics be – she laid it out clearly. Donald Trump brought nothing tonight but anger, resentment.”

Updated

Women were chipping in for Harris during the debate.

Harris’s campaign said that during the first hour of the debate, 71% of their grassroots donors were women. The campaign has not yet provided an overall tally for her fundraising figures.

Updated

In a conversation about Harris’s racial identity, the vice-president said Trump had a long history of stoking racial division.

She recalled that he had placed a full-page ad in the New York Times that called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly accused of raping a white woman.

It appears the reference was intentional.

The Harris campaign announced that Yusef Salaam, one of the five exonerated men who is now a New York councilmember, will be in the spin room as a surrogate for the Harris campaign.

Updated

Trump hits back at Harris's promises, asking: 'Why hasn't she done it?'

While Harris held off on attacking Donald Trump in her closing statement, the former president did not do the same, instead seizing on Harris’s years in the vice-presidency to argue she would be an ineffective leader.

“So, 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. Why hasn’t she done it?” Trump asked.

He went on:

She’s been there for three-and-a-half years. They’ve had three-and-a-half years to fix the border. They’ve had three-and-a-half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful White House, go to the Capitol, get everyone together and do the things you want to do, but you haven’t done it and you won’t do it because you believe in things that the American people don’t believe in.

Trump restated his downbeat view of the state of the country, which is a major part of his pitch to voters:

We’re a failing nation. We’re a nation that’s in serious decline. We’re being laughed at all over the world. All over the world, they laughed. I know the leaders very well, they’re coming to see me. They call me. We’re laughed at all over the world. They don’t understand what happened to us as a nation.

He concluded by calling Harris “the worst vice-president in the history of our country”.

And with that, the debate concluded.

Updated

In her closing statement, Harris vows to 'protect our fundamental rights and freedoms'

We’re now at the closing statements of the debate, with Kamala Harris up first.

Casting herself as a unifier, she argues her background as a prosecutor made her the right person to lead the country:

I will 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. I’ll tell you, I started my career as a prosecutor. I was the DA, I was an attorney general, United States senator and now vice-president. I only have one client: the people.

And I’ll tell you, as a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness, are you a Republican or a Democrat? The only thing I ever asked them, are you OK? And that’s the kind of president we need right now, someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first. I intend to be a president for all Americans and focus on what we can do over the next 10 and 20 years to build back up our country by investing right now in you, the American people.

Updated

Fact check: the Central Park Five

Donald Trump doubled down on his claims that the Central Park Five, a group of Black teenagers who were arrested in connection with the rape and assault of a white female jogger in 1989 and convicted based on police-coerced confessions.

Back then, Trump called for the execution of these five children. When Kamala Harris brought up Trump’s stance, he dug in: “They pled guilty … They badly hurt a person, they killed a person, ultimately.”

All of them were exonerated after a convicted murderer confessed to the crime in 2002. In 2014, they were awarded a $41m settlement.

In 1989, before any of the boys had faced trial, Trump paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for their execution. The headline read: “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” and above his signature, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

As my colleague Oliver Laughland reported back in 2016, Trump’s charge against the Central Park Five was a precursor to his divisive populism:

Updated

Tuesday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could have been a mess of layered talking, unchallenged claims and wild veers off-topic.

Instead, ABC’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, kept the candidates on point.

Muir and Davis took on the first matchup between the two virtually tied presidential candidates, seeking to “enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion”, according to debate rules from ABC that took weeks to negotiate, and it was no easy task.

The two effectively rerouted discussions back to the questions they had asked, on key topics including the economy, immigration, abortion rights and the peaceful transfer of power, and made important clarifying fact-check statements when they were warranted.

When Trump made the outlandish claim that Democrats supported “the execution” of babies after they were born and accused Tim Walz, Harris’s vice-presidential pick, of supporting abortions in the ninth month, Davis laid out the facts. “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born,” Davis told viewers.

