Vice President Kamala Harris shook the hand of former President Donald Trump at the beginning of their first presidential debate Sept. 10 in Philadelphia, but the friendly vibes soon faded as Trump and Harris sparred over topics including abortion and immigration.
The fiery debate was hosted by ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who sometimes interjected with fact-checks in response to the candidates’ answers.
Harris often directly addressed Trump while answering moderators’ questions, while Trump stared straight ahead. Harris attacked Trump’s criminal convictions in New York and other indictments after he spoke about crime during the Biden administration. Trump said that Biden secretly hated Harris.
Moments after the debate ended, singer Taylor Swift said on Instagram that she would be voting for Harris “because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
PolitiFact has fact-checked Harris 55 times since 2012 and Trump 1,050 times since 2011.
We drew on that deep archive to check the accuracy of the candidates’ statements.
PolitiFact fact-checks statements of people in power, regardless of political party. This is how we choose claims to check.
Here’s how the candidates’ answers stood up to the facts.
False claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio
Trump: “In Springfield (Ohio), they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
False.
A city spokesperson told PolitiFact that claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing neighbors’ pets to eat are unfounded.
A Springfield spokesperson said the city has received no such reports, and Springfield police told a local news outlet the department has received no reports of pets being stolen and eaten.
As many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have come to Springfield. Since 2023, some Haitians have come to the U.S. through the Department of Homeland Security’s humanitarian parole program that lets people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela and their immediate family members request to come to the United States legally. They can be paroled into the U.S. for up to two years.
Immigrants ‘taking over’ buildings in Aurora, Colorado
Trump: “You look at Aurora in Colorado. (Immigrants) are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings, they’re going in violently, these are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they’re destroying our country.”
Aurora, Colorado, officials dispute this narrative.
They report that Venezuelan gangs are not taking over apartment complexes and forcing residents to pay them rent.
Residents of The Edge at Lowry apartments said the company that owns the building, CBZ Management, caused the poor living conditions in the apartments, not Venezuelan gang members.
Four members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, were arrested in Aurora in connection with a shooting that occurred at a different apartment building owned by CBZ Management.
Harris says Trump will impose a sales tax
Harris: “Economists have said that the 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.”
Trump has repeatedly proposed wide-ranging tariffs on foreign goods, including an across-the-board tariff of 10% to 20% and a 60% levy on goods from China. Although tariffs are imposed separately from the tax system, consumers would feel their impact much the same way as taxes.
However, the specific dollar impact on consumers varies. Two estimates we found generally support Harris’ $4,000 figure; two show a smaller, though still significant, impact.
Trump’s wrong on abortion claims
Trump: “But the governor before, he said, ‘The baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby.’”
Trump said West Virginia. He meant Virginia.
Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat and a physician, never said he would sanction the execution of newborns. What he did say during a 2019 radio interview is that in rare, late-pregnancy cases when fetuses are nonviable, doctors deliver the baby, keep it comfortable, resuscitate it if the family wishes, and then have a “discussion” with the mother.
The issue is that Northam declined to say what that discussion would entail. Trump puts words in the then-governor’s mouth, saying doctors would urge the mother to let them forcibly kill the newborn, which is a felony in Virginia (and all other U.S. states) punishable by a long prison sentence or death.
Trump: “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted (abortion) to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.”
The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision inspired legions of supporters and opponents. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it in 2022, numerous legal scholars wrote briefs urging the court to uphold the ruling.
Some legal scholars who favor abortion rights have criticized the 1973 ruling’s legal underpinnings, saying that different constitutional arguments, based on equal protection, would have provided a stronger case. But legal experts, including some who held this view, said those scholars would not have advocated for overturning Roe on this basis.
Jobs under Biden-Harris are not ‘a fraud’
Trump: “It was a fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”
The federal agency that calculates how many people are working handed Democrats an unwelcome present during their August national convention in Chicago: a downward adjustment of the past year’s employment gains by 818,000 jobs.
But Trump claimed the Biden-Harris administration was cooking the books, calling it “fraud” during the debate. However, economists across the ideological spectrum reject Trump’s claim. The process is an annual effort to fine-tune initial data that the agency acknowledges is imperfect.
21 million immigrants did not come into the US
Trump: “Millions and millions of people … are pouring into our country monthly. Where it’s, I believe 21 million people.”
False.
During Biden’s administration, immigration officials have encountered immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border around 10 million times. When accounting for “got aways” — people who aren’t stopped by border officials — the number rises to about 11.6 million.
