After a long wait, marked by the resignation of Joe Biden for re-electionfinally Kamala Harris and Donald Trump They had their first presidential debateThe United States will vote for its next president on Tuesday November 5th of 2024.
The strategy of the current vice president of the United States was marked by linking the Republican candidate to the “Project 2025“a political initiative led by the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank in the United States. For his part, Trump focused on the role of the State in abortion and the moderators had to interrupt him repeatedly by false statements.
Kamala Harris’s contradictions during the presidential debate
Kamala Harristhe current vice president of the United States, arrived at the presidential debate with a renewed air for her political party. After Joe Biden’s resignation from his re-election, the Democrats unanimously supported Harris who, during her first months as a candidate, managed to generate record campaign funds.
This is how the Democratic candidate arrived to debate Trump. During her speech, Harris sought to annoy the Republican to respond outside of his speech, in addition to constantly linking him to the Project 2025a political initiative developed by the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank in the United States.
In this regard, Harris said: “What you are going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025, something that the former president plans to implement if he is elected.” However, despite the Republican’s accusation, The cited document is not an official Trump campaign proposal.
The report, which is more than 922 pages long, outlines policies on a range of issues, from the country’s defense, to the restructuring of the executive branch, to the economy, and more. On several occasions, the Democratic Party has sought to associate Trump with this platform. Although Harris’s accusation is false, it is worth noting that At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to the report.
Along the same lines, Harris also assured that on abortion, Project 2025 aims to “monitoring pregnancies and miscarriages” across the country. Beyond the unofficial link between the document and Trump, the project establishes a monitoring body, but also details that the “United States Department of Health and Human Services should use every available tool to ensure that all States report exactly how many abortions are performed in their territory, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason” among other details.
Finally, Harris also made a false accusation against the republican candidatestating that “Trump said there will be a bloodbath if the outcome of this election is not what you would like“. The phrase that Harris picked up was taken out of context, since the Republican made those statements in the framework of a speech on the impact of the Chinese electric cars in the US market, carried out on March 16 of this year.
Moderators corrected Trump for misstatements
For his part, the Republican candidate arrived at the presidential debate with a turn in his campaign, which in the previous months was focused on denounce Joe Biden’s inability to take office as presidentdue to his age and health. Now, with Harris in front of him, Trump repeatedly resorted to false claims, which earned him the Intervention of the debate moderators.
The first time they had to intervene was when the former American president assured that in some States Not only full-term abortion is permitted, but also the killing of newborn children: “Vice President (Harris) says abortion in the ninth month is okay. He also says that ‘execution after birth’ is fine.“the Republican denounced.
However, this statement is false since Tim Walz never made such statementsin addition to the fact that ‘execution after birth’ is banned in all US states. If you look at abortion statistics, the 90% of abortions in the United States are performed within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The second intervention was in response to another harsh false statement. During the debate Trump denounced that immigrants from Haiti were eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio: “A lot of cities don’t want to talk about this because they’re embarrassed. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people who came here are eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there.”
This statement by Trump refers to fake news from social media who denounce that Haitian immigrants are eating animals in Springfield. However, There is no evidence to prove that Trump’s claim is true.
Finally, Trump accused the Biden-Harris government of being the largest financier of Ukraine in the framework of the War with Russia: “We are between US$250 and US$275 billionwhile Europe is between US$100 and US$150 billion.”
Despite Trump’s claim, this figure has been proven false. According to a report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which details that European nations contributed a total of US$110 billionhigher than the US$83 billion contributed by USA.
In this way, Harris and Trump closed their first confrontation. The second debate will take place next September 25th.
Source: Ambito