Muir also pushed Trump on his connection to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, and his belief that he won the election, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Updated

Harris rebuts Trump gun claims, saying she and Walz 'are both gun owners'

Donald Trump may have been a transformational force in the GOP, but he’s followed in the footsteps of many Republicans who came before him by saying his Democratic opponent wants to take away guns.

“She has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun,” Trump alleged at one point in the debate.

A few minutes later, Harris mentioned that she is a gun owner – something she doesn’t bring up often.

“This business about taking everyone’s guns away – Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff,” the vice-president said.

Updated

Snap analysis: where the candidates stand

As the debate winds into its final stretch, both candidates have stayed true to form.

Donald Trump has doubled down on his tried-and-true talking points – including a barrage of misinformation about immigration and immigrants, abortion and election security.

But Kamala Harris appears to have rattled him in several moments, including when she made light of his tendency to reference fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, or to set off on difficult-to-follow tangents about windmills.

Though the candidates were muted while the other was speaking, Harris also made good use of her side of the screen – putting out a range of expressions to show skepticism, concern and dismissal.

Updated

Harris accuses Trump of using 'race to divide the American people'

Days after Harris launched her campaign, Trump alleged something that was shocking, even by his standards: that the vice-president, who is of South Asian and Black Jamaican heritage, was not actually African American.

“Why do you believe it’s appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent?” moderator David Muir asked.

“I don’t, and I don’t care. I don’t care what she is. I don’t care. You make a big deal out of something, I couldn’t care less, whatever she wants to be is OK with me,” Trump replied.

Muir then asked Harris for her thoughts. She replied:

Honestly, I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people. You know, I do believe that the vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what separates us, and we don’t want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us, and especially by race.

She made a point to bring up Trump’s involvement in pushing for the prosecution of the Central Park Five. Here’s more on that:

Updated

We’re now getting into a perilous topic for Harris: the US pullout from Afghanistan.

Joe Biden’s approval ratings dropped after the chaotic departure of American troops, during which a terrorist attack killed 13 US soldiers, and Republicans have hammered his administration over the withdrawal ever since. Harris says she approved of the president’s decision to end US involvement in the war, then pivoted to, once again, attacking Trump.

“I agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan. Four presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did. And as a result, America’s taxpayers are not paying the $300m 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,” Harris says.

Then, on to Trump:

But let’s understand how we got to where we are. Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine. He calls himself a dealmaker. Even his national security adviser said it was a weak, terrible deal, and here’s how it went down: he bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban. The negotiation involved the Taliban getting 5,000 terrorists, Taliban terrorists released.

Updated

Harris, no surprise, strongly defended Washington’s support for Ukraine, then again attacked Trump.

“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,” the vice-president said. “Through the work that I and others did, we brought 50 countries together to support Ukraine in its righteous defense, and because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country.”

She continued:

If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now, and understand what that would mean, because Putin’s agenda is not just about Ukraine. Understand why the European allies and our Nato allies are so thankful that you are no longer president, and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is Nato, and what we have done to preserve the ability of Zelenskiy and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence. Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.

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Trump declines to say whether he wants Ukraine to win against Russia

The debate just resumed after a short break, and the first question, to Trump, was about Ukraine.

“You have said you would solve this war in 24 hours. You said so just before the break tonight. How exactly would you do that? And I want to ask you a very simple question tonight: do you want Ukraine to win this war?” moderator David Muir asked.

The former president’s response wasn’t exactly a yes:

I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly. People being killed by the millions. It’s the millions. It’s so much worse than the numbers that you’re getting, which are fake numbers.

Muir pressed: “Just to clarify the question, do you believe it’s in the US best interest for Ukraine to win this war?”

“I think it’s the US best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, all right, negotiate a deal, because we have to stop all of these human lives from being destroyed,” Trump said.

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Fact check: crime

Donald Trump claimed that crime is way up in the US – and he’s wrong.

Crime is actually down. Data from the FBI found that violent crime decreased during the Trump administration, spiking in 2020 during the pandemic, and continuing to trend downward afterwards.

Preliminary data from the FBI found that violent crime was down 6% in 2023, and 15% in the first quarter of 2024.

