This is the sixth in a series on the Trump/Harris debate. Prior posts are here, here and here, The debate transcript is available here.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: People are paying privately for insurance that have worked hard and made money and they want to have private. She wants everybody to be on government insurance where you wait six months for an operation that you need immediately.
COMMENT: it is fair to remind people that Harris in 2019 did pursue a single-payer-system and nearly two-thirds of people generally like their private sector coverage, typically employer-provided insurance. Kamala has pivoted to more popular Obamacare, with private-sector participants.
LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump, thank you. We have another issue that we'd like to get to that's important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters, and that's climate change. President Trump, with regard to the environment, you say that we have to have clean air and clean water. Vice President Harris, you call climate change an existential threat. The question to you both tonight is what would you do to fight climate change? And Vice President Harris, we'll start with you. One minute for you each.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, the former president had said that climate change is a hoax. And what we know is that it is very real. You ask anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up. You ask anybody who has been the victim of what that means in terms of losing their home, having nowhere to go. We know that we can actually deal with this issue. The young people of America care deeply about this issue. And I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president. We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world. Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs. And I'm also proud to have the endorsement of the United Auto Workers and Shawn Fain, who also know that part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American-made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.
COMMENT: Once again, Harris is really not really responding directly to the moderator's question, which, for example, did not even mention manufacturing. She's using the context to launch a separate attack on Trump. Keep in mind that the US trend of service to manufacturing jobs is part of a long-term global trend, not peculiar to the US economy. Our manufacturing sector has been productive but there is a separate trend of increasing productivity, like automation and robotics
We libertarians take a dim view of industrial policy or corrupt crony capitalism. We don't need elite policymakers gambling with the tax revenue of future generations. The EV subsidies will profit said producers but will have expensive marginal effects on one type of greenhouse gas. There seems to be no thought on how that energy is going to be generated reliably, like via nuclear power
Harris asserts basically all recent weather events are based on human-based climate change; I had a prior related discussion during the VP debate and I excerpt here:
The problem is that “expectations” are predictions, usually based upon climate models that have overstated the actual temperature record by a factor of about 2.3." What do scientists really say? { Benjamin Zycher)
[T]here is still no consensus on the relative magnitude of human and natural influences on past changes in Atlantic hurricane activity, and particularly on which factor has dominated the observed increase (Ting et al., 2015) and it remains uncertain whether past changes in Atlantic [tropical cyclone] activity are outside the range of natural variability.
LINSEY DAVIS: Vice President Harris, thank you.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That didn't happen under Donald Trump. Let me just tell you, they lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs this last month. It's going -- they're all leaving. They're building big auto plants in Mexico. In many cases owned by China. They're building these massive plants, and they think they're going to sell their cars into the United States because of these people. What they have given to China is unbelievable. But we're not going to let that. We'll put tariffs on those cars so they can't come into our country. Because they will kill the United Auto Workers and any auto worker, whether it's in Detroit or South Carolina or any other place. What they've done to business and manufacturing in this country is horrible. We have nothing because they refuse -- you know, Biden doesn't go after people because supposedly China paid him millions of dollars. He's afraid to do it. Between him and his son. They get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder why is he so loyal to this one, that one Ukraine, China? Why is he? Why did he get 3 1/2 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow's wife? Why did he get -- why did she pay him 3 1/2 million dollars? This is a crooked administration, and they're selling our country down the tubes.
COMMENT: Trump's response has nothing to do with climate change. Once again, Harris has succeeded in getting under Trump's skin. Trump ends up rehashing debunked conspiracy theories like the alleged $3,5M bribe to Biden. Trump is a one-trick pony starting trade wars which harm American consumers and the economy/
LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump, thank you.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you.
DAVID MUIR: We'll be right back with closing statements from both of our candidates. A historic night, this ABC News Presidential Debate from Philadelphia. Back in a moment.
DAVID MUIR: The time has come for closing statements. And Vice President Harris, we begin with you.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So I think you've heard tonight two very different visions for our country. One that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past. And an attempt to take us backward. But we're not going back. And I do believe that the American people know we all have so much more in common than what separates us and we can chart a new way forward. And a vision of that includes having a plan, understanding the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the ambition of the American people, which is why I intend to create an opportunity economy, investing in small businesses, in new families, in what we can do around protecting seniors, what we can do that is about giving hard-working folks a break in bringing down the cost of living. I believe in what we can do together that is about sustaining America's standing in the world and ensuring we have the respect that we so rightly deserve including respecting our military and ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world. I will be a president that will protect our fundamental rights and freedoms including the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do. I'll tell you, I started my career as a prosecutor. I was a D.A. I was an attorney general. A United States senator. And now vice president. I've only had one client. The people. And I'll tell you, as a prosecutor I never asked a victim or a witness are you a Republican or a Democrat. The only thing I ever asked them, are you okay? And that's the kind of president we need right now. Someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first. I intend to be a president for all Americans and focus on what we can do over the next 10 and 20 years to build back up our country by investing right now in you the American people.
COMMENT: Kamala Harris has no credible public sector administrative experience. She's basically had 7 undistinguished years in DC, 3 as a junior Senator and the last 4 as VP. At low interest rates, we have a $1T debt service expense, more than our inflated DoD budget. We have a nearly built $2T annual deficit, and she has not improved the last 4 years of failed Biden Statist policies, no retreat from overextended international meddling. She offers nothing new other than throwing more money at problems which do little more than exacerbate inflationary pressures
LINSEY DAVIS: Vice President Harris, thank you. President Trump?
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So, she just started by saying she's going to do this, she's going to do that, she's going to do all these wonderful things. Why hasn't she done it? She's been there for 3 1/2 years. They've had 3 1/2 years to fix the border. They've had 3 1/2 years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn't she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful white house, go to the capitol, get everyone together and do the things you want to do. But you haven't done it. And you won't do it. Because you believe in things that the American people don't believe in. You believe in things like we're not going to frack. We're not going to take fossil fuel. We're not going to do, things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants. We're not ready for it. We can't sacrifice our country for the sake of bad vision. But I just ask one simple question. Why didn't she do it? We're a failing nation. We're a nation that's in serious decline. We're being laughed at all over the world. All over the world, they laugh, I know the leaders very well. They're coming to see me. They call me. We're laughed at all over the world. They don't understand what happened to us as a nation. We're not a leader. We don't have any idea what's going on. We have wars going on in the Middle East. We have wars going on with Russia and Ukraine. We're going to end up in a third World War. And it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban. She gave it to Afghanistan. What these people have done to our country, and maybe toughest of all is allowing millions of people to come into our country, many of them are criminals, and they're destroying our country. The worst president, the worst vice president in the history of our country.
COMMENT: Extremely bad closing statement. it's mostly an attack using Harris' old 2019 positions in the Dem POTUS primary and decisions made by Biden, not Harris. This is a guy whose foreign policy was a mess: discarding trade deals with Pacific and European partners. He ended a nuclear power deal with Iran, supported Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen. he mishandled the pandemic, including signing massive pandemic relief, a deferred part of the inflation story. He has no solution to nearly bankrupt senior entitlements, no plan for eliminating a nearly baked in $2T deficit. His anti-trade and anti-immigration stands harm economic growth
LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump thank you. And that is our ABC News presidential debate from here in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center. I'm Linsey Davis.
DAVID MUIR: And I'm David Muir. Thank you for watching here in the U.S. And all over the world. And from all of us here at ABC News, good night.
