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Kamala Harris commanded the first debate against Donald J. Trump, flashing her prosecutorial skills to leverage every chance to get under the former president’s skin in a 90-minute clash of visions and style.
They disagreed fiercely on abortion and the economy, immigration and the war in Ukraine. But throughout the night, Mr. Trump found himself in a defensive crouch, relitigating his record rather than picking apart hers.
The contrast was apparent even on mute. She smiled. He glowered. He spoke more, but she dictated the terms of the evening.
Here are six takeaways from a debate that was a remarkable reversal from June, when Democrats were so despondent they changed candidates afterward:
Ms. Harris strode across the room to deliver the first handshake in a presidential debate since 2016. It was the first time she had met Mr. Trump in person, and she was intent on introducing herself: “Kamala Harris,” she said, as he took her hand. “Have fun,” he instructed her.
She sure appeared to. He did not.
Ms. Harris dominated the proceedings from nearly the start. She laid bait. He took it. It began with her needling Mr. Trump that his bored supporters had been leaving his rallies. It continued with her comment that he had inherited riches from his father. And on it went as she invoked his Republican critics, including those who served in his administration.
On the back foot, Mr. Trump repeatedly spun down rhetorical cul-de-sacs.
At one point, Ms. Harris invited viewers to watch a Trump rally for a more unfiltered view of the former president. “You will not hear him talk about your needs,” she said.
He responded not by talking about voter needs but about crowd numbers.
“People don’t leave my rallies,” he pushed back.
He went on to invoke debunked claims on the right that immigrants are eating pets in an Ohio city, which led to fact-checking pushback from David Muir, one of the ABC News moderators.
“Talk about extreme,” Ms. Harris laughed her rival off.
Within the first five minutes, Ms. Harris looked into the camera and told viewers what to expect from Mr. Trump: “the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”
He indeed talked less about what he would do in a second term and spent more time trying to clarify his record. He defended his handling of the pandemic, his decision to fire his top military advisers, and even his seven-year-old response to the deadly far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va.
Mr. Trump fumbled a moment where he had hoped to go on offense: the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. Instead, he found himself defending his decision to invite the Taliban to Camp David in 2019.
Ms. Harris forced Mr. Trump to defend his closeness to authoritarians like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and his past courtship of Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, “a dictator who would eat you for lunch,” she said. She even goaded him by turning an epithet he calls her — “weak” — toward him on national security.
He called her “weak” back.
Ms. Harris looked straight into the camera as she pitched herself as the candidate of the future and forced him to defend the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. “We don’t have to go back,” she said. “Let’s not go back.”