Violent crime decreased throughout most of Trump’s presidency, according to FBI data that uses information provided by law enforcement agencies. However, it spiked in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has trended downward since 2020 across the US, nearing pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Preliminary FBI data for 2023 shows that violent crime overall was down another 6% that year.

Though the data is preliminary, it includes numbers from 80% of the law enforcement agencies in the country.

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Trump got the same question, and didn’t have much new to say, instead insisting that both the 7 October attack and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if he had been president – a line from previous speeches and debate.

“If I were president, it would have never started. If I were president, Russia would have never, ever, I know Putin very well. He would have never. There was no threat of it either,” Trump said.

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Harris dodges when asked how she would resolve stalemate over Gaza ceasefire

The debate has now shifted into foreign policy territory, and the first question, to Harris, was how she would convince Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire.

The vice-president didn’t quite answer the question, instead vowing to defend Israel, while acknowledging the toll taken on civilians by Israel’s invasion of Gaza:

Now, Israel has a right to defend itself … and how it does so matters. Because it is also true, far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed, children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end … And the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out, and so we will continue to work around the clock on that. Work around the clock, also understanding that we must chart a course for a two-state solution, and in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel, and an equal measure for the Palestinians.

She added: “I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular, as it relates to Iran, and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

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Harris says Trump 'was fired by 81 million people' after he again refuses to accept 2020 election loss

Donald Trump continued to insist that he won the 2020 election, despite moderator David Muir pointing out that judges across the country had thrown out his claims of fraud.

That gave Kamala Harris an opening to attack him in terms that the former The Apprentice host would well understand:

Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so, let’s be clear about that. 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.

And I’m going to tell you that I have traveled the world as vice-president of the United States, and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I talked with military leaders, some of whom work with you, and they say, you’re a disgrace. And when you then talk in this way in a presidential debate and deny … you have lost because you did, in fact, lose that election, it leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have, in the candidate to my right, the temperament or the ability to not be confused about facts. That’s deeply troubling, and the American people deserve better.

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In her debate against Mike Pence four years ago, Kamala Harris memorably rebuked him when he interrupted her, by responding: “Mr vice-president, I’m speaking.”

Donald Trump just deployed the line against Harris at their debate. Here’s the moment:

A bit more about how Harris’s quip landed in 2020:

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Fact check: Trump's abortion attack

Trump repeated one of his usual falsehoods: that abortions are taking place in the ninth month of pregnancy.

In fact, fewer than 1% of abortions are performed past 21 weeks of pregnancy; when these abortions do take place, they often occur in medical emergencies or cases of fetal anomalies.

Trump also suggested, at multiple points, that abortions take place after birth. That would be infanticide, and it is illegal in all 50 states.

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Trump claims Harris's verbal attacks led to assassination attempt

The FBI is still not sure why a young man opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania in July, wounding the former president and killing an attendee. But at the debate, the former president has said that Harris and other Democrats calling him a “threat to democracy” sparked the attack.

“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy, I’m a threat to democracy, they’re the threat to democracy,” Trump said, before bringing up the investigation into Russian influence that bedeviled him during his first term.

Moderator David Muir then cut him off, saying: “We have a lot to get to.”

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Fact check: immigrants

Donald Trump has spouted off a number of false claims about immigration and immigrants.

To start, he said immigrants are “taking over the towns … They’re going in violently.”

That’s false. Although some US cities have seen an influx of immigrants, most have arrived legally, with work permits or with authorization to stay while their cases are worked out in the courts.

There has been no widespread violence in these cities and overall, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the US-born according to multiple, extensive studies, including from the conservative Cato Institute.

Trump also referenced immigrants “eating the dogs” in Springfield, Ohio, which was live fact-checked by the debate moderators. Republicans have sometimes substituted dogs for cats when repeating this misinformation. Here’s some reporting from the Guardian looking into the salacious, and completely false claim:

The misinformation about migrants in Springfield comes as the Trump campaign has sought to make immigration a key issue, tying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the towns unprepared for migrants arriving via the southern border. Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, went on Fox to say the Biden administration was to blame for “failing cities like ours and taxing us beyond our limit”.

