Harris, Trump clash over economy, abortion, foreign policy in 1st U.S. presidential debate
Vice-President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump debated one another for the first time in the U.S. presidential election campaign on Tuesday, trading increasingly personal attacks over the economy, immigration, abortion and race.
Harris, 59, was on the offensive for much of the 90-minute debate as she looked to build on campaign momentum and define herself as a fresh candidate during her biggest night of the election so far. A visibly angry Trump, 78, responded by attacking his opponent as a dangerously “radical” candidate who would repeat the policies of President Joe Biden.
Harris painted herself as a principled former prosecutor and fresh candidate who could “chart a new way forward” for Americans. Trump said Harris would only bring more of the same and called her “the worst vice-president in the history of our country.”
The candidates shook hands before the debate, with Harris offering her hand and introducing herself by name, but did not acknowledge each other before leaving the stage.
The Democratic and Republican nominees went after each other’s character and ego more as the debate progressed.
Harris, a former prosecutor in California, referred to her Republican rival as a convicted felon while he called her a “radical” and a “Marxist” who would be “worse than Biden” in office. Harris criticized Trump’s political rallies, saying attendees leave early due to “exhaustion and boredom,” after which he brought up a debunked online conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating… they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said.
In the second half of the debate, the conversation shifted to race and politics. Asked why he had questioned Harris’s racial identity, Trump said, “I don’t care what she is” and said he had read his opponent was not actually Black. Harris said it was a “tragedy” to see Trump use race to divide the nation.
The candidates were also asked about the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Harris did not offer a clear plan to end the war in the Middle East, saying only that she would “work around the clock” to end the conflict. She instead reiterated her support for Israel, expressed horror at the death toll in Gaza and attacked Trump by saying military leaders believed him to be a disgrace.
Trump did not say how he would end the war, either, but said the conflict never would have started had he been in office. He said the same for the Russia-Ukraine file, calling Harris “weak.”
Harris responded by telling Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “eat [him] for lunch.”
‘The government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,’ Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said during the ABC News Presidential Debate on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
The candidates’ first exchange of the night focused on the economy and the cost of living, one of the biggest issues of the campaign. Responding first, Harris spoke about her middle-class upbringing in California and said she wanted to create an “opportunity economy,” while saying Trump would cut taxes for the richest Americans.
In his response, Trump defended his trade policy, noting the Biden administration left his tariffs in place. He criticized Harris over inflation, said his new tariffs on foreign goods would be “substantial” and insisted plans to cut taxes would jump-start the economy.
Another question was about abortion and the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that established Americans’ right to an abortion. Harris was forceful in her response, saying “the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
Trump said he did the nation “a great service” by appointing the three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Asked for a yes or no answer, Trump refused to rule out signing a national abortion ban.
Trump repeatedly pivoted to immigration — his top issue with his voter base.
Candidates’ surprise handshake
ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, who are moderating the debate, have periodically corrected falsehoods from Trump — the first live fact-checks of a candidate’s onstage comments in either of this year’s presidential debates. Muir corrected Trump’s claim about the pets in Ohio and Davis corrected Trump’s on the abortion after he made the false claim that some states allow a baby to be killed after birth.
Trump and Harris, who had previously never met, entered the debate at the same time from opposite sides of the stage. They shook hands, with Harris offering her hand first and introducing herself by name.
The candidates’ microphones are muted while the other is speaking and there is no in-studio audience.
During the debate, Harris was looking to introduce herself again to voters as a former prosecutor who understands the needs of the middle class and who could offer new hope to the nation and its fractured democracy.
For Trump, the event was his best chance to try to undercut Harris’s gains — which he tried to achieve by painting Harris as a candidate incapable of addressing voters’ concerns about crime, the economy and the border. He also expected to continue his campaign messaging that has framed Harris as a “failed,” “weak,” and “radical” incumbent from San Francisco who will bring Americans more of what they’ve seen from President Biden.
The stakes were high for both candidates, but experts agree it was a bigger night for Harris because she is the lesser known commodity. In her first presidential debate and longest unscripted event so far of the campaign, she faced an audience not only listening to her policies but watching how she would handle a bombastic opponent who often speaks with little regard for facts.
Trump, with six presidential debates under his belt, already has a loyal base whose feelings haven’t been swayed by two impeachments, several indictments and a felony conviction. Aides reportedly cautioned the former president to stick to talking points related to policy, rather than continuing a pattern of personal attacks on Harris and crass attacks against women.
The potential ramifications of a poor debate showing were made clear after Biden’s halting performance during the previous debate on June 27, which led to his dropping from the race weeks later to make way for Harris. The saga overshadowed Trump’s debate performance, during which he offered a litany of untruths and refused to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In an election that could again come down to tens of thousands of voters in just a few key states, even the tiniest shift in voter behaviour could change who wins the White House. Harris and Trump are effectively tied in the seven battleground states likely to decide the election, according to polling averages compiled by the New York Times.
