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Top 10 Moments From the Second US Presidential Debate of 2024
WatchMojo
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9/11/2024
These wild Presidential Debate moments are going viral! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the most buzzworthy moments from Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s first showdown.
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00:00
In Minnesota, she went out, wait a minute, I'm talking now, if you don't mind, please.
00:06
Does that sound familiar?
00:07
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most buzzworthy moments
00:12
from Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's first showdown.
00:15
The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food.
00:19
So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
00:23
I'm not taking this from television, I'm taking it from the city manager.
00:25
But the people on television say the dog was eaten by the people that went there.
00:30
Number 10. The opening handshake.
00:33
Kamala Harris, what's up? Good to meet you.
00:36
Nice to see you. Have fun.
00:38
It's a time-honored tradition.
00:40
Before presidential candidates rhetorically tear each other to pieces
00:43
in hopes of being the United States' next commander-in-chief,
00:46
they engage in a friendly handshake.
00:48
You know, in the spirit of democracy and decorum and stuff.
00:51
So I was raised as a middle-class kid.
00:55
And I am actually the only person on this stage
00:58
who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America.
01:02
However, when Donald Trump is involved, that hasn't necessarily been the case.
01:07
Hillary Clinton dodged a Trump handshake prior to a debate in October 2016,
01:11
nodding at him in a polite but bare-bones acknowledgment.
01:15
In Harris and Trump's case, the former strode over to Trump
01:18
and initiated the classic handshake.
01:20
Trump reportedly wished the vice president, quote,
01:24
However, what was to follow was anything but cordial.
01:28
First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement.
01:31
She knows that we're doing tariffs on other countries.
01:34
Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years,
01:37
pay us back for all that we've done for the world.
01:43
They're in for $150 billion less because Biden and you
01:47
don't have the courage to ask Europe like I did with NATO.
01:51
It's been well reported that since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race,
01:56
Trump and his team have been scrambling to readjust and recalibrate their campaign
02:00
in a way that accounts for Kamala Harris' sudden candidacy.
02:03
This was no more pronounced than in Philadelphia on this Tuesday evening.
02:07
I want to get the war settled. I know Zelensky very well and I know Putin very well.
02:11
I have a good relationship and they respect your president.
02:15
Okay, they respect me. They don't respect Biden.
02:18
How would you respect him? Why? For what reason?
02:21
Early on in the debate, Harris and Trump came to verbal blows over the latter's
02:25
repeated invocation of President Biden's perceived ousting as the Democratic nominee.
02:30
At one point, Harris explicitly called out the Trump campaign's biggest struggle.
02:35
Indeed, Trump is no longer running against Biden,
02:38
stoking fears among conservatives that he may be an unfit opponent for Harris.
02:43
Well, first of all, it's important to remind the former president,
02:46
you're not running against Joe Biden, you're running against me.
02:50
I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours
02:55
is because he would just give it up.
03:00
She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.
03:04
If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.
03:09
We're not sure what surprised us more, the fact that Kamala Harris is a proud gun owner
03:14
or that it's been a matter of public record for a number of years now.
03:17
When accused by her Republican rival of intending to confiscate individuals' guns,
03:22
Harris pushed back, noting that Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, her running mate,
03:26
is also a gun owner.
03:28
I've made very clear my position on fracking,
03:30
and then this business about taking everyone's guns away.
03:33
Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away.
03:36
So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.
03:39
Helen Browning, writing for the New York Times, pointed out that,
03:42
when she was running for president in the 2020 Democratic primary,
03:46
Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, said that she kept a gun for safety,
03:50
defending her choice by highlighting her choice of occupation.
03:53
We have to move on. President Trump.
03:56
Let's turn to policy, please.
04:03
Number one, I have nothing to do, as you know, and as she knows better than anyone,
04:06
I have nothing to do with Project 2025.
04:09
That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it.
04:12
For the uninitiated, a quick primer.
04:15
This is the brainchild of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation,
04:19
operating under the Unitary Executive Theory.
04:22
This posits that the president directly oversees the executive branch.
04:25
Critics of Project 2025 describe the initiative as a threat to liberal democracy
04:30
that aims to erode political accountability.
04:33
While Trump has repeatedly denied knowledge of, affiliation with,
04:37
and contributions to Project 2025,
04:39
The Guardian's Rachel Leingang asserts that,
04:46
and Kevin Roberts, Heritage's leader,
04:48
has previously said he and Trump have talked several times.
04:51
Vice President Harris suggested the former president's involvement in the initiative,
04:55
which Trump once again strongly disavowed.
04:58
This was a group of people that got together.
05:00
They came up with some ideas, I guess some good, some bad,
05:03
but it makes no difference. I have nothing to do.
05:05
Everybody knows I'm an open book. Everybody knows what I'm going to do.
05:08
Cut taxes very substantially and create a great economy like I did before.
05:16
So my values have not changed and I'm going to discuss every one of the,
05:20
at least every point that you've made.
05:22
But in particular, let's talk about fracking because we're here in Pennsylvania.
05:24
As noted by Sahil Kapoor of NBC News,
05:27
one area that Kamala Harris has exhibited noticeable weakness is in,
05:36
that she has since abandoned or backtracked from.
05:39
These include,
05:46
I will not ban fracking.
05:48
I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States.
05:50
And in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act,
05:55
which opened new leases for fracking.
05:58
Justin Morland, analyzing the debate for Time,
06:01
noted that the September 10th debate represented yet another flip from Harris,
06:05
who claimed,
06:14
This was despite President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act,
06:17
which was,
06:24
My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy
06:30
so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
06:33
We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.