The city has seen a large number of migrants from Haiti, which has both helped the economy there with staffing concerns while also stretching the capacity of some services like clinics and schools, the New York Times reported. A Biden administration policy provided temporary protected status to hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants, who have left their home country because of ongoing violence. Some estimates say as many as 20,000 people from Haiti have come to the city, the Times said.

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Earlier, Harris took Trump to task for spending his rallies making strange statements, rather than talking about how he would solve Americans’ problems:

I’m going to actually 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. You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about, windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams and your needs 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.

The former president replied by defending the size of his events:

People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back.

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Trump falsely claims immigrants are 'eating the pets' in Ohio town

In perhaps the most bizarre moment of this debate so far, Trump repeated an unsubstantiated claim that immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio town, forcing the moderator to tell him that there is no proof of that.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats … 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,” the former president said.

The story of immigrants allegedly eating pets has circulated in rightwing media in recent days, and been repeated by Trump’s running mate JD Vance.

“You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” moderator David Muir told Trump.

Here’s more on this most strange story:

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Trump and Harris got into a back and forth, after the former president demanded that she answer whether she supports abortion in the third trimester.

“Will she allow abortion in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month?” Trump demanded.

“Come on,” an annoyed Harris replied.

Fact check: Trump's economy

Donald Trump, as he always does, boasted that the US experienced its “best” economy under his administration, while Kamala Harris noted that Trump left the US with “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression”.

They’re both wrong – Trump by a lot, and Harris by a shade.

Though unemployment spiked to its worst levels since the Great Depression in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, it had dipped back by the time Trump left office.

Meanwhile, Trump’s “best economy” line has been the bane of fact-checkers since he was in office. “Best” is a very vague term – but by several measures, including GDP, unemployment and the trade deficit – the economy was far from its peak.

Here are some final numbers from his term, compiled by FactCheck.org:

  • The economy lost 2.7m jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 6.4%.

  • Paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.4% after inflation.

  • After-tax corporate profits went up, and the stock market set new records. The S&P 500 index rose 67.8%.

  • The international trade deficit Trump promised to reduce went up. The US trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 36.3% from 2016.

  • The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.

  • The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4tn to $21.6tn.

  • Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.

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Trump 'should not be telling a woman what to do with her body', Harris says

Harris then explained her support for reinstating Roe v Wade, in much clearer terms than Trump used:

Now, in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans, which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide healthcare. In one state, it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans that make no exception, even for rape and incest, which, understand what that means, a survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body.

Next, that is immoral, and one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.

She vowed to sign legislation restoring the overturned precedent, if Congress approves it.

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Trump says supreme court showed 'great courage' in overturning Roe v Wade

Linsey Davis, a moderator of the debate, pressed Trump to explain his policy on abortion, noting that he has changed his views repeatedly.

Trump responded by going through how various states have handled the issue, and claiming, falsely, that in some states, babies are killed after they are born (which is murder, and illegal everywhere).

Then, he thanked the supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe v Wade, though misstated the number – five voted to do away with the precedent, not six. Trump said:

Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people. Now, it’s not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it, and the supreme court had great courage in doing it, and I give tremendous credit to those six justices.

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Harris just made something of a new attack on Trump, by accusing him of being deferential to Chinese president Xi Jinping despite lingering questions over what his government knows about the origins of Covid-19.

“What Donald Trump did, let’s talk about this with Covid, is, he actually thanked President Xi for what he did during Covid. Look at his tweet: ‘Thank you, President Xi. Exclamation point’, when we know that Xi was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of Covid,” the vice-president said.

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Fact check: Trump and Project 2025

As expected, Trump denied knowledge of Project 2025, a 900-page plan for the aggressive rightwing reform of nearly every aspect of the federal government.

Though Trump has tried repeatedly to distance himself from the platform, which seeks to strip away reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights, his policies align heavily with Project 2025.

