Opinion | Tuesday’s debate: How did the candidates do?

ABC hosted the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on Tuesday, and the night went far differently than our current president’s debate with Trump a little over two months ago. If you missed the debate or intentionally avoided it for the sake of your mental health, we’re here to cover how the presidential candidates performed their first night formally meeting each other.

Donald Trump // Livia LaMarca, Assistant Opinions Editor

Former President Donald Trump’s debate performance was astonishing for all the wrong reasons. The Pitt News opinions desk has been historically harsh on Trump for a number of years, but I went into this debate planning to give him as much open mindedness I could muster. What unfolded was a staggering display of incoherence and evasion I could not morally ignore. 

When asked if he had a plan to address the Affordable Care Act, Trump responded with “I have concepts of a plan.” It became quite clear that this wasn’t a debate, but rather a masterclass performance in deflection and a narcissistic rant devoid of substance instead of a thoughtful articulation of policy.

When asked pointed questions, Trump never once gave a straight answer. The coherent answers he did give were few and far between with bits of policy positions buried beneath his self-aggrandizing language. For example, instead of sharing any substantial and direct policy plans for immigration, Trump just unleashed a barrage of inflammatory, unsavory rhetoric about immigrants. Since his initial run against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump has leaned heavily on xenophobic fantasies of mass deportation, and eight years later, he’s still using immigrants as scapegoats. In an almost comical display of ignorance, he most likely confused political asylum with mental institutions and claimed Black immigrants are “eating the cats,” echoing a baseless and grotesque conspiracy about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. 

Despite being fact checked in real time by David Muir, Trump nevertheless persisted with his deplorable rhetoric on immigrants, as if dog-whistling racism in front of millions is now the standard Republican procedure. The former president managed to somehow sink even lower when he doubled down on his other racist antics, including reaffirming his decision to publish his infamous letter on the Central Park 5 — where he called for the execution of innocent Black and Latino men in 1989. And when asked about his previous comments on Harris’ racial identity, he casually dismissed her race as non-important — yet he couldn’t resist the quick, but not-so-veiled, implication that Harris slept her way to the top.

The policy that did sneak through his temper was confusing and conflated. While he praised the six Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, his refusal to give a straight answer on whether he would sign a national abortion ban was highly concerning.

The former president spoke multiple times about his plan to impose higher and more strict tariffs on imports, but appeared insecure about the fact that the Wharton School praised the Harris-Walz economic plan more than his own. In an attempt to endorse his previous administration’s success, he chose Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as his spokesperson. His embrace of Orbán’s praise raises serious questions about his commitment to democratic values, as Orbán has been the autocrat dismantling Hungary’s democracy for years.

The only point Trump managed to feebly deliver was his supposed disassociation with Project 2025. While he may have successfully gotten Harris to lay off the Project 2025 gripes, it is a much different beast to convince the entire American public he rejects the document given the fact the 900-page manifesto has been shaped by several of his former staffers with ties to Republican VP pick JD Vance. Any proximity, whether refuted or not, should ring alarm bells. His half-hearted distancing seems like a ploy to placate moderate Republicans, but unless he completely severs ties with the Heritage Foundation, his words will continue to fall flat.

In the subsequent days since the debate, Trump has been fact-checked significantly more than Harris. He doubled down on his racism and sexism, and when given the opportunity to share his party’s platform, he utilized his two minutes to protect his own ego, not once sharing a policy position or showing how he is best for the American people. While he certainly got his soundbites in, he fell short in his aim to bring undecided voters to his side. Instead of strong policy platforms and digs at the current state of the nation’s economy, we witnessed a temper tantrum live. This wasn’t an intelligible debate performance — this was a national embarrassment.

Kamala Harris // Thomas Riley, Opinions Editor

All things considered, Kamala Harris did quite well in this debate. Though a careful viewer could hear a nervous waver in her voice as she answered the first question, she very quickly found her rhythm and delivered a performance much more focused and well-spoken than Biden’s in June.

She exhibited her ability to pivot from the fun, “Brat” persona her social media team has pushed to one that is more serious and that many might consider more “presidential.” For the voters who value optics and hadn’t seen many of her previous rallies or speeches, I’m sure this debate was comforting.

Harris also managed to beat Trump at his own game, throwing out a dig at his rallies or money and baiting him into wasting his response time defending his ego. The biggest question I had going into this debate was how Harris would handle Trump’s more insult-oriented debate strategy, but she navigated it brilliantly. Fortunately for her, Trump has also lost his touch since 2016.

While Harris certainly gave many of her voters more confidence in their decision on Nov. 5, it’s unlikely she swayed many people on the more progressive side of the Democratic party. In very non-Trump fashion, Trump made a half-decent point — “Everything that she believed three or four years ago is out the window. She’s going to my philosophy now — in fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.”

Harris is no Republican, of course, but since accepting her role in the Biden-Harris administration, she has turned her back on many positions that are far more progressive than what she stood for during Tuesday’s debate. Trump made many viewers — myself included — laugh after his claim about “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” but despite Trump’s bizarre wording, in 2019, Harris did support granting transgender inmates in prison and immigration detention access to comprehensive treatment for gender transition.

Though she denied it on the debate stage, Harris used to support a ban on fracking prior to her Vice Presidential nomination. She expressed support for the “defund the police” movement in 2020 but shook her head and laughed when Trump mentioned it onstage. Harris also used to support defunding ICE and ending immigration detention facilities, but Tuesday night, she bragged about her support for a bill backed by “some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate” that would provide funding for 1,500 more border agents.

In her efforts to take down Trump, Harris — intentionally or not — stepped closer to him. But aside from all her flipped positions, hundreds of thousands of uncommitted primary voters eagerly waited to hear what she had to say about the war in Gaza. And she did not deliver.

Harris opened her response to Netanyahu’s refusal to accept a ceasefire deal by once again emphasizing the events of Oct. 7 in which Hamas “slaughtered” and “raped” 1,200 Israelis and offering far less emotion or rhetorical power to the 40,000+ Palestinians who “have been killed,” with no mention of the sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

She restated that she is “working around the clock” to secure a ceasefire deal, a bleak reminder that she’s been “working around the clock” for at least the past month and likely will still be “working around the clock” for months to come. At the very least, she expressed support for Palestinian statehood in a two-state solution before the two candidates moved off topic.

Harris did what she set out to do in this debate — appear like a competent president and get Donald Trump to look like an idiot. She likely didn’t swing much of the left-wing side of her party, who spent most of the debate drinking and wishing the things that Trump said about her were true, but she impressed the group of people she sought to impress — the group of people she hopes will be large enough to win her this election.