These wild Presidential Debate moments are going viral! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most buzzworthy moments from Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s first showdown.
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00:00In Minnesota, she went out, wait a minute, I'm talking now, if you don't mind, please.
00:06Does that sound familiar?
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most buzzworthy moments
00:12from Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's first showdown.
00:15The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.
00:19So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
00:23I'm not taking this from television, I'm taking it from the city manager.
00:25But the people on television say the dog was eaten by the people that went there.
00:30Number 10. The opening handshake.
00:33Kamala Harris, what's up? Good to meet you.
00:36Nice to see you. Have fun.
00:38It's a time-honored tradition.
00:40Before presidential candidates rhetorically tear each other to pieces
00:43in hopes of being the United States' next commander-in-chief,
00:46they engage in a friendly handshake.
00:48You know, in the spirit of democracy and decorum and stuff.
00:51So I was raised as a middle-class kid.
00:55And I am actually the only person on this stage
00:58who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America.
01:02However, when Donald Trump is involved, that hasn't necessarily been the case.
01:07Hillary Clinton dodged a Trump handshake prior to a debate in October 2016,
01:11nodding at him in a polite but bare-bones acknowledgment.
01:15In Harris and Trump's case, the former strode over to Trump
01:18and initiated the classic handshake.
01:20Trump reportedly wished the vice president, quote,
01:24However, what was to follow was anything but cordial.
01:28First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement.
01:31She knows that we're doing tariffs on other countries.
01:34Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years,
01:37pay us back for all that we've done for the world.
01:43They're in for $150 billion less because Biden and you
01:47don't have the courage to ask Europe like I did with NATO.
01:51It's been well reported that since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race,
01:56Trump and his team have been scrambling to readjust and recalibrate their campaign
02:00in a way that accounts for Kamala Harris' sudden candidacy.
02:03This was no more pronounced than in Philadelphia on this Tuesday evening.
02:07I want to get the war settled. I know Zelensky very well and I know Putin very well.
02:11I have a good relationship and they respect your president.
02:15Okay, they respect me. They don't respect Biden.
02:18How would you respect him? Why? For what reason?
02:21Early on in the debate, Harris and Trump came to verbal blows over the latter's
02:25repeated invocation of President Biden's perceived ousting as the Democratic nominee.
02:30At one point, Harris explicitly called out the Trump campaign's biggest struggle.
02:35Indeed, Trump is no longer running against Biden,
02:38stoking fears among conservatives that he may be an unfit opponent for Harris.
02:43Well, first of all, it's important to remind the former president,
02:46you're not running against Joe Biden, you're running against me.
02:50I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours
02:55is because he would just give it up.
03:00She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.
03:04If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.
03:09We're not sure what surprised us more, the fact that Kamala Harris is a proud gun owner
03:14or that it's been a matter of public record for a number of years now.
03:17When accused by her Republican rival of intending to confiscate individuals' guns,
03:22Harris pushed back, noting that Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, her running mate,
03:26is also a gun owner.
03:28I've made very clear my position on fracking,
03:30and then this business about taking everyone's guns away.
03:33Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away.
03:36So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.
03:39Helen Browning, writing for the New York Times, pointed out that,
03:42when she was running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary,
03:46Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said that she kept a gun for safety,
03:50defending her choice by highlighting her choice of occupation.
03:53We have to move on. President Trump.
03:56Let's turn to policy, please.
04:03Number one, I have nothing to do, as you know, and as she knows better than anyone,
04:06I have nothing to do with Project 2025.
04:09That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it.
04:12For the uninitiated, a quick primer.
04:15This is the brainchild of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation,
04:19operating under the Unitary Executive Theory.
04:22This posits that the president directly oversees the executive branch.
04:25Critics of Project 2025 describe the initiative as a threat to liberal democracy
04:30that aims to erode political accountability.
04:33While Trump has repeatedly denied knowledge of, affiliation with,
04:37and contributions to Project 2025,
04:39The Guardian's Rachel Leingang asserts that,
04:46and Kevin Roberts, Heritage's leader,
04:48has previously said he and Trump have talked several times.
04:51Vice President Harris suggested the former president's involvement in the initiative,
04:55which Trump once again strongly disavowed.
04:58This was a group of people that got together.
05:00They came up with some ideas, I guess some good, some bad,
05:03but it makes no difference. I have nothing to do.
05:05Everybody knows I'm an open book. Everybody knows what I'm going to do.
05:08Cut taxes very substantially and create a great economy like I did before.
05:16So my values have not changed and I'm going to discuss every one of the,
05:20at least every point that you've made.
05:22But in particular, let's talk about fracking because we're here in Pennsylvania.
05:24As noted by Sahil Kapoor of NBC News,
05:27one area that Kamala Harris has exhibited noticeable weakness is in,
05:36that she has since abandoned or backtracked from.
05:39These include,
05:46I will not ban fracking.
05:48I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States.
05:50And in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act,
05:55which opened new leases for fracking.
05:58Justin Morland, analyzing the debate for Time,
06:01noted that the September 10th debate represented yet another flip from Harris,
06:05who claimed,
06:14This was despite President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act,
06:17which was,
06:24My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy
06:30so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
06:33We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.
