US Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris kept her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, on the defensive during the highly anticipated televised debate ahead of the November election.

The face-to-face, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in prime time, 56 days before the polls in this country, pitted the two opponents against each other for the first time. It was Harris who advanced towards Trump to greet, shake hands and introduce herself.

They got straight to the point: the economy. Both were strong, but the Democrat went to the details and perhaps that was the difference, because while she said she has a plan for Americans, the Republican could not give elements of what he will do.

«Americans deserve better than this,» the vice president stressed, referring to her opponent, who, moreover, during the 90 minutes of the debate repeated false claims about voter fraud and did not commit to whether he would respect the 2024 election result.

«I had nothing to do with that,» Trump commented at another point when asked if he had any regrets about the attack on the federal Capitol on 6 January 2021.

However, Harris recalled that she was on the floor of Congress because she was the vice president-elect and a senator and «that day the president (Trump) incited a mob».

We understand that the former president was impeached and politically prosecuted for that reason, she stressed, insisting that Trump «has a hard time processing that he lost» in 2020.

On the issue of the Middle East, the Democratic candidate reiterated her position that Israel has a right to defend itself, but the war «has to end immediately». Trump did not define his line of thinking in that regard.

Harris called Trump a crook, a liar, and the former president called her opponent «weak».

There was a moment when Harris said: «You’re running against me», warning about the continuous allusions to President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race for re-election on 21 July.

«I’m clearly not Joe Biden and I’m certainly not Donald Trump,» Harris stressed. At 21:00 Eastern local time, the confrontation between the two standard bearers of the only two parties that compete for the White House here every four years began.

This opportunity to put them face to face for the remainder of the campaign was organised by ABC and took place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Between exaggerations and falsehoods Trump said that Harris «is a Marxist» and that «criminals continue to come (across the border) and that’s bad for our economy».

The former president repeated absurdities such as that immigrants are eating dogs and cats in some states or that those who enter illegally were in psychiatric hospitals in their countries of origin.

For her part, Vice President Harris warned that «what we have done is clean up the mess that Donald Trump left us».

«I’m an open book,» said Trump, who also boasted that «we did an outstanding job».

In a general sense over the course of the debate they jumped from economics and taxes to migration and reproductive rights, the latter a topic that sparked sparks between the two. Trump also suggested that World War III could happen.

And while the debate – which ended without a handshake – took place on a stage without an audience, protests over Israel’s war against the Palestinian population in Gaza could be heard near the gates of the event venue.

Participants lined up under slogans such as «Justice is our demand», carrying banners and flags, as well as placards reading «arms embargo now».

In terms of numbers, Harris’s momentum after replacing Biden on the ticket on 21 July has so far not resulted in a commanding lead, which in the polls remains within the margins of error.

For some observers, the tight race shows a lingering loyalty to Trump from his electoral base as Harris tries to salvage an election that the Democrats seemed doomed to lose before Biden ended his effort to remain in the Oval Office.

It was the 27 June debate between Biden and Trump that precipitated the current occupant of the executive mansion’s historic exit from the race for a second term.