At the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and a Democratic candidate to succeed him at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the moderators seemed eager to cast doubt on some of the Republican candidate's claims.
But ABC News' David Muir and Lindsey Davis refrained from making a similar statement when Kamala Harris rolled out a number of false claims, even recycling fabrications previously debunked by liberal fact-checking organizations.
Here are five of the most egregious lies Harris made during the debate, and the truth behind them.
The Hoax of “Respectable People”
Harris's claim: “Think back to Charlottesville, where there were mobs with tiki torches and spewing anti-Semitic hatred. What did the president say at the time? 'There were fine people on both sides.'”
reality: Harris has similarly adopted her boss' go-to lines, as reported by Snopes on Sunday when she copied and pasted Biden's policy agenda. Excluded will be treated as “false”.
The so-called “Unite the Right” rally took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Protesters and counterprotesters included leftists, critics of the removal of Confederate statues, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists.
A few days later, President Trump
Press ConferenceSo the reporter asked about the neo-Nazis who were at the protest. Trump said“As we said Saturday, we condemn in the strongest terms this vicious act of hatred, bigotry and violence. There is no place for this in America.”
After President Trump noted that there were violent agitators on both sides of the protests and that some people at the rally were simply protesting iconoclasm, the reporter said, “Neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville.”
Trump responded:
I didn't think they were neo-Nazis, and there were some very bad people in that group, but there were some very fine people on both sides. And there was a group of people in that group, and I saw the same pictures as you did. And there were people in that group who were there to protest the removal of a statue that was very important to them, and the renaming of Robert E. Lee Park.
In its latest fact check, Snopes confirmed that Trump was referring to protesters and dissidents, and that he clarified that he was “not talking about neo-Nazis or white supremacists, but that he calls them 'totally reprehensible.'”
Project 2025
Harris's claim“What you are going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called 'Project 2025' that the former president intends to implement if re-elected.”
reality: The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is a “candidate-agnostic” policy document developed by a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups long before Trump became the Republican presidential nominee and released ahead of the April 2023 primary elections.
Trump
Denied it“Some of the things they're saying are just ridiculous and disgusting,” he said.
Harris, her campaign, various Democratic activists and their allies in the liberal media have been pushing this false claim for weeks.
The Associated Press
Echoing In response to Democrats suggesting this was a “Republican blueprint for a second term in the Trump administration,” Project 2025 demanded a correction and apology, and stressed that “Project 2025 does not represent any candidate or campaign.”
Nationwide abortion ban
Harris's claim: “Understand, if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will sign a nationwide abortion ban. Understand, his Project 2025 will have a national abortion monitoring system that will monitor pregnancies and miscarriages.”
reality: Ms Harris has made good use of the threat in recent weeks, but it has no basis in reality: Mr Trump has repeatedly said states should pass their own abortion laws.
This comes just weeks after Trump called reports that he personally supports banning abortions at 16 weeks “fake news.”
Suggested “You've heard it for years, and all the legal scholars on both sides agree: This is a state issue. This is not a federal issue, this is a state issue,” he told WABC-FM's “Sid & Friends in the Morning” in March.
In April he
said Truth Social states, “My view is that now abortion, which everyone wants, is permitted from a legal perspective, and it's up to the states to decide, either by vote or by legislation, or both. And what they decide must become the law of the land, or in this case, the law of the state.”
CNN
Reported That same month, when asked in Atlanta whether he would ratify an abortion ban if Congress passed it, President Trump responded firmly, “No.”
While President Trump did not say so explicitly on Tuesday, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio)
said Last month, NBC News' “Meet the Press” reported that President Trump would veto a nationwide abortion ban.
Both
Republican Policies for 2024 Trump too Agenda Item 47 Refers to a nationwide abortion ban.
The “Bloody Mayhem” Hoax
Harris's claim“Candidate Donald Trump has said in this election that if the election and the outcome are not to his liking, there will be bloodshed.”
realityOn March 16, President Trump used the word “catastrophe” to describe the economic impact of the continued overseas relocation of jobs and auto manufacturing plants under the Biden-Harris administration.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping's speech
speech Speaking at Dayton International Airport in Ohio, President Trump suggested the U.S. would not buy cars made in Chinese manufacturing plants in Mexico without U.S. labor.
Trump added:
We're going to put a 100% tariff on every car that comes through the border. And if I'm elected, those guys won't be able to sell their cars. Now, if I don't win, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole country. That's just a small part of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That's just a small part of it. But they're not going to sell their cars.
Mythologization January 6
claim: “[On Jan. 6]140 police officers were injured, some of them killed.”
“Trump has left us with the worst attack on democracy since the Civil War.”
reality: The theory that a police officer was killed in the January 6th attack on the Capitol is Democratic Party Members This is something that media commentators have been claiming for years, but it's wrong.
No police officers were killed. While on duty during the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who Democrats have long said was killed during or as a result of the riot, returned to headquarters in “good condition” after the incident but suffered two strokes the next day. Reportedly Natural death.
April 19, 2021, USCP approved The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the District of Columbia ruled that Sicknick “died of natural causes.”
Four police officers rushed to the scene. Committed suicide.
The day's deadly shooting occurred when unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by USCP officer Michael Byrd while protesting at the Capitol.
Harris implied that the riots were the worst attack on the United States since the Civil War, but she seemed to forget the historical significance of September 11, the day after the debate.
Online critics have pointed out that this could also apply to other incidents since the Civil War, including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed more than 1,000 people. 2,400 AmericansThe assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) riots of the 1980s and 1990s 6 to 20 peopleone police officer was killed, over 2,000 were injured, and billions of dollars in damages were caused.
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