Who won the US presidential debate?

By Anthony Zurcher, PHILADELPHIA United States 

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris met for the first time on the presidential debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.

They may have shaken hands, but they did not hit it off.

In a fiery 90 minutes, Harris frequently rattled the former president with personal attacks that threw him off message and raised the temperature of this highly-anticipated contest.

Her pointed digs on the size of his rally crowds, his conduct during the Capitol riot, and on the officials who served in his administration who have since become outspoken critics of his campaign repeatedly left Trump on the back foot.

The pattern for much of this debate was Harris goading her Republican rival into making extended defences of his past conduct and comments. He gladly obliged, raising his voice at times and shaking his head.

Americans should go to a Trump rally, Harris said during an early question about immigration, because they were illuminating. “People start leaving the rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” she said.

That barb clearly rattled the former president, as he then spent most of his answer – on a topic that should have been one his main area of strength – defending his rally sizes and belittling hers.

Trump went from there to an extended riff on a debunked report that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating their neighbour’s pets.

If debates are won and lost on which candidate best takes advantage of issues where they are strong - and defends or deflects on areas of weakness - Tuesday night tilted in favour of the vice-president.

That was clear early in the evening, as the topics covered were the economy and abortion. Public opinion surveys indicate many Americans are unhappy with how the Biden administration – of which Harris is a key member – has handled inflation and the economy.

But Harris turned the topic to Trump’s proposed across-the-board tariffs, which she labelled a “Trump sales tax”, and then brought up Project 2025, the controversial independent conservative plan for a future Republican administration.

As he has in the past, Trump distanced himself from the project and defended his tariff plan, noting that the Biden administration had kept many of the tariffs in his first presidency. They were valid points, but it kept him from hammering the vice-president on inflation and consumer prices.

On abortion, Trump defended his handling of the issue, saying that Americans across the spectrum wanted Roe v Wade abortion protections overturned by the Supreme Court – a statement that polling does not support. He struggled to make his position clear and his answer was at times rambling.

Harris, meanwhile, took the opportunity to make an impassioned, personal appeal to families who have faced severe pregnancy complications and have been unable to receive abortion care in states that have banned the procedure – states with “Trump abortion bans”, as she called them.

“It’s insulting to the women of America,” she concluded.

It was a carefully modulated message in an area in which she has a double-digit advantage over Trump.