There are 56 days until U.S. voters head to the polls on Nov. 5. A vice-presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 1.
Published at Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:58:04 +0000
Palestinians search for survivors after Israeli airstrikes in designated ‘safe zone’ in Gaza
Israeli strikes blasted a huge crater in a designated safe zone in southern Gaza before dawn on Tuesday, setting tents ablaze and burying Palestinian families under sand.
Palestinian officials said scores of people had been killed or injured in the strikes. The Gaza Health Ministry, which compiles casualty figures, said hospitals had so far received 19 bodies, and that about 60 people had been wounded. Other victims were still under sand or on roads that rescuers could not reach, it said.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of fatalities at more than 40. It said that at least 60 others were wounded in the strikes and many remained missing.
Israel disputed the Palestinian casualty figures.
Displaced Palestinians who were sheltering in the camp in Khan Younis were still digging people out from under the sand after the early morning attack on Tuesday. Rozan Al-Fahd, 12, said she broke her shoulder, and Omar Abdel Aal says there is no safe place left in Gaza.
The Israeli military said it had struck a command centre for Hamas fighters it said had infiltrated the designated “humanitarian” area in Al-Mawasi, a vast camp on sandy soil where the military has told hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to shelter since ordering them out of their homes.
Hamas, the Islamist group that controlled Gaza before the conflict, denied Israeli allegations that gunmen were present in the targeted area, and rejected accusations it exploited civilian areas for military purposes.
For residents of the camp who spoke to CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife, survival was first and foremost on their minds.
“To be honest, this was the scariest night that I lived through since the beginning of the war,” said Daoud Adnan, 32.
IDF expresses regret over civilian death
Separately, the Israeli military said Tuesday that a Turkish American activist who was killed in the West Bank last week was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by Israeli forces who were aiming at someone else. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was a 26-year-old activist from Seattle.
Turkish and Palestinian officials said last Friday that Israeli troops shot Eygi, who had been taking part in a protest against settlement expansion during a regular protest march by activists in Beita, a village near Nablus.
Israeli Defence Forces commanders had conducted an investigation into the incident, the military said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire, which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot,” the military said.
“The incident took place during a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tires and hurled rocks toward security forces at the Beita Junction.”
“The IDF expresses its deepest regret over the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi,” it said.
Israel has sent a request to Palestinian authorities to carry out an autopsy, it said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the killing was “unprovoked and unjustified” and showed the Israeli security forces needed to make some fundamental changes in their rules of engagement.
A surge in violent settler assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank has stirred anger among Western allies of Israel, including the U.S. and Canada, which have imposed sanctions on some Israelis involved in the hardline settler movement.
Eygi’s family in the U.S. released a statement saying “we are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional. The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling.”
‘I was under the sand’
In Gaza, residents and medics said the tent encampment near Khan Younis in the Al-Mawasi area, which Israel has designated a humanitarian safe zone for displaced Palestinians, was struck by at least four missiles. The camp is crowded with families ordered by the Israeli military to flee there from elsewhere in the territory.
Tents in the surrounding area had been incinerated, leaving only metal frames dusted with ghostly ash in a wasteland littered with debris. A car had been completely buried, only its top visible beneath the sand.
In the morning, mourners at a nearby hospital wailed over bodies heaped in white plastic bags or wrapped in bloodstained shrouds.
One of Raed Abu Muammar’s daughters had been killed. His wife and his other daughter had been buried but were pulled out alive. He carried the surviving baby girl.
“I was under the sand as well,” he told Reuters. “I got out and started looking for my daughters and my wife. I saw body parts of the neighbours in my tent — I did not know those were our neighbours’ parts until I saw my family in one piece.”
United Nations Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland strongly condemned the Israeli strike on a densely populated safe area, while also saying civilians should never be used as human shields.
“The principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack must be upheld at all times,” he said.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes at least once, and some have had to flee several times.
“We have no idea what to do,” Hajj Alaa Al-Shaer told El Saife, reporting for CBC News. “People are displaced … [the Israeli military] told us to go to the safe areas and they came to the safe areas.”
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 41,020 Palestinians and wounded 94,925 more, according to the local Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilian deaths in its reports. Israel attacked the enclave after Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people — including several Canadian citizens — and took another 250 hostage in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies.
Around 100 hostages are unaccounted for after repatriations, with the Israeli government believing according to its information that at least one-third of those people are no longer alive.
The two warring sides each blame the other for a failure so far to reach a ceasefire that would end the fighting and see the release of hostages.
Israeli strikes ripped a huge crater, set tents ablaze and buried Palestinian families alive under sand in the Al-Mawasi humanitarian safe zone in southern Gaza, Palestinian officials said. Scores of people were killed or injured, with at least 19 dead bodies taken to hospital and other victims feared lost or buried, the officials said.
Published at Tue, 10 Sep 2024 11:03:09 +0000
