Fact-Checking 22 Claims Made in Trump-Harris Debate

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off Tuesday night for their first, and possibly only, debate before the Nov. 5 presidential election. 

The matchup was hosted by ABC News and moderated by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis. The debate took place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

This is the second debate for Trump during the 2024 campaign. The first time around he faced off against President Joe Biden on June 27. Biden struggled to answer questions and finish sentences, and dropped out of the race July 21.

The rules in this debate were the same as the June debate. Candidates’ microphones were silenced while the opponent answered questions.

1. Trump: We had no inflation

Trump repeatedly said he “had no inflation” during his tenure in the White House. While inflation grew much faster under Biden and Harris, prices also rose under Trump. 

Prices overall rose 19% over the first 42 months of Biden’s term compared with 6% during Trump’s first 42 months, according to Forbes. Year-over-year inflation peaked under Biden at a four-decade hgh of 9% in 2022.

2. Opportunity economy

Harris said she is the only candidate promoting an opportunity economy, but Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act gave the 82% of middle-income earners a tax cut that averaged about $1,050, according to FactCheck.org.

“I was raised in a middle-class home,” Harris said, “And I am actually the only person on the stage who has a plan to lift up the middle class and the working people, and when you look at his economic plan, it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people.” 

But even the Biden-Harris administration’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, acknowledged that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut taxes for all. 

The year following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, new job openings surged, and about 83,000 more Americans voluntarily left their jobs for better opportunities at the end of 2019, compared with the trend before the reform.

3. Trump: Harris’ father Is a Marxist professor

The claim that Harris’ father is a Marxist was fact-checked by Snopes as “true” after a viral X post from political economist Maxine Fowé. 

Donald Harris, a now-retired professor of economics at Stanford University, was the author of a 1978 book, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution.” It features ideas on Karl Marx’s theory of capital. “His book, ‘Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution’, published in 1978 and dedicated to Kamala and her sister, examines the pitfalls of relying on profit-seeking capitalists to direct an economy,” writes The Economist. The New Yorker wrote of Donald Harris being “a renowned Marxist economist from Jamaica who taught at Stanford University for decades.”

4. Border ‘Security’ Bill 

With the border and illegal immigration being one of the most important issues among voters in the 2024 presidential election, it’s no surprise moderators raised the issue early on in the debate. 

Muir began by asking Harris why the Biden administration waited “until six months before the election” to take action on the border, referring to Biden’s recent executive order limiting illegal border crossings. 

Harris answered by touting her work prosecuting “transnational criminal organizations,” before attacking Trump for opposing a controversial border bill that failed in the Senate twice. 

Harris said the failed bill “would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl” coming into the U.S., and would have provided “more resources to prosecute transnational criminal organizations.” 

The failed bill directed the Department of Homeland Security to close the southern border “during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, [if] there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.”

Over 1.8 million illegal aliens a year still would have been permitted to enter the United States under the now twice-failed legislation.  

Harris blamed Trump for the bill’s failure, saying the former president “got on the phone” and told Republican members of Congress to “kill the bill.” 

Trump, and many GOP members of Congress, were clear about their opposition to the proposed border security bill, arguing it would enshrine harmful border policies into law. 

The Senate border bill “codified Joe Biden’s open border,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said of the bill in February. 

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., led the way in negotiating the terms of the bill with Democrats. Lankford was one of the few Republicans who voted in favor of advancing the border and foreign aid bill, along with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah.  

Even if the Senate had successfully passed the bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill would have been “dead on arrival” in the House.

5. Are Haitians in Ohio ‘Eating Dogs’?

Trump claimed Haitian immigrants that have flocked by the thousands to Springfield, Ohio, are eating dogs, an assertion that has not been confirmed. 

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

The claims have not been confirmed.

“There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Springfield police said in a statement on Monday. 

But a recording of a police phone call did reveal a local resident reporting a group of Haitian migrants carrying four geese in Springfield two weeks ago, according to a Federalist report. 

“I’m sitting here, I’m riding on the trail, I’m going to my orientation for my job today, and I see a group of Haitian people, there was about four of ’em, they all had geese in their hand,” the caller told the public services dispatcher.

Residents at a City Council meeting complained that the Haitians were eating ducks and seagulls at a park, as well as roadkill. 

Under the Biden administration, an estimated 20,000 Haitian migrants have been relocated to Springfield, a small city of about 58,000.

