FACT CHECK: Breaking down the candidates' claims in the first Trump vs. Harris matchup
Photo via TNP Staff
This Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump clashed in a highly anticipated debate hosted by ABC news, the first since sitting President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race. The candidates slung accusations and made attention-grabbing claims, even compelling moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir to fact-check in real time.
Moderators set the record straight
ABC’s moderators, Linsey Davis and David Muir, interrupted former President Trump on three occasions to correct misinformation.
Trump claimed, when questioned on abortion, that “they have abortion in the ninth month,” specifically naming Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz and the former governor of West Virginia as supporters of the alleged practice.
When the former President reached the end of his allotted response time, Davis identified Trump’s claim as false. “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born,” Davis said before moving on to the next question.
Trump’s claim that the former West Virginia governor was quoted supporting “abortion in the ninth month” is false as well. West Virginia’s previous governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, campaigned as an anti-abortion candidate.
Virginia’s previous governor, Ralph Northam, however, came under controversy in 2019, when social media users shared a video of Northam in an interview about abortion. According to the Associated Press, one X post read, “Trump just posted this video of former VA Governor Ralph Northam supporting ‘post-birth abortions’ aka infanticide. He’s going to go on offense on abortion this election and make Dems defend their extreme, wildly unpopular positions.”
These claims, which Trump seemed to reference in the Sept. 10 debate, are misleading. In the interview, Northam is asked by a reporter to comment on a state legislator Kathy Tran’s proposal to lift restrictions on third trimester abortions. Northam responds that “this is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers involved.”
“When we talk about third trimester abortions, it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable,” Northam said in the interview. “So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, the infant would be kept comfortable, and the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and family desired.”
Northam then argued that Tran’s proposal had been “blown out of proportion” and that “we want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions.”
Trump echoed claims by Senators Ted Cruz and JD Vance that Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating household pets.
In response, moderator David Muir identified these claims as false. “I just want to clarify, you bring up Springfield Ohio, and ABC news did reach out to the city manager there. He told us that there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Muir said.
While it’s unclear where these claims originated, the local Springfield News-Sun reported that in a post on a Springfield Facebook group, a user “claimed that their neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat and found it hanging from a branch at a Haitian neighbor’s home being carved up to be eaten.”
According to the Springfield News-Sun article, Springfield police said they were aware of the Facebook post’s circulation, but that the incident itself was “not something on our radar right now.”
On several occasions, Trump repeated his claims that violent criminals are entering the United States in large numbers and that, as a result, “all over the world crime is down” while crime in the U.S. is “through the roof.”
Muir interrupted the former President to identify his claim that crime rates in the U.S. are “through the roof” as false. “As you know, the FBI has said violent crime in this country is actually coming down,” Muir said.
According to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer violent crime rates have steadily decreased since 2020 from 398.5 per 100,000 people to 380.7 in 2022. The agency’s quarterly crime report, released in June of 2024, also refuted Trump’s claims, reporting decreases in crime across the board. The report cited a 15.2% decrease in violent crime, a 26.4% decrease in murder, a 17.8% decrease in robbery, a 12.8% decrease in aggravated assault and a 15.1% decrease in property crime.
The former President specifically referenced Venezuela, claiming that Venezuela’s crime rates have decreased “because they have taken their criminals off the streets and given them to [Kamala Harris], to put in our country.”
This is misleading. Venezuela has seen a drop in its crime rates in recent years. The Venezuelan non-governmental organization, Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia (OVV), described the trends in its 2023 annual report, citing the migration of criminals and criminal gangs as a factor at play. However, the vast majority of this migration of criminals has been to other Latin American countries, rather than to the United States.
“The decrease in ‘disorganized’ violence, which causes high lethality, has been reduced by the loss of opportunities for crime, with the consequent departure from the country of criminals and criminal gangs,” the OVV said.
Insight Crime, a think tank specialized in organized crime in Latin America, made similar claims. “Recession in Venezuela has led criminal gangs like the Tren de Aragua, Yeico Masacre, and The Meleán to infiltrate Venezuelan diasporas settled in other Latin American countries,” the think tank reported.
The candidates repeated familiar claims from previous debates and public appearances
Trump repeated a claim which he also made in his June 27 debate with President Biden, stating that Black Lives Matter protesters “took over a big percentage of Seattle.”
This is misleading. The claim is likely in reference to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), an area conceded by the Seattle Police Department to protestors in the summer of 2020. At the time, Trump described the movement in a tweet: “Anarchists just took over Seattle.”
While it is true that the protestors occupied a portion of Seattle, CHAZ was relatively small and short lived. The zone, which was established on June 8, 2020, was cleared by police after less than a month on July 1. It was described by Fox News on June 11 as a “six block zone”.
Trump once again referred to a tape in which Nancy Pelosi allegedly admits responsibility for Jan. 6.