But encounters aren’t the same as admissions. Encounters represent events, so one person who tries to cross the border twice counts as two encounters. Also, not everyone encountered is let into the country. The Department of Homeland Security estimates about 4 million encounters have led to expulsions or removals.
During Biden’s administration, about 3.8 million people have been released into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings, Department of Homeland Security data shows.
Trump misleads about military equipment in Afghanistan
Trump: The U.S. “left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind” in Afghanistan
The figure is far lower than Trump stated.
When the Taliban toppled Afghanistan’s civilian government in 2021, it inherited military hardware the U.S. gave to the government.
An independent inspector general report told Congress that about $7 billion of U.S.-funded equipment remained in Afghanistan and in the Taliban’s hands. According to the report, “the U.S. military removed or destroyed nearly all major equipment used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan throughout the drawdown period in 2021.”
Harris’ claim about employment under Trump
Harris: “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.”
False.
The unemployment rate spiked to a post-Great Depression record of 14.8% in April 2020, as the pandemic escalated. Trump was in office then. But he didn’t “leave” Biden or Harris with a post-Depression record unemployment rate. By December 2020, the unemployment rate had fallen back to 6.4%, which was high for recent history but well below numerous spikes during recessions.
Trump’s ridiculous claim about Venezuela and criminals
Trump: “Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down. You know why? Because they’ve taken their criminals off the street, and they’ve given them to (Harris) to put into our country.”
Pants on Fire!
There is no evidence that countries are emptying their prisons — or mental institutions, as he also claimed at the debate — and sending people to illegally migrate to the U.S.
Immigration officials arrested about 103,700 noncitizens with criminal convictions (whether in the U.S. or abroad) from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal data shows. That accounts for people stopped at and between ports of entry. Not everyone was let in.
The term “noncitizens” includes people who may have had legal immigration status in the U.S. but were not U.S. citizens. The data reflects the people that the federal government knows about, but it’s inexhaustive.
Although Venezuelan government data is unreliable, some data from independent organizations shows that violent deaths have recently decreased. From 2022 to 2023, violent deaths dropped by 25%, according to the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. Criminologists attribute this decline to Venezuela’s poor economy and the government’s extrajudicial killings, not the government emptying its prisons and sending criminals to the United States.
Trump misleads on Biden-Harris inflation
Trump: Under Biden and Harris, the U.S. had “the worst inflation we’ve ever had.”
False.
The highest year-over-year inflation rate on Biden’s watch was around 9% in summer 2022. That was the highest in about 40 years.
The highest sustained, year-over-year U.S. inflation rates were recorded in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the price increase ranged from 12% to 15%. For one year — 1946, after the U.S. won World War II — the overall year-over-year inflation rate exceeded 18%.
Also, the year-over-year inflation rate has fallen since its 2022 peak under Biden. It was at 2.9% in July 2024, the most recent month available.
Trump’s claims about 2020 election results
Trump: Referring to the lawsuits he and allies filed alleging irregularities in the 2020 presidential election that he lost, “No judge looked at it. … They said we didn’t have standing. A technicality.”
False.
The lawsuits failed for different reasons. Some were dismissed for lacking standing, which means the judge ruled that the plaintiff didn’t have a stake. Others had errors in the filings. But in many cases, judges determined that the allegations lacked proof.
A Campaign Legal Center analysis found at least 10 cases that were decided on the merits.
Did Harris meet with Netanyahu?
Trump: Harris “wouldn’t even meet with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech. She refused to be there ’cause she was at a sorority party of hers.”
Half True.
Harris did miss the July 24 speech Netanyahu made to a joint session of Congress. Instead, she made a previously scheduled keynote speech to the Zeta Phi Beta sorority. (Harris is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.)
Harris met with Netanyahu the following day.
PolitiFact executive director Aaron Sharockman, chief correspondent Louis Jacobson, senior correspondent Amy Sherman, staff writers Grace Abels, Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Maria Briceño, Jeff Cercone, Madison Czopek, Marta Campabadal Graus, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Loreben Tuquero, Maria Ramirez Uribe, researcher Caryn Baird, KFF Health News senior editor Stephanie Stapleton and KFF Health News senior correspondent Stephanie Armour contributed to this story.
Our debate fact checks rely on both new and previously reported work. We link to past work whenever possible. In some cases, a fact-check rating may be different tonight than in past versions. In those cases, either details of what the candidate said, or how the candidate said it, differed enough that we evaluated it anew.
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