6. ‘Trump Abortion Bans’

Harris branded state laws on abortion “Trump abortion bans,” because Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who created the majority that overturned the 1973 abortion precedent, Roe v. Wade. 

The justices Trump nominated did indeed overturn Roe in the 2022 case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“Donald Trump hand-selected three justices of the Supreme Court with the intention that they would overturn Roe,” Harris said. 

When Trump said he supports exceptions to abortion restrictions in the cases of rape, incest, and a threat to the life of the mother, Harris said, “in over 20 states, there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care,” a reference to abortion. 

She noted that many of these laws “make no exception for rape or incest.”

Yet Trump claimed that after Dobbs, states can make their own laws on abortion, so a federal ban is unnecessary.

“Look, this is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years,” the former president said. “Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people now. It’s not tied up in the federal government.”

Trump does not bear responsibility for each of the abortion laws passed after Dobbs; the states themselves do. All Trump’s Supreme Court justices did was enable the states to make their own laws.

7. ‘Weaponization’ of DOJ and Prosecutions

In response to Harris talking about criminal charges against him, Trump said the investigations at both the federal and state level were pushed by the Biden-Harris administration. 

“Everyone of those cases was started by them against their political opponents, and I’m winning most of them, and I’ll win the rest on appeal,” Trump said. 

He added: “Those cases, it’s called weaponization. They weaponized the Justice Department. Every one of those cases was involved with the [Department of Justice], from Atlanta and [District Attorney] Fani Willis, to the New York, the DA in New York. Every one of those cases, and they say he was a criminal.”

The Biden administration’s Justice Department, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, named special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump on a documents case, and for Trump’s challenge to the outcome of the 2020 election.

While not formally sanctioned by the Biden administration, the prosecutions in both Georgia and New York had loose ties to it. 

Matthew Colangelo, who was President Joe Biden’s acting associate attorney general and spent two years in Biden’s Justice Department, joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as senior counsel in December 2022 to work on the Trump case. 

Previously, Colangelo also worked for New York state Attorney General Letitia James, and led an investigation that eventually became Trump’s civil fraud case , according to The New York Times.

In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made a controversial hiring of Nathan Wade to prosecute the Trump case for challenging the 2020 election outcome in the state. 

Wade’s billing records to Fulton County show he was in two meetings at the Biden White House. One of those meetings included Biden’s White House counsel before the indictments of Trump and the others were issued.

8. ‘Dictator on Day One’ Taken Out of Context

In a discussion of foreign policy, Harris said that Trump admires autocrats and said he would be a dictator on “Day One” of his presidency.

Harris was referring to a Dec. 5 town-hall event Trump held with Fox News host Sean Hannity. He was asked jokingly during the interview if he wanted to be a dictator.

“To be clear, do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?” Hannity asked at the time.

“Like they’re doing right now?” Trump said of the Biden-Harris administration. “In the history of our country, what’s happened to us, again, has never happened before, over nonsense, over nothing, made up charges.”

Trump said of Hannity: “I love this guy. He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I say, ‘No, no, no, other than Day One.’ We are closing the border and drilling, drilling, drilling. Other than that, I am not a dictator.” It was meant as a joke.

Trump talked about the comment later in an interview on Fox News and said that his line about being a dictator was taken totally out of context by the media.

9. Harris: No Women Getting Late-Term Abortions

Harris said no women are carrying their babies to the ninth month of pregnancy, then getting abortions. 

She said this after answering a question about whether she supported any limitations on abortions by saying she would restore Roe v. Wade. 

In saying this, Harris admitted that she would allow abortions in the ninth month. She just denies that they are happening. 

But as of June 28, six states and Washington, D.C., impose no term restrictions on abortion. And 11 states have ballot measures that would permit abortion up until birth if a “health care professional” determines the mother needs it. 

In 2019, Harris voted to block a bill that would have required medical care for babies born alive in botched abortions.

10. ‘Tax Cut for Billionaires and Big Corporations’

Harris touted her own plan for a $6,000 child tax credit and a $50,000 tax deduction for startup small businesses. But she accused Trump of wanting to give a tax cut only for the wealthy. 

“My opponent on the other hand, his plan, is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in $5 trillion to America’s deficit,” Harris said.

She also attacked what she called a “Trump sales tax.” 

Trump has not supported a direct sales tax, but has supported tariffs, which critics say would increase prices and would function effectively as a tax. 

Harris’ reference to “what he has done before,” on taxes was an apparent reference to the 2017 tax reform legislation, known as the $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 

The tax cuts benefited middle-class workers, as wage growth increased by about $1,400 in the years following the corporate tax cuts. Job openings also increased in 2018.

