The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was replete with heated exchanges and accusations of lying. Both candidates said many things that didn’t hold up to scrutiny, and at times moderators interjected with fact-checks. We’ll examine below some of the most prominent false claims Harris and Trump made in Tuesday’s debate.
Trump’s wild claims about Haitian immigrants
Of the many wild claims Trump made, perhaps the most outlandish was that the Haitian immigrants inhabiting Springfield, Ohio, were eating the residents’ pets. However, according to a city spokesperson and the police department, there are no credible reports to confirm such a claim. At this point, it would appear that Trump’s statement was a baseless conspiracy theory with no fact to it whatsoever.
Misleading abortion claims by Trump
Trump made several false statements about abortion policies saying Democrats support aborting babies up until ‘the moment of birth’, and even after birth, which the moderator David Muir was right to correct, “there is no state in this country where that, as president, is legal. Though there are late-term abortions, they are very rare and due to severe complications either endangering the life of the woman or the fetus.”
Harris’ claim about manufacturing jobs
Harris said Trump lost manufacturing jobs on his watch. That needs clarification. It’s true the United States lost nearly all of the gains in manufacturing jobs that occurred under Trump because of the economic effects of the pandemic, but before COVID-19, the nation had gained about 500,000 manufacturing jobs.
Trump distorts facts on lawsuits over the 2020 Election
Trump said the lawsuits he and his supporters filed over alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election were dismissed for lack of standing and not because of lack of evidence. That’s misleading. While some cases were dismissed for lack of standing, many others were decided on their merits with judges finding that what was alleged wasn’t supported by any evidence.
Harris’ false claim sbout U.S. Military in combat zones
Harris stated, “This very day, not one member of our military is in a combat zone,” which is highly inaccurate. Although declarations of war have not been technically declared in many years, U.S. military forces have been undertaking combat operations in a number of countries such as Iraq and Syria.
Trump’s misleading claim about Netanyahu’s speech
Trump said Harris did not go into Congress to hear a speech from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, because she was in a sorority party. That’s close to correct, Harris did miss Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, but was at a previously planned event and not at any sorority gathering.
Fact-checking the candidates’ responses
The debate between Harris and Trump was full of one false, misleading, or needed clarification after another. Moderators tried to set the record straight, but the avalanche was intense, and it was difficult to carve out time for all corrections on the spot.
That said, voters should be encouraged to listen to every word uttered by political candidates and individually verify each point from an independent source of their own. Services specializing in fact-checking, like PolitiFact, have a long history of fact-checking statements from public figures across the political spectrum.
