Former president Donald Trump was fact-checked in real-time on multiple occasions by moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
The ABC anchors never disputed any of Vice President Kamala Harris’ claims.
Guns
On gun control, the vice president claimed, “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away” and pointed out that both she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, are gun owners.
In late 2019, though, Harris publicly claimed, “We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory gun buyback program.” Neither moderator probed deeper into her sudden policy shift on the position.
As a senator in 2019, Harris signed onto a bill that would have banned so-called “assault weapons,” a category that encompasses the most commonly owned rifle in America, the AR-15. And at a rally just a month ago, Harris vowed to sign into law a ban on such weapons if she’s elected in November.
The moderators failed to raise Harris’s record in the Senate and the positions she’s taken on the stump this cycle.
Abortion
The moderators also passed up an opportunity to drill down on what, if any, abortion restrictions Harris supports, allowing her to simply deny that abortions were ever performed in the final trimester.
“I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade,” said Harris when asked if she would support any restrictions on abortion.
Although Trump remained uncommitted on vetoing a prospective national abortion ban, Harris refused to oppose abortion in “the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month” when challenged directly by the former president, simply replying, “C’mon.”
“Under Roe v. Wade, you could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month,” Trump said. Harris interrupted him: “That’s not true.”
Roe v. Wade requires a “health exception” up until the point of birth. But the definition of “health” under that framework extends to “mental health, financial concerns, and familial circumstances,” according to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.
In a 2014 study, the institute concluded that “the United States is one of just seven nations in the world – including North Korea and the People’s Republic of China – to allow elective abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.” This finding was later confirmed by The Washington Post.
The moderators failed to challenge Harris on her lack of clarity surrounding the procedure’s limits.
In May 2023, Doctor Warren Hern, a Colorado abortionist, revealed to The Atlantic that his state had “no gestational limits on the procedure” and said that he had performed abortions on women who were 30 weeks, or more than seven moths, pregnant. He also admitted to performing multiple “sex selection” abortions, even terminating a baby girl based on her sex. Hern estimated that “at least half, and sometimes more, of the women who come to the clinic” do not suffer from devastating medical diagnoses.
While Trump certainly exaggerated in accusing Democrats of “executing” babies after birth, he did cite then-Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s support for a bill that would have expanded abortion access in the final trimester in Virginia. The bill’s sponsor, Kathy Tran, explained that the legislation would have legalized aborting a baby while the mother is in labor.
“I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable,” Northam said in 2019 when asked whether he supported the bill. “The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Davis bluntly responded to Trump’s mention of the former governor by saying, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after its born,” before turning back to Vice President Harris for additional comment.
Harris notably voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, designed to safeguard the health of children who survived failed abortion attempts.
Foreign Policy
In foreign policy, Harris had much to say. “…as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”
The botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 13 American soldiers and is seen by many as the administration’s most severe foreign policy blunder. The U.S. still currently houses around 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq as the U.S. Navy routinely clashes with the Houthis throughout the Red Sea. In January, three American service members were killed on a military base in Jordan.
Policing
Trump also noted that Harris was “big on Defund The Police,” to which the vice president responded with an aggressive head shake and a muted rebuttal of “not true.”
“This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” Harris said in 2020. This statement came weeks after the killing of George Floyd in her running mate Tim Walz’s home state of Minnesota and subsequent nationwide civil unrest.
“We have to reimagine public safety in America…for too long, people have confused achieving public safety with putting more cops on the street,” she said.
Harris expressed similar ideas around the same time during an interview on The View.
“In many cities in America, over one third of their city budget goes to police. So, we have to have this conversation. What are we doing? What about the money going to social services?” she asked. “What about the money going to helping people with job training? What about helping with the mental health issues that communities are being plagued with for which we’re putting no resources?”
On an ACLU questionnaire she filled out while running for president in 2019, Harris expressed support for making major cuts to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget and endorsed an open-ended pledge to end immigration detention entirely.
“Our immigrant detention system is out of control, and I believe we must end the unfair incarceration of thousands of individuals, families and children,” Harris wrote. “I was one of the first Senators after President Trump was elected to advocate for a decrease in funding to ICE.”
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