16 when he kind of lost, it's all really taped himself together. and what about coming to her is supposed to be able to explain to the american people who she really is. will she be able to lay out a plan? her policy is how she will kind of deal this, all these crucial issues. so lots a lots to watch out for tennis. tell us who is leading the polls currently. well, it's a really close call. it's actually so close. close that. it's hard to say um, you know, voice in the lead, donald trump is leading in some crucial spring states kind of the harris and others and the national policy. she's a little bit ahead, but it's so small that it's kind of might be also to us an arrow so we don't really know what we know is it, it, it's very, very close. and that also thing states like pennsylvania. well, the debate is taking place really, really measure,

and it might come down to $70000.00 or so voters by the units because i'm going to talk to dad because we are going to cross to the debate. now it's being hosted by motor, right? is lindsay davis and david mueller, the abc news presidential, the bank between donald trump and couple of hours. so you can see what was going to be pretty big idea idea where you're doing the nice and i using the senior vice president of the one who was going to be worth watching on a, b, c. and around the world. tonight, vice president campbell harris and president donald trump are just moments away from taking the stage in this unprecedented race for president. and i'm lindsey davis. tonight's meeting could be the most consequential event of their campaigns was election day. now less than 2 months away. for vice president campbell of harris, this is her 1st debate since present,

invite and withdrew from the race on july 20. first, of course that decision followed his debate against president donald trump in june . since then, his race has taken on an entirely new dynamic and that brings us to the rules of tonight's debate, 90 minutes with 2 commercial breaks, no topics or questions have been shared with the campaigns. the candidates will have 2 minutes to answer questions and this is the clock. that's what they'll be seeing 2 minutes for rebuttals and one minute for follow ups, clarifications, or responses. their microphones will only be turned on, but it's their turn to speak, no pre written notes aloud. there is no audience here tonight in this hall at the national constitution center. this is an intimate setting for 2 candidates who have never met president from one the coin toss he chose to deliver the final closing statement of the evening, vice president harris selected the podium to the right. so let's now welcome the candidates to the stage vice president campbell of harris and president donald trump. come with harris,

basically sci fi. thank you. welcome to bill. it's wonderful to have you. it's an honor to have you both here tonight. good evening. we are looking forward to a spirited and thoughtful today. so let's get started. i want to begin tonight with the issue that voters repeatedly say is their number one issue and that is the economy and the call cost of living in this country, vice president harris, who in president trump were elected 4 years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight, often asks is the porters, are you better off than you were 4 years ago when it comes to the economy? do you believe americans are better off that they were 4 years ago? so i was raised as the middle class kits, and i am actually the only person on the stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of america. i believe in the emissions the aspirations, the dreams of the american people. and that is why i imagine and have actually a plan to build what i call an opportunity economy. because here's the thing. we know that we have a storage of,

of homes and housing. and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. we know that young families need support to raise their children and i intend on extending a tax cut for those families of $6000.00, which is the largest child tax credit that we have given in a long time so that those young families can afford to buy a crib by a car seat by quotes for their children. my passion, one of them is small businesses. i was actually my mother raised my sister in me, but there was a woman who helped raise us. we call her 2nd mother. she was a small business owner. i love our small businesses. my plan is to give a $50000.00 tax deduction to start up small businesses, knowing they are part of the backbone of america's economy. my opponent, on the other hand, his plan is to do it. he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in 5 trillion dollars to americas deficit. my opponent has

a plan that i called the trump sales tax, which would be a 20 percent tax on every day. goods that you rely on to get through the month. economist have said that that trump sales tax would actually result for middle class families. and about $4000.00 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires? president trump, i'll give you 2 minutes. first of all, i have no sales tax. that's an incorrect stipend, she knows that we're doing care of so in other countries, other countries are going to finally after 75 years. pay us back for all that we've done for the world and the tariff will be substantial. in some cases i took in billions and billions of dollars as you know from china. in fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money. they can't, they would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do. they're taking in

millions of dollars from china and other places they've left the tariff. so when i had it, i had tariffs and yet i had no inflation at look, we've had a terrible economy because inflation has, which is really known as a country buster, breaks up countries. we have inflation like very few people have ever seen before. probably the worse than our nation's history. we were at 21 percent, but that's being generous because many things are 506070, and 80 percent are higher than they were just a few years ago. this has been a disaster for people for the middle class, but for every class on top of that, we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails from mental institutions and insane asylums. and they're coming in and they're taking jobs that are occupied right now by african americans and hispanics. and also unions. unions are going to be effected very soon. and you see what's happening. you see what's happening with towns throughout the united states. you look at springfield, ohio,

you look at aurora in colorado. they are taking over the town. so taking over buildings they going in violently. these are the people that she and biden lead into our country, and they're destroying our country. they're dangerous. they're at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out. we have to get them out fast. i created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country. i'll do it again and even better, we are going to get to immigration in border security during this debate, but i would like to let the vice president harris respond on the economy here. well, i would love to, let's talk about what donald trump left us. donald trump left us the worst unemployment since the great depression. donald trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. donald trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war. and what we have done is clean up donald trump's mess. what we have