About 83,000 more Americans voluntarily left their jobs for better opportunities at the end of 2019 compared with the trend before the reform, while Census Bureau data has shown real household income reached an all-time high in 2019, growing by $4,400 (a one-year increase of 6.8%).

Meanwhile, IRS data shows average effective tax rates declined by 9.3% in 2018. Tax cuts as a percentage of taxes paid in 2017 were largest for the lowest-income Americans and lowest for the top 1%, as The Daily Signal previously reported.

11. Trump Thanked Xi During COVID-19

While discussing tariffs on goods from China, Harris said that Trump thanks China’s leader, Xi Jinping, for his actions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What Donald Trump did with COVID, he actually thanked President Xi for what he did during COVID. Look at his tweet, ‘Thank you, President Xi, exclamation point.’”

Harris was likely referring to a X post by Trump that he posted on Jan. 24, 2020.

“China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank President Xi!”

The first cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. began in late January 2020.

Trump later was highly critical of China, pointing to the Asian nation as the origin site of the disease.
“In the earliest days of the virus, China locked down travel domestically while allowing flights to leave China and infect the world,” Trump said in a U.N. speech in September 2020. “China condemned my travel ban on their country, even as they canceled domestic flights and locked citizens in their homes.”

12. Presidential Immunity

“The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” Harris claimed.

This misrepresents the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States. 

“The president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion in July. “But under our system of separated powers, the president may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office.”

The immunity only applies to constitutional powers and partially to official acts. The immunity also extends to every occupant of the Oval Office, not just Trump.

13. Harris: Trump Would ‘Terminate the Constitution’

“Understand that this is someone who has openly said he would terminate the Constitution of the United States,” Harris said.

Trump has not said he wants to terminate America’s founding document. 

That claim likely comes from a 2022 Truth Social post about the 2020 election, in which Trump wrote, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” 

“Our great ‘Founder’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” Trump continued. 

A month later, Trump said, “The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES.”

14. In Charlottesville, ‘Very Fine People’ 

Harris repeated that the false claim that  in 2017, Trump said white nationalist rioters in Charlottesville, Virginia, were “fine people.” 

President Joe Biden made the same claim in the June 27 debate, days after it was debunked by fact-checking website Snopes. According to Snopes, Trump said there “very fine people on both sides
about the protesters and the counter protesters. But in the same statement, he clarified he was not referring to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, adding they should be ‘condemned totally.’”

15. Trump: Harris Wants to ‘Defund the Police’ 

Trump said Harris bailed out rioters who “killed people” and “burned down Minneapolis” after the 2020 Minneapolis race riots following the death of George Floyd. 

“She went out and raised money to get them out of jail,” Trump said, “and she did things that nobody would ever think of now.” 

Harris infamously urged followers to contribute to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, urging them to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” after rioters ravaged Minneapolis after Floyd’s death in police custody.

Fact-checkers later established that Harris didn’t personally donate to the Freedom Fund, although at the time she and others helped direct more than $40 million to the organization.

Harris voiced support for the “defund the police” movement after Floyd’s May 2020 death in a radio interview in June of that year, CNN reported. 

“This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” Harris said.

Harris also praised then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for his decision to cut $150 million from the police budget and redirect funding into social services.

16. ‘Violent Mob’

Harris talked about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by Trump supporters in an effort to stop certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. 

“Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” Harris said early in the debate. 

In fact, the U.S. Capitol was attacked at least four times before Jan. 6, and three of those were after the Civil War. 

In 1814, British soldiers burned the Capitol during the War of 1812. It took about five years to rebuild the House chamber. In 1954, four Puerto Rican terrorists—Andres Figueroa Cordero, Lolita Lebrón, Irvin Flores Rodríguez, and Rafael Cancel Miranda—attacked the Capitol. Unlike those who got inside the Capitol building in January 2021, those terrorist were armed with guns. The four opened fire from the House Gallery, wounding five lawmakers.

In 1971, a domestic terrorist group called the Weather Underground bombed the Capitol, causing $300,000 worth of damage. No one was harmed. 

The so-called Weathermen returned in 1983 and set off another bomb that “tore through the second floor of the Capitol’s North Wing,” according to the Senate’s history site. No fatalities occurred.

“On that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation’s Capitol, to desecrate our nation’s Capitol,” Harris later said. “On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured, and some died, and understand the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.”