As my colleague Rachel Leingang reported: “Trump well knows the Heritage Foundation and has spoken at their events, and [Kevin] Roberts, Heritage’s leader, has previously said he and Trump have talked several times. Project 2025’s authors and supporters contain a ton of former Trump administration officials.”

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As Trump is talking, Harris appears to be looking at him and lightly shaking her head.

And whenever it’s Harris’s turn to talk, Trump has been looking straight ahead.

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Trump says he has 'nothing to do with Project 2025'

As the two candidates squabbled over the economy, Harris quickly brought up Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint to remake the US government authored by former Trump officials and people connected to him.

“I’m going to tell you all on this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired book, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling. 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 to again,” Harris said.

Trump replied by saying he has no involvement with the document:

I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. 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 100 million people died, has there been anything like it.

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In his rebuttal, Trump zeroed in on what his campaign believes are two of his strongest issues: inflation and undocumented people.

“Look, we’ve had a terrible economy because inflation has, which it’s really known as a country buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history,” Trump said. That isn’t quite true – inflation had been worse in the past than the bout experienced over the last three years.

Then, Trump raised the issue of illegal immigration:

On top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and they’re coming in, and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions. Unions are going to be affected very soon. And you see what’s happening. You see what’s happening with towns throughout the United States.

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Harris asked whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago

The first question, for Harris, was: “Do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

“I was raised as a middle-class kid, and 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. I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people, and that is why I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy.”

She also made a point to attack Trump’s tax policy:

My opponent, on the other hand, his plan is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in $5tn to America’s deficit. My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month. Economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result for middle-class families in about $4,000 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle-class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires.

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Harris walks to Trump to shake hands as both take stage at presidential debate

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have just taken the stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

It’s their first time ever meeting, and they did shake hands after Harris approached Trump’s podium. The debate has begun.

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The candidates’ top messengers are floating through the spin room to “spin” us ahead of the debate.

So far, we’ve heard Senator Rick Scott pre-emptively accuse the media of downplaying a good performance.

Asked about House Republicans’ report on the Afghanistan withdrawal, Senator Chris Murphy quipped that he doesn’t typically read “Republican campaign documents”. The reporter didn’t get the joke and tried again, clarifying that he meant the “official” report. Murphy repeated the joke.

RFK Jr, who recently bowed out of the race and endorsed Trump, barreled through the room, drawing a large audience as he spoke to a handful of conservative outlets.

California governor Gavin Newsom, one of the Democrats’ best messengers, held court, lacing into Trump and touting his fellow Californian. Surrogates from both Dakotas turned out for Trump: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and theNorth Dakota governor, Doug Burgum.

I also dropped into a revealing gaggle with Florida Representative Byron Donalds, another Trump surrogate.

“I’m a cigar guy. I’m a tequila guy. You know, I work out when I can. I hit the weights. I like movies,” he told a reporter.

Another cut in to ask whether he’d tried Beyoncé’s new whiskey, SirDavis. (He has not but appeared genuinely excited to do so.)

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Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, told reporters in the debate spin room that he is confident about how Harris will perform on the biggest night of the election campaign so far.

“I’m not nervous about her debate skills,” he said. “If I’m Donald Trump, I’d be nervous. That said, he has more options because he doesn’t play by the same sets of rules and so he’s a very challenging person to debate in that respect. If he feels he’s losing, this will get very interesting and you will feel that very quickly. My sense is we’re going to feel that right out of the gate.”

Trump will find it especially difficult to debate a woman, Newsom continued, saying: “He has a hard time with women generally. He sure as hell has a hard time with critique, criticism. He’s the most easily manipulated human being I’ve ever met in my life.”

Newsom said he has met 30 world leaders “and literally every conversation begins with, what the hell is going on in the United States of America? They’re laughing behind his back. At the same time they said if he does come back, he’s pretty easily manipulated.

“She can easily get under his skin by just asserting herself competently and prosecuting the case against the guy who’s quite literally a convicted felon. He’s a fraudster and he’s boring, not just boorish. He’s become boring and that is showing up more and more.”