done, and what i intend to do is build on what we know are the aspirations in the hopes of the american people. but i'm going to tell you on this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name, calling. what you're going to hear tonight is a detail and dangerous plan called project 2025, that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected to again. and i believe very strongly that the american people want a president who understands the importance of bringing us together know we have so much more in common than what separates us. and i pledge to to be a president for all americans. president trump will give you a minute here to respond. number one, i have nothing to do as you know under. she knows better than anyone. i have nothing to do with project 20. 25. 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 i'm good,

some bad, but it makes no difference. i have nothing to do. everybody knows i'm an open book . everybody knows what i'm going to do, cut taxes very substantially, and create a great economy. like i did before, we had the greatest economy. we got hit with a pen demick, and the pandemic was not since 1917 where a 100000000 people died. has it been anything like it? we did a phenomenal job with a pandemic. we had did them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came and nobody's ever seen anything like it we made ventilate, is for the entire world. we got gowns, we got mass cuz we did things that nobody thought possible. and people give me credit for rebuilding the military. they give me credit for a lot of things, but not enough credit for the great job we did with the pen damage. but the only jobs they got were bounced back, job sees with jobs bounce back and it bounced back and it went to their benefits. but i was the one that created them. they know it. and so does everybody else vice

president harris ali respond. so donald trump has no plan for you to and when you look at his economic plan, it's all about tax breaks for the richest people. i am offering. what i describe as an opportunity economy and the best economist in our country. if not the world have reviewed our relative plans for the future of america, what goldman sachs had said is that donald trump's plan would make the economy worse. mine would strengthen the economy. what the wharton school has said is donald trump's plan would actually explode the deficit. 16 nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation. and by the middle of next year would invite a recession. you just have to look at where we are and where we stand on the issues . and i didn't invite you to know that donald trump actually has no plan for you because he is more interested in defending himself. then he isn't looking out for

you. let's just say that i went to the warrant is going to finance, and many of those professors, the top professors think by plan is a brilliant plan. it's a great plan, it's a plan that's gonna bring up our, our worth or value as a country. it's going to make people want to be able to go and work and create jobs and create a lot of good solid money for compet, for our country. just to finish off at she doesn't have a plan, she copied by whose plan. and it's like a 4 set. this is like run spot, run for sentences that are just oh, we'll try and lower taxes. she doesn't have a plan. take a look at her plan. she doesn't have a plan. mister president. i do want to drill down on something you both brought up, the vice president brought up about your terrorist, you responded and let's drill down on this because your plan is what she calls is essentially a national sales tax. your proposal calls for terence. as you pointed out here on foreign imports across the board,

you recently said that you might double your plan and posing terrace up to 20 percent on goods coming into this country. or as you know, many economists say that we'd stairs at that level of costs or then passed on to the consumer. vice president harris has argued it will mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing, medication, arguing it costs the typical family, nearly $4000.00 a year. do you believe americans can afford higher prices because of tariff? they're not going to have higher prices. what's going to have and who's going to have higher price is china and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years. i charge, i was the only president over, china was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. and so we're other countries and you know, if she doesn't like them, they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tears. but those tear. so the 3 and a half years now, under their administration, we're going to take and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. i had no inflation, virtually no inflation. they had the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country because i've never seen

a worse period of time. people can't go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else. these, the people of our country are absolutely dying with what they've done. they've destroyed the economy and all you have to do is look at appall dap, all say $80.85 and even 90 percent. that the truck, the economy was great that their economy was terrible. vice president harris. i do want to ask for your response and you hear what the president said there, because the by the administration did keep a number of the trump tariffs in place. so how do you respond? well, let's be clear that the trumpet administration resulted in a trade deficit one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of america. he invited trade wars. you want to talk about his deal with china. what he ended up doing is under donald trump's presidency. he ended up selling american chips to china to help them improve and modernize their military. basically sold us out when a policy about china should be in making sure the united states of america. when's

the competition for the 21st century? which means focusing on the details of what that requires focusing on relationships with our allies, focusing on investing and american based technology so that we win the race on a i, on quantum computing. focusing on what we need to do to support america's workforce . so that we don't end up having that on the short end of the stick in terms of workers' rights. but what donald trump did, let's talk about this with cove. it is he actually st presidency for what he did during cove and look at his tweet. thank you president. she exclamation point. when we know that she was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of coven president, trouble a restore. first of all, they bought the chips from taiwan. we hardly make chips anymore because of philosophies like they have and policies like they have. i don't say her because

she has no policy. everything that she believes 3 years ago and 4 years ago is out the window. she's going to my philosophy now. in fact, i was going to send her a mega hat. she's gone to my philosophy, but if she ever got elected, she change it, and it will be the end of our country. she's a marxist. everybody knows she's a marxist. her father is a marxist professor and economics, and he told her, well, but when you look at what she's done to our country, and when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country monthly, where it's, i believe 21000000 people not the 15 that people say, and i think it's a lot higher than the 21 that's bigger than new york state, oregon, and just look at what they're doing to our country. they're criminal has many of these people coming in or criminals, and that's bad for our economy to. you know, you mentioned before, we'll talk about immigration later. well, bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. they have and

she has destroyed our country.