Fact-checking the presidential debate between Trump and Harris

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.

Fact check: Would Trump end the Russia-Ukraine war by giving up Ukrainian interests?

“I believe Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours. It’s because he would just give it up. And that’s not who we are as Americans,” Harris said.

This needs context.

Harris’ comments came during a lengthy exchange that was kicked off when debate moderator David Muir asked Trump, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”

Trump responded by saying only that “I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly, people being killed by the millions.” He added that “I will get it settled” because “what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”

Harris responded with the above quotation and brought up that the Biden administration had helped bring dozens of countries together to support Ukraine’s defense.

“Because of our support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery … that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country. If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” she said.

Trump hasn’t publicly discussed what his specific plan to end the war would be. The Washington Post reported in April that the plan was essentially a land-for-peace deal.

Citing people who discussed the plan with Trump and his advisers, the Post reported that Trump would plan to push Ukraine to hand over control of Crimea and the Donbas region to Russia in any future deal, which would effectively formalize the gains Russian President Vladimir Putin made during his illegal invasion. In exchange, the Post reported, Putin would stop the war. The report attracted criticism across the political spectrum and from Kyiv, with many lawmakers and international figures saying the deal amounted to appeasement.

Regardless of whether such a plan would ever bear fruit, Harris’ latest comments build on the narrative that Trump continues to seek cozy ties with Moscow. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump praised Putin as “genius” and “savvy” for declaring his intention to invade. 

In addition, it’s important to note that Trump didn’t say in his direct response to Muir that he wanted Ukraine to win in the war. He said only that he wanted the war to stop.

And even if Trump won and tried to stop the war, U.S. and European governments say Russia has shown no sign it is genuinely interested in any peace negotiations.

Fact check: Harris says no U.S. military members are on active duty in a combat zone

“And as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world, the first time this century,” Harris said.

This is false.

While Congress hasn’t formally declared a war in decades, American troops are certainly in combat zones around the world.

They’re serving in places like Iraq and Syria, where they work with local troops to fight terrorist networks. And they also conduct missions in both places — we saw that late last month in Iraq’s Anbar province, where an operation killed 15 Islamic State fighters and two U.S. soldiers were medevaced for injuries (and five more were injured). And a drone attack in Syria last month injured eight U.S. service members.

U.S. troops are also in Somalia and other parts of Africa, where they support local troops fighting terrorist groups, and they’ve been shooting down Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea.

Fact check: Trump claims he saved Obamacare

“Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot, and I saved it,” Trump said.

This is false.

During Trump’s term in office, he made several attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. While those efforts were unsuccessful, Republicans in Congress did repeal its individual mandate, which required people to have health insurance or face fines.

Fact check: Did Trump’s election cases fail on standing?

“No judge looked at it. … They said we didn’t have standing. That’s the other thing. They said we didn’t have standing. Can you imagine a system where a person in an election doesn’t have standing? The president of the United States doesn’t have standing? That’s how we lost if you look at the facts, and I’d love to have you do a special on it. I’ll show you Georgia, and I’ll show you Wisconsin, and I’ll show you Pennsylvania,” Trump said.

This is false.

Trump falsely claimed that judges rejected the more than 50 lawsuits brought by his supporters claiming widespread fraud because the president did not have legal “standing.”

The majority of the lawsuits were rejected because of a lack of evidence of voter fraud, a finding that Attorney General William Barr supported. Judges in Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania rejected the claims of widespread voter fraud. The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s appeal because of a lack of standing. There is extensive proof that the 2020 election wasn’t marred by fraud. 

Fact check: Is ‘migrant crime’ happening at high levels?

“They’ve destroyed the fabric of our country. Millions of people let in and all over the world, crime is down all over the world, except here. Crime here is up and through the roof, despite their fraudulent statements that they made, crime in this country’s through the roof, and we have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime. I like that. It’s happening at levels nobody thought possible,” Trump said.

This is misleading.

The rate of violent and property crimes dropped precipitously in the first three months of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to quarterly statistics released Monday by the FBI known as the Uniform Crime Report. The murder rate fell by 26.4%, reported rapes decreased by 25.7%, robberies fell by 17.8%, aggravated assault fell by 12.5%, and the overall violent crime rate went down by 15.2%, the statistics indicate.

Pressed about the crime rates’ contradicting him, Trump claimed the FBI didn’t “include the cities with the worst crime; it was a fraud.” And while it’s true that some cities data isn’t included in the FBI crime data, city-level data shows similar trends. For example, New York City data compiled by the police department indicates that crime was down overall in the first quarter of 2024 there, too.

