Presidential debate: Kamala Harris puts Donald Trump in front

When Donald Trump comes on stage, he goes straight to his podium. Kamala Harris, however, goes not to her podium, but to the former president, extends her right hand to him and introduces herself by name.

The 78-year-old looks astonished. “Nice to see you,” he replies. Trump had not expected a handshake. The two have never spoken to each other in person before. Harris shows in the first few seconds of the presidential debate that she is going into the debate with a strategy of dominance.

Over the next hour and a half, she will provoke Trump several times. He repeatedly jumps on the issue – whether it’s about abortion rights, January 6, Ukraine or his criminal trials. Trump gets loud and shouts, sometimes for minutes. In what is probably the most absurd scene of the evening, he claims that immigrants eat American dogs and cats, and Harris just laughs at him.

From ABC, the broadcaster that hosted the debate, to CNN and Fox News, everyone from left to right agrees: Harris won the debate, some even say by a landslide. Trump is embarrassed and defeated, at least for this evening.

Three insights:

1. Kamala Harris’ strongest moment was abortion rights

Trump likes to talk about how his opponent has changed many positions, which is true. But when it comes to the topic of abortion, it is Trump who has run into problems in the debate because of his change of position. He once supported a planned ban on abortion in Florida after six weeks. The former president later said he was against it. He was unable to resolve this contradiction when asked.

Instead, Trump boasted that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court had overturned nationwide abortion law. During his term in office, Trump appointed three judges, making it possible to tighten abortion law. “I have done a great service,” Trump said. “It took courage to do that.”

Harris spoke about cases in which women were unable to have an abortion after rape or miscarriage or had difficulty getting medical help.

“You want to talk about women wanting this?” Harris said, directly to Trump. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, who have a miscarriage, who are denied emergency room treatment because doctors are afraid they’ll go to jail. And this woman is bleeding to death in a car in the parking lot – she didn’t want this.”

2. Harris repeatedly lured Trump into traps – and he fell into them

Harris had criticized Trump for allowing a border protection bill that had been negotiated on a bipartisan basis to fail at the beginning of the year. But Trump was not prepared to take the criticism lying down. In Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants were eating Americans’ pets, Trump said. “They eat the dogs, they eat the cats.” A city representative later explained that there was no evidence to support such claims.

At another point, Harris invited viewers to watch a Trump campaign rally. Participants would leave his rallies out of exhaustion and boredom. Trump would talk about many things, but not about the American people.

Trump was not going to let that go. “People are not leaving my rallies, we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in history.” Trump became visibly angry.

At the beginning of the debate, Trump had repeatedly tried to blame Harris for inflation and immigration policy. He seemed to be in control, but he lost his composure more and more with every provocation from Harris.

3. Trump sticks to his election lie and does Harris a favor

Donald Trump was asked if he regretted his actions on January 6, 2021, when he sent a mob toward the Capitol. “I had nothing to do with that,” Trump said. The former president is under indictment for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The ex-president recently said in a podcast that he lost by a hair’s breadth. In the debate, however, Trump again refused to acknowledge his defeat in the last election.

“Are you now admitting that you lost in 2020?” asked ABC host David Muir. “No,” Trump replied. “I said that sarcastically,” he explained the comments in the podcast. He repeated false claims that there was “so much evidence” that he won the election. Harris said immediately afterwards that Trump had been fired by 81 million voters – that’s how many people voted for Joe Biden in 2020. “It’s obvious that he’s having a lot of trouble processing this,” Harris said.

It turned out to be an almost perfect evening for Kamala Harris. Immediately after the debate ended, pop star Taylor Swift called for the election of the vice president on Instagram. According to a CNN survey, 63 percent of viewers said that Harris had won the TV debate.

But there are still almost two months until the election. And according to surveys, many swing voters are still struggling with candidate Kamala Harris because they don’t know enough about her. In the next few weeks, the Vice President will not only have to give them reasons to vote against Trump, but also for her.

Otherwise, Harris could end up like Hillary Clinton eight years ago. The former Secretary of State also won her TV debates against Trump. But it was still not enough for an election victory.

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