Asked by the Guardian whether Harris should attempt to fact-check Harris during the debate, Newsom replied: “It’s hard to fact-check a serial liar. There’s no capacity to do that unless an AI bot is doing the debate. But there are some outlandish and outrageous things that we certainly need to push back.

“I do think that’s the role of the moderator for those outlandish and absurd things but it’s also the role of the candidate - both candidates. I expect with that ample opportunity – two minutes, a minute to respond and an opportunity for follow up – it’ll be a lot more give-and-take in that respect.”

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The rules of the Trump-Harris debate

Here are the rules of this evening’s debate, according to the host, ABC News:

  • The debate will be 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.

  • The two seated moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, will be the only people asking questions.

  • A coin flip was held virtually on Tuesday, 3 September, to determine podium placement and order of closing statements; former President Donald Trump won the coin toss and chose to select the order of statements. The former president will offer the last closing statement, and Vice-President Kamala Harris selected the right podium position on screen (stage left).

  • Candidates will be introduced by the moderators.

  • The candidates will enter upon introduction from opposite sides of the stage; the incumbent party will be introduced first.

  • There will be no opening statements; closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.

  • Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate.

  • Props or pre-written notes are not allowed on stage.

  • No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.

  • Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.

  • Candidates will be given two minutes to answer questions, two minutes for rebuttals, and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications or responses.

  • Candidates’ microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to another candidate.

  • Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other.

  • Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during commercial breaks.

  • Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion.

  • There will be no audience in the room.

Here’s more on what we can expect when Trump and Kamala Harris take the stage in just a few minutes:

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Gaza solidarity protesters have taken to the streets today near the venue where the two candidates are having their debate:

Harris arrives at debate venue

Kamala Harris’s motorcade has arrived at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where she’ll debate Donald Trump in about 12 minutes.

So, too, did Kamala Harris’s campaign, who had several high-profile Democrats giving interviews at the debate:

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Donald Trump’s campaign had a host of surrogates talking with reporters before the debate:

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Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, has urged Kamala Harris to communicate a vision of hope and inclusion to millions of viewers watching tonight’s debate.

“She’s got to show the American people tonight that she’s not Joe Biden. She sure as hell is not Donald Trump,” Newsom told reporters in the debate spin room. “She is a new generation of leader and that’s her opportunity. She shows up on stage. You see that. You feel that. And now she’s got to express it in a way that communicates a vision where people feel hope and included.

“She’s got to talk to the extent that she is specifically talking to the people watching – they feel that she’s talking about them. Donald Trump in contrast – we know, you know – he’ll be talking about himself. That is a powerful, powerful contrast.”

Newsom, who was seen as a potential replacement for Biden before the party consolidated around Harris, added: “She’s not the status quo. She’s not Joe Biden. She’s her own person. She’s always been her own person. Trust me, I’ve known Kamala Harris for 30 years. She is her own person. She has unique skill sets that are unique and distinctive from Joe Biden.”

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Meanwhile, Doug Emhoff, Harris’s husband, is with Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, riling up supporters outside the debate venue.

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Robert F Kennedy Jr, who recently endorsed Donald Trump after abandoning his independent run for president, was in the debate spin room with the Trump campaign.

Donald Trump has done the most prep sessions before the ABC presidential debate tonight of any of his prior seven debates, according to people familiar with the matter.

The former president has been practicing primarily with his pal Matt Gaetz, a Republican representative, and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic representative.

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Yesterday, ABC News released a photo of the debate stage where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are to meet:

One imagines they’ll turn the lights up when the candidates are on stage.

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Trump campaign seeks to undermine debate before it starts

The Trump campaign is already playing the refs and suggesting that, if the moderators fail to sufficiently challenge Kamala Harris on her record, “you can throw the whole debate out”.

Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota and a Trump surrogate, told reporters in the debate spin room that ABC News’s moderators have “a responsibility to the American people, and part of their responsibility is to actually ask Vice-President Harris real questions and tough questions. This is historic. She’s a historic candidate but for a different reason.

