Top 10 Moments From the Second US Presidential Debate of 2024

It’s a time-honored tradition: before presidential candidates rhetorically tear each other to pieces in hopes of being the United States’ next commander-in-chief, they engage in a friendly handshake — you know, in the spirit of democracy and decorum, and stuff. Whenever Trump is involved, though, general logic tends to go out the window. Hillary Clinton dodged a Trump handshake prior to a debate in October 2016, nodding at him in a polite but bare-bones acknowledgment. In Harris and Trump’s case, the former strode over to Trump and initiated the classic handshake. Trump reportedly wished the vice president “good luck” in response. However, what was to follow was anything but cordial.

It’s been well-reported that, since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Trump and his team have been scrambling to readjust and recalibrate their campaign in a way that accounts for Kamala Harris’ sudden candidacy. This was no more pronounced than in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening. Early on in the debate, Harris and Trump came to verbal blows over the latter’s repeated invocation of President Biden’s perceived ousting as the Democratic nominee. At one point, Harris explicitly called out the Trump campaign’s biggest struggle. Indeed, Trump is no longer running against Biden, stoking fears among conservatives that he may be an unfit opponent for Harris.

We’re not sure what surprised us more: the fact that Kamala Harris is a proud gun owner, or that it’s been a matter of public record for a number of years now. When accused by her Republican rival of intending to confiscate individuals’ guns, Harris pushed back, noting that Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, her running mate, is also a gun owner. Kellen Browning, writing for the New York Times, pointed out that, “[w]hen she was running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary, Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said that she kept a gun for safety,” defending her choice by highlighting her choice of occupation.

For the uninitiated, a quick primer: this is the brainchild of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, operating under the unitary executive theory — this posits that the president directly oversees the executive branch. Critics of Project 2025 describe the initiative as a threat to liberal democracy that aims to erode political accountability. While Trump has repeatedly denied knowledge of, affiliation with, and contributions to Project 2025, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang asserts that “Trump well knows the Heritage Foundation and has spoken at their events, and [Kevin] Roberts, Heritage’s leader, has previously said he and Trump have talked several times.” Vice President Harris suggested the former president’s involvement in the initiative, which Trump once again strongly disavowed.

As noted by Sahil Kapur of NBC News, one area that Kamala Harris has exhibited noticeable weakness in is “the left-wing positions she took as a Democratic presidential primary candidate in 2020 that she has since abandoned or backtracked from” — these include “banning fracking, mandating buybacks of semiautomatic firearms and decriminalizing border crossings.” Justin Worland, analyzing the debate for TIME, noted that the September 10th debate represented yet another flip from Harris, who claimed “that she now supports fracking, a technology used to drill oil and gas wells, after asserting in 2019 that she favored a ban of it.” This was despite President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was “estimated to provide $370 billion in support for emissions reducing programs.”

In one of the debate’s admittedly more amusing moments, Trump called back to a viral Harris line. The jab stemmed from her 2020 vice-presidential debate with then-VP and 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence. While attempting to respond to a question, the current vice president was interrupted by the former vice president, to which she politely but firmly asked Pence to allow her to finish her statement. Smash cut to: Sep 10, 2024. Criticizing Harris’ supposed inability to remain committed to certain issues, Trump brushed off an attempt by her to address said criticisms. We can only speculate as to why the debate’s organizers made the choice to turn the candidates’ microphones off when they weren’t speaking.

Over the course of his campaigning for reelection, Trump has often faced heat from all sides as to his positions on abortion. As noted by NPR’s Sarah McCammon, the 45th president “repeatedly called for leaving abortion policy to the states, but anti-abortion rights activists — who make up a key part of the Republican base — have called on Republican elected officials to work toward national abortion restrictions.” Trump went all-out at the second debate, baselessly claiming that Democrats supported abortions even after a baby is born. Linsey Davis, one of the debate’s moderators, was quick to note that no such act is legal in any state.

The Affordable Care Act, which Trump failed to shoot down in 2017, was a hot-button issue during the September 10th debate. As the New York Times noted, while a poll of likely voters indicated that they needed to know more about Harris’ policies, the Democratic presidential candidate was skimped on such details. That said, Trump was far from off the hook either. While Trump had indeed put plans in motion to repeal that legislation, the late senator John McCain ended the former president’s efforts. In 2024, Trump falsely declared that he had single-handedly saved the Affordable Care Act, and when asked if he had a plan to replace it, vaguely replied that he had “concepts of a plan.”

When Harris responded to the aforementioned question on fracking, she declared that her values remained the same, despite her flip-flopping on the issue being a matter of record. Smelling blood in the water, Trump pounced, declaring that “She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this.” Health policy journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg linked Trump’s bizarre accusation to an ACLU questionnaire that Harris filled out when running for president in 2019. Stolberg notes that, at the time, “she supported using taxpayer funds to give access to gender-affirming care to transgender and nonbinary people, including those in immigration detention and prison.”

This is definitely a statement that requires a little bit of context. In the days immediately leading up to Harris and Trump’s face-off, Sen. JD Vance posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) that he had “raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” and that “[r]eports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” Police officers, the city manager, and even the mayor of Springfield have all reported that they are unaware of any credible evidence of this having taken place.

Which moment from the second U.S. presidential debate shocked you the most? Be sure to let us know in the comments!