During his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told the gathering, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Though he also said, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

A total of 1,240 pro-Trump protesters were charged with committing crimes Jan. 6 as of Thursday, according to the FBI. Most were accused of felonies in connection with storming the Capitol to stop certification of Biden’s win.

According to reports, it’s true that about 140 police were reportedly injured in the rioting. Only two people reportedly died directly from the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. But as many as seven others died indirectly from the events of the day, based on a tally of deaths published this week in The New York Times.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, initially thought to have died from an attack, actually died of natural causes. But the stress from the day’s events could have prompted his strokes. 

Others died of natural causes or suicide, but the stress from the violence and commotion of the day could have contributed to those deaths. 

Rioter Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer. Another rioter was reportedly stampeded by fellow rioters. 

Contrary to Harris’ claim, special counsel Jack Smith didn’t charge Trump with insurrection or incitement of an insurrection in a federal court case. Smith secured a grand jury indictment charging Trump with trying to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. 

Smith secured an indictment against Trump that charges him with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

17. Trump ‘Negotiated the Weakest Deal Ever with Afghanistan’

Harris claimed that Trump “negotiated the weakest deal ever with Afghanistan” and invited the Taliban to Camp David.

It’s true that Trump negotiated with the Taliban and that the Taliban were invited to the Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains. But the negotiations were conditions-based, and Trump made clear the Taliban would be held accountable for their actions.

Moreover, Trump’s team ensured that if, in the end, the Taliban proved untrustworthy, the remaining U.S. force had been sized and scoped to present a serious deterrent to the Taliban and would be sufficient to protect U.S. interests.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Trump “made very clear to Mullah Baradar, the senior Taliban negotiator, that if you threatened an American, if you scared an American, certainly if you hurt an American, that we would bring all American power to bear to make sure that we went to your village, to your house.”

“We were very clear about the things we were prepared to do to protect American lives,” Pompeo said. “And indeed, since we began those negotiations back in February of 2020, there wasn’t a single American killed by the Taliban. We had established a deterrence model.”

Democrats have blamed Trump for the Taliban’s 2021 capture of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, which effectively handed the country to the terrorist organization. 

A total of 13 U.S. service members, ages 20 to 31, were killed and at least 18 other members were injured in the Hamid Karzai International Airport bombing attack on Aug. 26, 2021.

After Biden made an address blaming Trump for the events in Kabul, Trump said, “It’s not that we left Afghanistan. It’s the grossly incompetent way we left.”

18. Transgender Operations for Illegal Immigrant Prisoners

Trump claimed of Harris, “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” 

Harris has not directly stated her position on this issue in the 2024 election, but she explicitly endorsed it in 2019.

Harris, then a senator from California running for president, told the American Civil Liberties Union that she would use her executive power as president to ensure transgender and non-binary individuals “including those in prison and immigration detention” receive access to “all necessary surgical care.” 

As California attorney general, she pushed for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to offer transgender surgeries to inmates.

“I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,” she wrote.

“Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

This position is also the logical conclusion of her support for Democrats’ proposed Equality Act and the gender operations euphemistically referred to as “gender affirming care.”

Under Biden and Harris, the federal Bureau of Prisons reissued a Transgender Offender manual that the Obama administration had begun. The manual’s latest version states that surgery for prisoners who claim to be transgender is “generally considered only after one year of clear conduct and compliance with mental health, medical, and programming services at the gender-affirming facility.”

The pro-transgender outlet The 19th News has faulted the Biden administration for not clarifying its position on gender operations for prisoners, but it has taken multiple actions to offer cross-sex hormones and surgeries for prisoners. 

In January, Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, filed a “statement of interest” supporting “gender-affirming care” for prisoners.

“People with gender dysphoria should be able to seek the full protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act, just like other people with disabilities,” Clarke said. “We are committed to ensuring constitutional conditions inside our jails and prisons so that those detained inside these facilities, including people with gender dysphoria, can live safely and receive needed medical care. The U.S. Constitution requires that people incarcerated in jails and prisons receive necessary medical care, treatment and services to address serious medical conditions.”

The administration has also extended transgender policy to illegal aliens.
Under Biden and Harris, the Department of Customs and Border Protection issued guidance telling border security personnel to refer to illegal aliens by their preferred gender pronouns.

19. Project 2025: ‘I Have Nothing to Do’ With It

“What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again,” Harris said. 

Trump fact-checked her himself.

“No. 1, I have nothing to do … I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” he said. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely, I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas: I guess some good, some bad, but it makes no difference. I have nothing to do” with it.

