By Kate Scanlon
(OSV News) — Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris met Sept. 10 for their first — and possibly only — debate of the 2024 presidential cycle.
The nearly two-hour debate, in which both candidates had their microphones muted when it was not their turn to speak, began with a handshake as Harris and Trump met in person for the first time.
Harris cast a second Trump term as “the same old, tired rhetoric,” and going back instead of moving forward. Trump cast Harris as part of a Biden administration he called a failure.
Personal attacks did feature in the debate. Harris mocked Trump’s rallies as “boring,” leading Trump to defend them. Trump accused Harris of shifting policy views, quipping, “I was going to send her a MAGA hat.”
The debate also included topics of concern to Catholic voters, including abortion, family policy, immigration and climate change.
Asked about his apparent shift on abortion, Trump riposted, “The Democrats are radical in that.”
“Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine,” he said, referring to Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“This is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years, every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened,” Trump said.
Harris, who has made expanding access to abortion a key part of her campaign, said she would sign legislation to “put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade,” and argued Trump would instead sign a national abortion ban.
Trump called that argument “a lie,” and accused Harris of supporting abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Harris sidestepped the question of whether she would allow abortion “in the eighth month, ninth month, seventh month,” and asked about whether Trump would veto an abortion ban.
“I’m not signing a ban, and there’s no reason to sign a ban, because we’ve gotten what everybody wanted — Democrats, Republicans and everybody else — and every legal scholar wanted it to be brought back into the states, and the states are voting,” Trump said.
The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death, opposing direct abortion as an act of violence that takes the life of the unborn child.
The pair also sparred over in vitro fertilization. Trump recently pledged his administration would implement a mandate requiring the government or insurance companies to pay for IVF treatments, a form of artificial reproduction opposed by the Catholic Church on the grounds that it typically involves the destruction of human embryos in the process of achieving a live birth, among other concerns.
“I have been a leader on IVF,” Trump said. Harris also supports IVF, but has not advocated a government mandate to cover the procedure.
Trump also repeated his call for mass deportations, arguing those without legal status “destroyed the fabric of our country.” He did not give specifics on how he would carry such a program out.
Trump’s call for mass deportations runs contrary to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes” condemning “deportation” among other actions, such as abortion, that “poison human society,” a teaching St. John Paul II affirmed in two encyclicals on moral truth and the life issues.
Trump also repeated viral, unverified claims — refuted by local authorities — about Haitian migrants, a largely Catholic population, living in the city of Springfield, Ohio, that accuses them of abducting and “eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Harris touted her support for a bipartisan border security bill that she said “would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help those folks who are working there right now over time trying to do their job.” She blamed Trump for the bill’s demise.
Trump pivoted back to illegal border crossings when asked if he regretted any of his statements or actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when about 2,000 supporters of then-President Trump attempted to block Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, asking when those without legal status would be prosecuted instead.
“Those people are killing many people, unlike J6,” Trump said.
Trump also repeated his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But Harris replied that Trump “was fired by 81 million people,” a reference to Biden’s higher vote count in 2020.
“We cannot afford to have a President of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election,” Harris said.
Harris also touted her plans to create what she called “an opportunity economy,” including giving startup businesses a $50,000 tax deduction and granting a $6,000 child tax credit to parents of newborns.
“We know that young families need support to raise their children, and I intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6,000 which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time, so that those young families can afford to buy a crib, buy car seats for their children,” she said.
Trump, however, hit Harris on the economy, blaming the Biden administration for higher grocery prices.
“We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. Probably the worst in our nation’s history,” he said.
In response to a question on health care, Trump said he would only change the Affordable Care Act “if we come up with something better and less expensive.”
Trump also alleged Harris had a plan to confiscate guns, which she disputed as false, saying she was a gun owner.
Harris also hit Trump for previous comments claiming that climate change is a hoax.
“What we know is that it is very real,” she said, arguing one could ask “anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or (their rate is) is being jacked up.”
Trump, in turn, said he supported solar power, but said solar farms out in the desert were bad for the environment. He also claimed Harris would ban fracking. Harris denied that repeatedly, pointing to her “tie-breaking vote” in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, “which opened new leases for fracking.”
A vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, and Gov. Tim Walz is scheduled for Oct 1.
Election day is Nov. 5.