Kamala Harris accused her Republican rival Donald Trump on Tuesday, September 10, of being “the laughing stock” of international leaders and of being able to be “manipulated” by “dictators” during their first televised debate for the American presidential election.
“I’ve traveled the world as vice president of the United States and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump,” the Democratic candidate said, continuing:
“It is common knowledge that these dictators and autocrats want you to become president again because they know very well that they can manipulate you by flattering you and granting you favors.”
A first tense debate
According to Kamala Harris, if Donald Trump had been elected in 2020, Vladimir “Putin would be sitting in kyiv right now, his eyes fixed on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.” The Republican has promised to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible, and has defended his record on the international stage by highlighting the support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The Democratic vice president and the Republican candidate, who had never met face-to-face, quickly turned this debate in Philadelphia into a free-for-all on the economy, abortion and immigration.
Assuring that she had “cleaned up the mess” left by Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, for example, accused her opponent of spreading a “web of lies” about abortion and “insulting” American women.
Calling his rival a “Marxist”, he instead accused the vice-president of having “copied” Joe Biden’s program and of “destroying the social fabric of our country” by letting “millions of people flow into our country from prisons, psychiatric institutions and insane asylums”.
“Donald Trump left us with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression… the worst public health epidemic in a century (and) the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” she said, referring to his attempts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election.
- BFMTV.com