Under President Joe Biden, over 112,000 migrants with criminal backgrounds have been apprehended at the border, compared with over 63,000 under Trump. The number of people who are on the terrorist watchlist stopped at the border has largely stayed the same, with an estimated 1,400 encounters under Trump and 1,800 under Biden. But the government has acknowledged the difficulty of vetting migrants coming from countries that won’t share criminal history data with the U.S., and investigators have opened more than 100 investigations into the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has spread into the U.S.

Fact check: Are noncitizens being encouraged to vote?

“We have to have borders, and we have to have good elections. Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country,” Trump said.

This is false.

It is a crime to register or vote as a noncitizen in all state and federal elections, though Washington, D.C., and a handful of municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont allow noncitizen voting in local elections. Few people break those laws.

There’s no evidence of “people” trying to get undocumented migrants to vote, either.

Fact check: Trump says ‘fossil fuel will be dead’ under Harris

“If she won the election, the day after that election, go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead. Fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills, and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I’m a big fan of solar, but they take 400-500 acres of desert soil,” Trump said.

This is false.

Oil and gas production is at an all-time high under the Biden administration, and the U.S. is the world’s top oil producer.

Meanwhile, wind and solar power are rapidly expanding across the country. The U.S. Energy Information Association projects the amount of new solar power coming online will grow by 75% from 2023 to 2025. New wind power is also increasing by 11%.

In the context of the cost of living for Americans, solar and onshore wind are also significantly cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuel. Solar power, on average, costs nearly half the price of fossil gas energy, according to the EIA.

Fact check: Did Trump threaten there would be a ‘bloodbath’ if he doesn’t win the election?

“Donald Trump, the candidate, has said, in this election, there will be a bloodbath if this and the outcome of this election is not to his liking. Let’s turn the page on this. Let’s not go back. Let’s chart a course for the future and not go backwards to the past,” Harris said.

This is true, though Trump says differently.

During the debate, Trump hit back at Harris, saying: “Let me just it was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. … That story has been, as you would say, debunked.”

Harris was referring to comments Trump made at a rally in Andalia, Ohio, in March.

At the rally, Trump vowed there would be a “bloodbath” if he’s not elected in November — comments that came during a broader tirade that included his referring to the possibility of an increasing trade war with China over auto manufacturing.

At the Ohio rally, Trump said: “If you’re listening, President Xi — and you and I are friends — but he understands the way I deal. Those big monster car manufacturing plants that you’re building in Mexico right now … you’re going to not hire Americans and you’re going to sell the cars to us, no. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected.”

“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it,” he added. “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories.”

Later, Trump said, “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”

Trump has continued to refuse to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. The doubt he cast on the results of the race helped sow the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

In response to the comments in March, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told NBC News at the time that “Biden’s policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers.”

Fact check: Who is responsible for the botched troop exit from Afghanistan?

“They didn’t fire anybody having to do with Afghanistan and the Taliban and the 13 people who were just killed, viciously and violently killed. And I got to know the parents and the family. They didn’t fire, they should have fired all those generals, all those top people, because that was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen,” Trump said.

This is true, but additional context is needed.

It’s true that no one in the Biden administration was held accountable for the final withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, a chaotic event that resulted in 13 deaths.

But Trump and Biden share responsibility for the withdrawal and its consequences. Both publicly supported pulling U.S. troops out and rejected advice from military commanders to keep a small U.S. force on the ground.

Trump and his supporters have tried to solely blame Biden and Harris for the chaotic pullout. The Biden administration, in a National Security Council report last year, tried to pin most of the blame on the Trump administration, arguing that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions.

In February 2020, the Trump administration negotiated an agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, reduced U.S. troops levels from 12,500 to 2,500, freed 5,000 Taliban prisoners in a prisoner exchange and required all U.S. troops to withdraw by May 1, 2021.

In return, the U.S received an ambiguous pledge from the Taliban not to allow Afghanistan to become a base for terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its allies. 

Trump then scaled back U.S. troop levels over the course of 2020 from about 13,000 to 2,500 as part of the deal, even though the Taliban didn’t keep their commitment to reduce violence and it maintained ties with Al Qaeda. Republican lawmakers in November expressed alarm over the troop reductions, with Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, warning of a “Saigon-type situation.”

The February 2020 Doha agreement and the troop drawdown presented Biden with difficult choices. Some administration officials were concerned that if the U.S. chose to renege on the Doha agreement, the administration would have to deploy additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan to bolster the small contingent remaining. That, in turn, risked triggering an intensified war with the Taliban.

The head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, recommended keeping a small force of 2,500 in place to counter the terrorist threat from the country and to support the Afghan army. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, agreed with the recommendation.

Biden eventually moved up the timeline for full troop withdrawal to Aug. 31 (from Sept. 11) as the Taliban made dramatic advances across the country.

In August, Taliban forces seized Kabul without a fight, and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country amid chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport. Desperate Afghans climbed onto the wings of a U.S. cargo plane and fell from the sky after it took off. 