“I’m an open book,” he added.

The Heritage Foundation drafted Project 2025 and has partnered with more than 100 conservative organizations in the effort. Heritage published the project in April 2023, long before Trump had become the 2024 Republican nominee. 

The project aims to restore the Constitution by reining in the administrative state, which has grown insulated from the authority of the president.

While Harris and other Democrats have repeated the lie that Trump would implement the policies in Project 2025, the Republican has repeatedly distanced himself from the project.

20. Trump: Overturning Dobbs Was ‘What Everybody Wanted’

Trump said that “everybody wanted” the Supreme Court to return the issue of abortion laws to the states. While he made a valid point about the right of states making their own laws on abortion, it’s not true that everybody wanted Roe to be overturned.

A majority of Americans (62%) disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, according to a July poll from the Pew Research Center. A 2022 Marist poll commissioned by the Knights of Columbus found that 55% of Americans identify as “pro-choice.”

Yet Americans favor limits on abortion, even though they claim they oppose Dobbs. 

The same Marist poll that found most Americans identify as “pro-choice” also reported that 71% of Americans support legal limits on abortion. Marist gave Americans six options on abortion, and most of them favored at least some restrictions. 

Only 17% agreed with the position that “abortion should be available to a woman any time she wants one during her entire pregnancy.” Some supported allowing abortion only during the first six months (12%), only during the first three months (22%), or only in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life (28%). Others said abortion should only be legal in cases where the mother’s life is threatened (9%), while 12% said it should never be allowed at all. 

Even 72% of those who identified themselves as “pro-choice” supported some restrictions on abortion.

State laws on abortion better represent the diversity of Americans’ views on this issue, because at lower levels of government, individuals can have a greater say on the issue. 

While not everybody wanted the overturning of Roe, Trump made a good point that the diversity of state laws may decrease the partisanship on this issue, as different states work out their own solutions.

21. Harris Notes Trump-McCain Schism

Harris said that then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saved the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, in 2017, from efforts to repeal it.

“The late, great John McCain, I will never forget that night, walked onto the Senate floor and said, ‘No, you don’t,’” Harris said of efforts to kill the law enacted during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

McCain later explained his “no” vote, reinforcing his opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

“From the beginning, I have believed that Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with a solution that increases competition, lowers costs, and improves care for the American people,” McCain said. “The so-called ‘skinny repeal’ amendment the Senate voted on today would not accomplish those goals.

Harris noted that Trump had repeatedly attacked McCain. 

While it’s true that Trump criticized the since-deceased 2008 Republican presidential nominee, some of those attacks were in response to McCain, who initially opposed Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016. 

McCain, a retired Navy pilot, was a POW during the Vietnam War.

In 2015, Trump said: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

He also criticized the Arizonan after McCain’s death in 2018. He continued bringing up the fact that McCain was among three Senate Republicans who voted against repealing Obamacare. 

In March 2019, Trump said, “I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.”

When Harris brought that up, Trump noted that McCain had campaigned on repealing Obamacare before he voted against it. 

“I’m very unhappy that he didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare, as you know,” Trump continued in his 2019 comment. 

“He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and then he got to a vote and he said thumbs down.”

When Harris and Trump sparred over health care, Trump said of Obamacare that he tried to “make it as good as it can be.”

As a candidate for president in the 2016 cycle, Trump pledged to repeal and replace Obamacare with something better. The Republican-controlled House passed a repeal measure in 2017, but the proposal fell in the GOP-run Senate. 

However, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump signed into law in December 2017 did away with Obamacare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance, which helped to undermine the program. McCain voted for the tax-reform bill.

22. Criminals in US, Crime Down in Venezuela

Trump criticized Harris for allowing “criminals” and “terrorists” into the country through the southern border. 

More than 50,000 criminal illegal immigrants have been encountered between ports of entry at the southern border under the Biden-Harris administration. About 21,000 illegal aliens with criminal records were encountered during the Trump administration. 

Under the current administration, more than 350 illegal aliens on America’s terrorist watchlist have been encountered between ports of entry at the southern border. There were fewer than a dozen such encounters under the Trump administration. 

Trump claimed crime in Venezuela and “all over the world” is down under the Biden administration, claiming those criminals are coming to the U.S. instead. 

In May, Venezuelan officials reported that crime in the South American nation had fallen 25.1% compared with 2023. The officials did not indicate whether outmigration from Venezuela was contributing to the decrease of crime.

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