06:42Fracking? She's been against it for 12 years.
06:45Defund the police. She's been against that forever.
06:48She gave all that stuff up very wrongly, very horribly.
06:53In one of the debate's admittedly more amusing moments,
06:56Trump called back to a viral Harris line.
06:59The jab stemmed from her 2020 vice presidential debate
07:02with then-VP and 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence.
07:06While attempting to respond to a question,
07:08the current vice president was interrupted by the former vice president,
07:11to which she politely but firmly asked Pence to allow her to finish her statement.
07:16Smash cut to,
07:17Wait a minute, I'm talking now, if you don't mind, please.
07:21Does that sound familiar?
07:23Criticizing Harris' supposed inability to remain committed to certain issues,
07:27Trump brushed off an attempt by her to address said criticisms.
07:30We can only speculate as to why the debate's organizers made the choice
07:34to turn the candidates' microphones off when they weren't speaking.
07:37And everybody's laughing at it, okay? They're all laughing at it.
07:40She gave up at least 12 and probably 14 or 15 different policies.
07:45Like, she was big on defund the police.
07:51Vice President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you on the issue of abortion
07:55because you've changed your position so many times.
07:58Therefore, why should they trust you?
08:00Over the course of his campaigning for re-election,
08:03Trump has often faced heat from all sides as to his positions on abortion.
08:07As noted by NPR's Sarah McCammon,
08:09the 45th president, quote,
08:11repeatedly called for leaving abortion policy to the states.
08:14But anti-abortion rights activists, who make up a key part of the Republican base,
08:18have called on Republican elected officials to work toward national abortion restrictions.
08:23The reason I'm doing that vote is because the plan is, as you know the vote is,
08:27they have abortion in the ninth month.
08:30Trump went all out at the second debate,
08:33baselessly claiming that Democrats supported abortions even after a baby is born.
08:38Lindsay Davis, one of the debate's moderators,
08:40was quick to note that no such act is legal in any state.
08:44They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia,
08:47the previous governor of West Virginia,
08:49not the current governor who's doing an excellent job,
08:51but the governor before, he said the baby will be born
08:55and we will decide what to do with the baby.
08:57In other words, we'll execute the baby.
09:02Obamacare was lousy health care.
09:04Always was. It's not very good today.
09:06And what I said, that if we come up with something and we are working on things,
09:10we're going to do it and we're going to replace it.
09:12The Affordable Care Act, which Trump failed to shoot down in 2017,
09:16was a hot button issue during the September 10th debate.
09:19As the New York Times noted,
09:21while a poll of likely voters indicated that they needed to know more about Harris' policies,
09:25the Democratic presidential candidate skimped on such details.
09:29That said, Trump was far off the hook either.
09:32I inherited Obamacare because Democrats wouldn't change it.
09:36They wouldn't vote for it. They were unanimous.
09:38They wouldn't vote to change it.
09:40If they would have done that, we would have had a much better plan than Obamacare.
09:44While Trump had indeed put plans in motion to repeal that legislation,
09:48the late Senator John McCain ended the former president's efforts.
09:51In 2024, Trump falsely declared that he had single-handedly saved the Affordable Care Act,
09:57and when asked if he had a plan to replace it,
09:59vaguely replied that he had, quote,
10:03So, just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?
10:05I have concepts of a plan. I'm not president right now.
10:09But if we come up with something,
10:12I would only change it if we come up with something that's better and less expensive.
10:21She went out in Minnesota and wanted to let criminals
10:26that killed people, that burned down Minneapolis,
10:29she went out and raised money to get them out of jail.
10:31When Harris responded to the aforementioned question on fracking,
10:35she declared that her values remained the same,
10:37despite her flip-flopping on the issue being a matter of record.
10:40Smelling blood in the water, Trump pounced,
10:43declaring that, quote,
10:49This is a radical left liberal that would do this.
10:51Health policy journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg linked Trump's bizarre accusations
10:55to an ACLU questionnaire that Harris filled out when running for president in 2019.
11:00Stolberg notes that at the time, quote,
11:11This is a radical left liberal that would do this.
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11:30Number one, dogs and cats.
11:45This is definitely a statement that requires a little bit of context.
11:49In the days immediately leading up to Harrison Trump's face-off,
11:52Senator J.D. Vance posted on X, formerly known as Twitter,
11:56that he had, quote,
12:04I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio,
12:07and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.
12:10He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims
12:13of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.
12:18And that, quote,
12:19Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten
12:22by people who shouldn't be in this country.
12:24Police officers, the city manager and even the mayor of Springfield
12:28have all reported that they are unaware of any credible evidence of this having taken place.
12:33People on television say my dog was taken and used for food.
12:37So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
12:41I'm not taking this from television.
12:42But the people on television say my dog was eaten by the people that went there.
12:47Which moment from the second U.S. presidential debate shocked you the most?
12:50Be sure to let us know in the comments.
12:52And I'm going to actually do something really unusual,
12:54and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies
12:58because it's a really interesting thing to watch.
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