Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off in their first debate Tuesday night, trading barbs on foreign policy, abortion and guns.
Trump advanced a number of debunked conspiracy theories related to migration, crime and voting in the combative showdown, while Harris made misleading statements about manufacturing jobs and whether U.S. troops are in combat zones.
Here's what Harris and Trump got right and wrong on the debate stage in Philadelphia.
Fact check: Trump calls Harris’ dad a Marxist
“Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well," Trump said.
That’s not what his students say.
In interviews, three of Professor Donald Harris’ former students, who are now economists themselves, told NBC News that they disagreed that Harris’ father is a Marxist.
Donald Harris taught at Stanford University for nearly three decades until he retired in 1998, and while he was there, he studied Karl Marx’s economic philosophy among the philosophies of other different thinkers, his students recall. While Harris has spoken about her father’s influence in her early childhood, she has credited her mother for being the parent who shaped her into the person she is today.
Fact check: Did the U.S. leave $85 billion worth of military equipment in Afghanistan?
“We wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand-new, beautiful military equipment behind," Trump said.
This is false.
The Taliban did gain possession of U.S.-made military equipment when they retook power in 2021, but the $85 billion figure is grossly exaggerated. It is a rounding up of the approximately $83 billion in total assistance appropriated for the Afghan military and police during the two-decade war, including training, equipment and housing.
According to a 2022 Defense Department report, the Taliban seized much of the estimated $7.12 billion in U.S.-funded equipment that was in the hands of the former Afghan government when it collapsed, the condition of which was unknown. The report said the U.S. military had removed or destroyed almost all the major equipment it was using in Afghanistan in the months leading up to the U.S. withdrawal.
Fact check: Trump claims Harris ‘wants to confiscate your guns’
“She wants to confiscate your guns,” Trump claimed.
This is false.
Online posts have advanced a similar false claim. Harris has advocated for gun safety laws, proposing requirements for “anyone who sells more than five guns a year” to conduct background checks and for unlawful gun dealers to face penalties.
Harris responded moments later: “This business about taking everyone’s guns away? Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”
Fact check: Harris says Trump oversaw manufacturing job losses
“Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs," Harris said.
This needs context.
Before the onset of the pandemic, the U.S. added about 500,000 manufacturing jobs during the Trump administration. But by the time Trump left office at the height of the pandemic, the U.S. had given up virtually all those gains as a result of the worldwide economic devastation from the virus.
Meanwhile, Trump actually understated the number of manufacturing jobs lost last month: It was 24,000, not 10,000