“She’s historic because she’s 55 days away from the election and she’s done one short interview and has never done a debate and this may be the only one. I think America is going to be outraged if we find out a few hours from tonight that she got through a debate and nobody asked her tough questions about her past positions and why her anonymous aides are saying no, she doesn’t believe in all this anymore on issues that are critical, whether it’s energy policy, the border, whether fentanyl should be legal.”

Burgum, who was on Trump’s shortlist for running mate until senator JD Vance got the nod, added: “It’s not just about plastic straws that she supported. She needs to be asked tough questions tonight, and that’s one of the things that I’m going to be looking for. If the moderators don’t come through, then you can throw the whole debate out because it was a three-on-one tilted playing field from the start.”

Burgum called for close scrutiny of Harris’s past record, saying: “She’s a dangerously progressive liberal from California, and people should understand that when they’re voting. Is that a direction she wants to take the country? Because the last time I checked, California’s losing population. One of the states where people are leaving, voting with their feet.”

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Trump seen arriving in Philadelphia

Donald Trump arrived in Philadelphia earlier today for his debate with Kamala Harris.

Photographers captured him and his entourage deplaning:

The debate takes place at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center. Here are some scenes from the area:

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The Harris campaign will be fact-checking the debate in real time, on X.

ABC, meanwhile, has said that the debate moderators will facilitate the debate but not fact-check. Rick Klein, ABC News’ political director, told the New York Times: “We’re not making a commitment to fact-check everything, or fact-check nothing, in either direction. We’re there to keep a conversation going, and to facilitate a good solid debate.”

For truly unbiased fact-checking of both candidates, follow along here on the Guardian US liveblog!

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Speaking to reporters in Philadelphia, Rick Scott, the Republican senator from Florida, said Donald Trump has been “very clear” about his position on abortion, after the former president sought to moderate on an issue he fears will hurt Republicans in the November election.

Trump recently suggested he would support a Florida ballot initiative enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution, only to say the following day, amid blowback from conservative Christians, that he would vote against it.

“The supreme court made a decision. It’s a state issue,” Scott told reporters in the spin room, summarizing Trump’s view on the matter. He said Trump would have an opportunity to turn the issue on Democrats, whom he falsely claimed support laws allowing people to get abortions after the baby is born. This is untrue: infanticide is criminalized in all 50 states.

During the debate, Scott predicted that Trump would seek to tie Kamala Harris to Biden’s record, and expected her to face sharp criticism from the former president over the administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

He also sought to set expectations, pre-emptively accusing the press of not giving the president a fair shake.

“Well, first off, he’s going to have a big win tonight,” Scott said. “Now the question will be, will the mainstream media say he’s had a big win?”

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The Harris-Walz campaign will be putting on a drone show over the Philadelphia Museum of Art prior to the debate.

Per the campaign, “this drone show will serve as a perfect opener as eyes turn to the debate stage, where Vice President Harris will make her case for her popular New Way Forward agenda”. The show “will echo some of the popular messaging this campaign and grassroots supporters have latched onto”, according to a campaign statement. It is unclear how the drones will be spelling out or interpreting Harris’s newly released policy platform, but do watch the skies over Philly and let us know!

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Former Trump official warns over ex-president's threats to jail opponents

Now from Olivia Troye, a former homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser to Mike Pence, the vice-president under Donald Trump.

Troye is holding a press conference as a surrogate of the Harris campaign before the debate, and was asked whether she fears retribution from the former president because of her staunch opposition to him.

Troye highlighted a social media post by Trump on Saturday threatening to jail “corrupt” election officials if he wins. The former president wrote: “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

Troye told reporters in Philadelphia: “Just this weekend, he threatened to throw election workers in jail. Actually wanted law enforcement to go after them. Think about that. Take a step back and think about what that means for our elections right now, when you have a former president of the United States who seeks the Oval Office again and he’s advocating attacks on our election officials.”

