Former president Donald Trump and vice president Kamala Harris brawled, often in personal terms, in their first presidential debate on Tuesday, with Trump branding Harris a "Marxist" and Harris saying world leaders know they can manipulate Trump with flattery.
With polls indicating an even match between Trump and Harris across the six or seven battleground states that will determine the election outcome, Tuesday's debate — likely the only one they will have — presented a breakout opportunity for the two candidates.
While President Joe Biden was unable to stand up to Trump's attacks in their match-up in June — in a debate performance that eventually led to his withdrawing from the race — Harris, a former prosecutor, frequently had Trump on the defensive, casting her 78-year-old opponent as confused and extreme.
The debate, held in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, started off on a calm note as Harris walked up to Trump to introduce herself — the two politicians were meeting face to face for the first time. Harris touted her plan to extend child tax credits and provide tax deductions for small businesses.
Harris cast Trump's plan to impose tariffs of up to 20pc on all imported goods as essentially a national sales tax that would hurt the middle class. Trump argued that his plan would not represent a tax on US consumers because "other countries are going to finally pay us back for all that we've done".
But the debate quickly deteriorated, as Trump called Harris a "Marxist", suggested that immigrants moving to the US hunt dogs and cats for personal consumption and asserted that Harris would ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on her first day in office.
"I have not banned fracking as vice president of the US, and in fact, I was the tie breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which opened new leases for fracking," Harris said. When Harris was running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, she said there was "no question I'm in favor of banning fracking", only to abandon that position when running this year.
The IRA, the landmark climate legislation that Congress approved in 2022, included a compromise provision demanded by the Republican lawmakers that set aside more areas for leasing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump appeared to give the Democratic administration credit for keeping the US oil industry intact. "They started getting rid of it, and the prices were going up the roof. They immediately let these guys go where they were." But he contended that US oil output would have been "four-five times" than it is now if he had been re-elected in 2020.
US crude output fell sharply in Trump's last year in office as the Covid-19 pandemic devastated demand. Oil output reached a record high of 12.9mn b/d last year and is projected to grow again this year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
"If she won the election, the day after that election, they'll go back to destroying our country, and oil will be dead," Trump said. "Fossil fuel will be dead. We'll go back to windmills, and we'll go back to solar."
Foreign policy issues presented another area of personal attacks for the candidates.
"World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump," Harris said. Trump countered by citing praise for his leadership from Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban, a controversial leader who frequently clashes with EU leaders over their support for Ukraine.
Trump repeatedly refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia, merely saying that the war should end. And he argued it would not have started if he had been in office.
"If Donald Trump were president, [Russian president Vladimir] Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now," Harris said. "You adore strongmen instead of caring about democracy."
Trump frequently attacked Biden during the debate, prompting Harris to say: "It's important to remind the former president, you're not running against Joe Biden, you're running against me."
An average of national polls aggregated by the Washington Post shows Harris with a 2 percentage point lead over Trump this week — a result that pollsters interpret as a statistical dead heat, as the winner is determined in the Electoral College, not in the nationwide voting.
It will take some time for the outcome of Tuesday's debate to become apparent in the polls. Harris and Trump have not agreed to hold another debate. Trump's vice presidential pick, Ohio senator JD Vance and Harris' running partner, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, are scheduled to hold a televised debate on 1 October.