On Aug. 26, a bombing at the airport’s Abbey Gate during the final days of the withdrawal killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans and wounded many more people. The attack was carried out by ISIS. 

Fact check: Trump says Harris ‘wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison’

“Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” Trump said.

This needs context.

CNN recently reported that in her response to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire in 2019, Harris said transgender people who rely on the state for care, including federal prisoners and detainees, should have access to gender transition treatment. The Harris campaign didn’t answer questions from CNN about whether she still supports that position.

Fact check: Trump says Democrats support ‘execution after birth’

“You can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia — not the current governor, who is doing an excellent job, but the governor before — he said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute it. And that’s why I did that, because that predominates, because they’re radical. The Democrats are radical. … Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth is execution — no longer abortion because the baby is born OK, and that’s not OK with me,” Trump said.

This is false.

While some Democrats, including Walz, support broad access to abortion regardless of gestation age, infanticide is illegal, and no Democrats advocate for it. What’s more, just 1% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and they are typically due to serious medical causes.

This is a frequent falsehood from Trump dating to 2019, referring to something former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, said on a radio program. NBC News debunked the claim then, reporting that Northam’s remarks were about resuscitating infants with severe deformities or nonviable pregnancies. 

Asked what happens when a woman who is going into labor desires a third-trimester abortion, Northam noted that such procedures occur only in cases of severe deformities or nonviable pregnancies. He said that in those scenarios, “the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Fact check: Are pets being harmed by migrants?

This is false.

Baseless rumors have spread on social media for days claiming that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Most of the rumors involve Springfield, which has a large number of Haitian immigrants, but police there knocked down the stories Monday in a statement saying they hadn’t seen any documented examples.

“There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the statement said.

Republicans, including Vance, have pointed to the claims as evidence that immigrants are causing chaos. Vance, though, hedged somewhat in a statement on X on Tuesday, saying, “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

Immigration is a potent subject in the presidential face. In an NBC News poll in April, 22% of voters put immigration and the border as the most important issue facing the country, second only to inflation and the cost of living, at 23%.

John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, denounced the claims about Haitians in Ohio as a dangerous conspiracy theory that could inspire anti-immigrant violence.

“There will be people that believe it no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is, and they might act on that kind of information and act on it in a way where somebody could get hurt,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Fact check: Have the jobs created under the Biden administration been ‘bounce-back’ jobs?

“[T]he only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs. These were jobs bounce back, and it bounced back, and it went to their benefit, but I was the one that created them,” Trump said.

This is false.

The U.S. regained all the jobs lost during the Covid-19 pandemic in June 2022. Since then, more than 6 million jobs have been created.

Fact check: Trump says inflation is ‘probably the worst in our nation’s history’

“Look, we’ve had a terrible economy because inflation has — which is really known as a country buster. It breaks up countries. We have inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history,” Trump said.

This is false.

Inflation is at 2.9%, the lowest it has been since March 2021, although the rate did reach a peak of 9.1% during June 2022 amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Inflation was at that level at multiple points of the Trump presidency, as well, in June and July 2018.

Fact check: Trump says he has ‘nothing to do with Project 2025’

“I have nothing to do with Project 2025. 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, some good, some bad, but it makes no difference,” Trump said.

This is misleading.

Trump has spent weeks trying to push back against associations with Project 2025, a 900-page policy wish list put out by the Heritage Foundation.

It’s true that Trump has disavowed some of the policies in the document and that he didn’t write it, but many of his allies and former aides are behind it and have advanced the positions proposed in it.

The Heritage Foundation also had significant influence in the Trump administration. In 2018, it boasted that Trump and his administration “embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations” it advanced in a similar document. 

Fact check: Are 21 million migrants coming into the U.S. monthly?

“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 21 million people, not the 15 that people say,” Trump said.

This is false.

According to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there have been an estimated 10 million encounters across U.S. land borders during the Biden administration. In July, CBP recorded 170,273 national encounters between and at U.S. ports of entry. The most national encounters recorded since the start of fiscal year 2024 has been 370,887.

Fact check: Would Trump tax cuts create a $5 trillion deficit?

“My opponent, on the other hand, his plan is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in $5 trillion to America’s deficit. My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month. Economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result for middle-class families in about $4,000 more a year,” Harris said.

This is true.

A report in May from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that extending the Trump tax cuts for 10 years would add $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit.

Harris’ reference to Trump’s “sales tax” actually refers to his proposal to raise tariffs on all nearly all imported basic goods by 10% and by up to 60% on basic goods imported from China. Economists, including from the left-leaning Center for American Progress, have said those levels of tariffs would pass costs on to consumers, amounting to about $3,900 in additional costs for an average middle-class family.