06:42
Fracking? She's been against it for 12 years.
06:45
Defund the police. She's been against that forever.
06:48
She gave all that stuff up very wrongly, very horribly.
06:53
In one of the debate's admittedly more amusing moments,
06:56
Trump called back to a viral Harris line.
06:59
The jab stemmed from her 2020 vice presidential debate
07:02
with then-VP and 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence.
07:06
While attempting to respond to a question,
07:08
the current vice president was interrupted by the former vice president,
07:11
to which she politely but firmly asked Pence to allow her to finish her statement.
07:16
Smash cut to,
07:17
Wait a minute, I'm talking now, if you don't mind, please.
07:21
Does that sound familiar?
07:23
Criticizing Harris' supposed inability to remain committed to certain issues,
07:27
Trump brushed off an attempt by her to address said criticisms.
07:30
We can only speculate as to why the debate's organizers made the choice
07:34
to turn the candidates' microphones off when they weren't speaking.
07:37
And everybody's laughing at it, okay? They're all laughing at it.
07:40
She gave up at least 12 and probably 14 or 15 different policies.
07:45
Like, she was big on defund the police.
07:51
Vice President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you on the issue of abortion
07:55
because you've changed your position so many times.
07:58
Therefore, why should they trust you?
08:00
Over the course of his campaigning for re-election,
08:03
Trump has often faced heat from all sides as to his positions on abortion.
08:07
As noted by NPR's Sarah McCammon,
08:09
the 45th president, quote,
08:11
repeatedly called for leaving abortion policy to the states.
08:14
But anti-abortion rights activists, who make up a key part of the Republican base,
08:18
have called on Republican elected officials to work toward national abortion restrictions.
08:23
The reason I'm doing that vote is because the plan is, as you know the vote is,
08:27
they have abortion in the ninth month.
08:30
Trump went all out at the second debate,
08:33
baselessly claiming that Democrats supported abortions even after a baby is born.
08:38
Lindsay Davis, one of the debate's moderators,
08:40
was quick to note that no such act is legal in any state.
08:44
They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia,
08:47
the previous governor of West Virginia,
08:49
not the current governor who's doing an excellent job,
08:51
but the governor before, he said the baby will be born
08:55
and we will decide what to do with the baby.
08:57
In other words, we'll execute the baby.
09:02
Obamacare was lousy health care.
09:04
Always was. It's not very good today.
09:06
And what I said, that if we come up with something and we are working on things,
09:10
we're going to do it and we're going to replace it.
09:12
The Affordable Care Act, which Trump failed to shoot down in 2017,
09:16
was a hot button issue during the September 10th debate.
09:19
As the New York Times noted,
09:21
while a poll of likely voters indicated that they needed to know more about Harris' policies,
09:25
the Democratic presidential candidate skimped on such details.
09:29
That said, Trump was far off the hook either.
09:32
I inherited Obamacare because Democrats wouldn't change it.
09:36
They wouldn't vote for it. They were unanimous.
09:38
They wouldn't vote to change it.
09:40
If they would have done that, we would have had a much better plan than Obamacare.
09:44
While Trump had indeed put plans in motion to repeal that legislation,
09:48
the late Senator John McCain ended the former president's efforts.
09:51
In 2024, Trump falsely declared that he had single-handedly saved the Affordable Care Act,
09:57
and when asked if he had a plan to replace it,
09:59
vaguely replied that he had, quote,
10:03
So, just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?
10:05
I have concepts of a plan. I'm not president right now.
10:09
But if we come up with something,
10:12
I would only change it if we come up with something that's better and less expensive.
10:21
She went out in Minnesota and wanted to let criminals
10:26
that killed people, that burned down Minneapolis,
10:29
she went out and raised money to get them out of jail.
10:31
When Harris responded to the aforementioned question on fracking,
10:35
she declared that her values remained the same,
10:37
despite her flip-flopping on the issue being a matter of record.
10:40
Smelling blood in the water, Trump pounced,
10:43
declaring that, quote,
10:49
This is a radical left liberal that would do this.
10:51
Health policy journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg linked Trump's bizarre accusations
10:55
to an ACLU questionnaire that Harris filled out when running for president in 2019.
11:00
Stolberg notes that at the time, quote,
11:11
This is a radical left liberal that would do this.
11:15
Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel
11:18
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11:21
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11:25
If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
11:30
Number one, dogs and cats.
11:45
This is definitely a statement that requires a little bit of context.
11:49
In the days immediately leading up to Harrison Trump's face-off,
11:52
Senator J.D. Vance posted on X, formerly known as Twitter,
11:56
that he had, quote,
12:04
I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio,
12:07
and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there.
12:10
He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims
12:13
of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.
12:18
And that, quote,
12:19
Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten
12:22
by people who shouldn't be in this country.
12:24
Police officers, the city manager and even the mayor of Springfield
12:28
have all reported that they are unaware of any credible evidence of this having taken place.
12:33
People on television say my dog was taken and used for food.
12:37
So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
12:41
I'm not taking this from television.
12:42
But the people on television say my dog was eaten by the people that went there.
12:47
Which moment from the second U.S. presidential debate shocked you the most?
12:50
Be sure to let us know in the comments.
12:52
And I'm going to actually do something really unusual,
12:54
and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies
12:58
because it's a really interesting thing to watch.
13:00
Did you enjoy this video?
13:02
Check out these other clips from WatchMojo
13:04
and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
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13:38
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