Trump claimed in his June 27 debate against President Biden that Pelosi “said [Jan. 6] was her responsibility, not mine. She said that loud and clear.” The former President reraised the accusation at Tuesday’s debate: “Her daughter has a tape of her saying she is fully responsible for what happened.”
The claim that Nancy Pelosi, in a video recorded by her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, took responsibility for the security failings on Jan. 6 is true. In June of 2024, the House Oversight Committee issued a press release stating that its chairman, Barry Loudermilk, obtained the documentary footage.
The video shows Pelosi in a car on Jan. 6, amid a conversation with aides. When the issue of the National Guard was raised, Pelosi said, “I take responsibility for not having them there.”
Trump also repeated a claim, first raised in a February 2021 interview, that Nancy Pelosi rejected his request for 10,000 National Guard troops on Jan. 6. This is false — there is no evidence that then-President Trump made such a request.
According to a January 2021 Vanity Fair interview, acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller recalled Trump thinking aloud the night before the attack on the Capitol. The President allegedly told Miller, “You’re going to need 10,000 people.” No record of an actual order, however, has been provided.
Trump repeated warnings that “people [are] pouring in from prisons, jails, mental asylums.”
This is unproven. Existing Customs and Border Protection data on Southern border encounters do not include reporting on the mental health or criminal records of incoming immigrants.
Trump repeated his claim from the June 27 debate that Biden and Harris are trying to recruit undocumented immigrants as voters.
The former President’s claim that widespread non-citizen voting has and is taking place is false. A database of voter fraud cases compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, reported only 24 cases of non-citizen voting between 2003 and 2023.
The act of non-citizens voting or even registering to vote is prohibited by federal laws, along with state laws in all 50 states.
He said, she said
Throughout the debate, Harris and Trump fired extreme accusations back and forth and referenced each other’s past controversies.
Kamala Harris claimed that Trump “sold American chips to China to help them improve their military.”
The claim that Trump “sold American chips to China” is true.
The Trump administration signed a trade agreement with China, known as “Phase One,” in January of 2020. Under the agreement, China pledged to purchase $200 billion in U.S. exports over the course of 2020 and 2021, including semiconductor chips.
The claim that the possession of such chips allows China to improve its military, therefore posing a threat to National Security is unproven, but the risk is widely anticipated. In 2022, the U.S. imposed new restrictions on the export of advanced semiconductors with the intention of limiting China’s advancement of its military power.
Harris claimed that as President, Trump would “monitor miscarriages and pregnancies.”
This claim is misleading.
When asked in a TIME interview in May of 2024 whether he’d allow states to monitor womens’ pregnancies, the former President answered, “I think they might do that” and issued a familiar refrain: “the states are going to make those decisions.” Trump has not affirmatively advocated for or against such policies.
Harris accused Trump of threatening to “terminate the Constitution.”
This is true. In a December 2022 Truth Social post, the former President wrote, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” in reference to the 2020 election. Trump denied his comments two days later.
Harris attacked Trump’s affluent background, claiming that he was “handed” $400 million.
This is true. A special investigation by the New York Times in 2018 found that Trump “received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.”
Harris alleged that Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if the election results are “not to his liking.”
The former President accused Harris of taking his comments out of context, responding during the debate that he used “... a different term. It was a different term that was related to energy, because they destroyed our energy, that was where ‘bloodbath’ was from.”
Harris’s accusation is misleading — Trump’s controversial “bloodbath” comment at a March campaign rally in Vandalia, Ohio, referred to the election and its implication to the auto industry.
“We’re gonna put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line”, the former President said. And you’re not gonna be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole — that’ll be the least of it. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country, that’s gonna be the least of it”.
Harris claimed that Trump refused to rent properties to Black families as a real estate agent.
This is true — both Donald Trump and his father, Fred C. Trump, were named as defendants in a 1973 housing discrimination suit by the Department of Justice.
In a 1974 interview posted on the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act website, a former doorman alleged that supervisors instructed him to lie about the rent in order to deter prospective Black tenants.
Harris claimed that the Biden administration created 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while Trump “lost jobs.”
This is true — approximately. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 12,366,000 jobs in manufacturing in January 2017, when Trump took office, compared with 12,188,000 — 178,000 fewer jobs — at the end of his Presidency in January 2021.
Under the Biden administration, meanwhile, manufacturing jobs saw a net gain of 739,000 between January 2021 and August 2024.
Trump claimed that inflation under the Biden administration was “the highest inflation perhaps in the history of our country.”
This is false. While “year-over-year” inflation hit a 4-decade record high under the Biden administration of 9.1% in 2022, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates significantly higher rates of 18.10% in 1946, 12.30% in 1974, 13.30% in 1979, and 12.50% in 1980.
Trump claimed that Harris “raised money to get BLM rioters out of jail.”
This is true.
The former President’s accusation refers to a 2020 tweet, which read, “If you're able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”