She added: “By the way, they’ve already suffered from threats – we saw that in Georgia especially. Even some of the threats to Governor Kemp who just simply held the line and told the truth and stood by the 2020 election, which was a free and fair election.

“When you have someone that’s speaking in that way, I think, yes, he has said there’ll be retribution. I have no doubt there’ll be retribution against myself and others who don’t fall in line with exactly his type of cult.”

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Young voter groups have criticized the Republican National Committee’s gun store debate watch party, calling Trump’s team “evil” and the former president “out of touch” for hosting the event so close to a mass school shooting site.

The groups, which include Voters of Tomorrow, College Democrats of America, Leaders We Deserve, College Democrats of Georgia, Georgia High School Democrats, Young Democrats of Georgia, Path to Progress and Blue Future issued a joint statement condemning the committee’s decision:

Just days after students and teachers were murdered in Apalachee High School, Republicans are hosting a debate watch party an hour away at the world’s largest gun store. The Trump team is evil for disrespecting the victims like this – and by continually refusing to support life-saving gun violence prevention policies.

Donald Trump is out-of-touch with the vast majority of Americans on gun violence prevention. He continues to suck up to the gun lobby and insult victims, as shown by today’s event. As young organizers in Georgia and across the country, and members of a generation that has been defined by mass shootings, we know Donald Trump’s flagrant disregard for young Americans’ lives will cost him this election.

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The Republican National Committee has scheduled a watch party for tonight’s debate at a gun store in Georgia just miles away from Apalachee high school, where two teachers and two students were killed by a 14-year-old shooter last week.

Gun-control advocacy group Moms Demand Action condemned the event on X:

Adventure Outdoors, which proudly proclaims itself as “the Greatest Store on Earth”, carries more than 15,000 guns and has a 17-lane shooting range. The store has hosted debate watch parties before, including last June when Donald Trump debated Joe Biden.

The event, which includes dinner and refreshments, is sponsored by a slew of conservative groups, including Tea Party Patriots Action, the Fulton county Republican party and Pac Turning Point Action.

Updated

Trump, Harris may be tied in presidential race

Earlier, we described this race as “neck and neck”. We mean that literally – our polling average shows the two candidates tied nationally, at 47.3% support each.

Of course, America’s use of the electoral college means that seven swing states – Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – are expected to decide this election.

For an idea of how Trump and Harris are faring in each, check out our poll tracker:

Updated

How to watch the Harris-Trump debate

Whether you’re in the United States or abroad, we have a handy guide that’ll tell you how to tune in to this evening’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and that covers its ground rules.

Read it here:

Updated

Harris and Trump to debate as polls show dead heat in presidential race

Good evening, US politics blog readers, and thanks for joining us as we cover tonight’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, which we expect to be a milestone in what has already been a historically tumultuous presidential race. The two contenders will square off for 90 minutes at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, with ABC News hosting and their anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis moderating. The Democratic and Republican candidates are meeting as polls indicate a neck-and-neck race between them, particularly in the seven swing states expected to decide the winner.

This will be the first debate between Harris and Trump. Joe Biden and Trump faced off in June, but the president put in such a poor showing that it sparked a plunge in his poll numbers and a Democratic pressure campaign that contributed to his decision to end his bid for a second term. Though Harris has been vice-president since 2021, she has done only one formal interview since launching her presidential campaign, and polls have indicated that voters are looking to find out more about her plans, if elected. This debate could present her with the opportunity to do that – while, for Trump, he’ll be given the chance to make the case for his return to the White House.

Here’s what we’ll be watching out for:

  • Will either candidate deliver a knockout blow to the other? Biden certainly received one when he encountered Trump just over two months ago, though he was far from the only candidate to emerge from a debate with their campaign hanging by a thread.

  • Will Trump say something insensitive about Harris’s racial identity? Just days after she launched her campaign, the former president claimed that the vice-president was not really Black, sparking outrage.

  • What will Harris say about her policies? She inherited a campaign from Biden, but has slowly deviated from some of his proposals. Look out for anything she has to say about US support for Israel, and her previous stances on immigration – a subject Trump is sure to bring up.

Updated

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