Millions of people across the U.S. and world listened keenly on Thursday to Vice President Kamala Harris, as she spoke on perhaps the biggest stage of her presidential campaign that began just a month ago. But perhaps no one was as glued to the speech capping the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as Harris’ Republican opponent, Donald Trump, who offered his blow-by-blow live reaction on social media and instant reaction on TV.
“IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” the former President posted on his platform Truth Social, as Harris warned of the dangers of another Trump presidency, accusing him of election fraud and inciting the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump nitpicked at Harris’ script and delivery: “Too many ‘Thank yous,’ too rapidly said, what’s going on with her?” he posted as she took the stage. “A lot of talk about childhood, we’ve got to get to the Border, Inflation, and Crime!” he wrote in another post, one of more than 30 posted between the start and end of Harris’ 40-minute speech.
And immediately after Harris finished, Trump called in to conservative channels Fox News and Newsmax to offer his takes. “I personally thought it was a terrible speech. It was very nonspecific. It was also very short. She just wanted to get off the stage, because her ideas are bad,” he told Newsmax. (Trump’s own Republican National Convention speech last month, at over 90 minutes, was criticized by observers for running so long.)
He also rattled off a list of topics he said he was disappointed Harris didn’t mention (including some that she did)—interest rates, China, fracking, crime, poverty, housing, the trade deficit, trafficking, the border—before saying on Fox, with the only compliment he seemed able to muster, “other than that, it was a nice-looking room.”
Both in his simultaneous posts and his post-speech cable news debriefs, Trump offered a number of policy-related rebukes of Harris’ remarks—though he wasn’t always truthful in his assessments.
Here’s what to know about the things Trump said about what Harris said.
On the border
What Harris said: If elected President, Harris said she would bring back the bipartisan border security bill that didn’t pass earlier this year. “[President] Joe [Biden] and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades,” she said. “But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security.”
What Trump said: “The Border Bill is one of the worst ever written, would have allowed millions of people into our Country, and it’s only a political ploy by her! It legalizes Illegal Immigration, and is a TOTAL DISASTER, WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE! She doesn’t need a Bill. As President, Crooked Joe and her could have just said, ‘CLOSE THE BORDER!’ like I did – I didn’t have a Bill, I didn’t need a Bill. The Border Patrol respected me, they did their job. We had the Safest Border in Recorded History!” he posted. And in apparent reaction to Harris saying she would seek to revive the bill, he added: “She just called to give all Illegals CITIZENSHIP, SAY GOODBYE TO THE U.S.A.! SHE IS A RADICAL MARXIST!”
Trump offered similar remarks again on TV, saying that the bipartisan bill was “horrible” and that the Biden-Harris Administration “doesn’t need” legislation to “close the border,” which it could do “right now,” like he says he did during his administration. Trump also blamed Harris, whom he called “the border czar,” for letting in migrants who he said are being “put on Social Security and Medicare” and “killing and maiming lots of people.”
The reality and context: Migrant crime, as a point of fear mongering, has been statistically shown to be a “myth.” And on the notion of migrants straining Social Security and Medicare, something Trump has repeated, the Washington Post’s fact checker gave that “four pinocchios”—undocumented immigrants actually improve the status of those federal welfare programs by paying taxes without receiving benefits. Similarly, the Post’s fact checker has said that the claim that the Biden-Harris Administration could “close the border” without legislation is dubious: Trump used executive orders to effectively close the border during the COVID-19 pandemic and to try to restrict immigration throughout his Administration, but courts repeatedly found that “he was overstepping the law—which suggests a new law might be necessary,” according to the Post. The bipartisan border security bill that Trump described as “ineffective” and “horrible” was endorsed by the border patrol officer union, the Chamber of Commerce, and the typically conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, before it was killed by Senate Republicans at Trump’s urging. As for the moniker of “border czar” that Trump has applied to Harris, the reality of her role addressing root causes of migration flows was more complicated.
On reproductive rights
What Harris said: Harris called Trump and his Republican allies “out of their minds” for working against reproductive freedoms. “As a part of his agenda, he and his allies will limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress. And … he plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions,” she said.
What Trump said: “Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives, wanted Roe v. Wade TERMINATED, and brought back to the States. Like Ronald Reagan and myself, most believe in EXCEPTIONS. Now the people are voting, which is the way it was supposed to be. I do not limit access to birth control or I.V.F. – THAT IS A LIE, these are all false stories that she’s making up, that I’ve never even heard of. It’s just words coming out of her mouth,” he posted.
In his interview on Newsmax, Trump said he had “never even heard” of plans to have an anti-abortion coordinator. As for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Trump reiterated that his administration simply did what people “wanted us to do” and that “people are happy” that abortion rights are out of the federal domain and deferred to the states.
The reality and context: While the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade was broadly unpopular, Trump has not explicitly endorsed the policies Harris listed. He has declined to endorse a nationwide ban on abortion, saying that the decision must be left to the states. As for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), Trump said earlier this year, “The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life … IVF is an important part of that.” He has also said that he “will never advocate imposing restrictions on birth control, or other contraceptives,” despite some Republican allies pushing for such measures. It’s unclear what the source is of Harris’ claim of a “national anti-abortion coordinator.”
On foreign policy
What Harris said: Harris said that she “will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself” while also calling for an end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. She recalled how she was tasked with warning Zelensky of a Russian invasion in 2022, and claimed that Trump “threatened to abandon NATO” and “encouraged Putin to invade our allies.” She also slammed Trump’s friendliness with controversial authoritarian leaders. “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un who are rooting for Trump,” she said. “They know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable, because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”
What Trump said: “She stands for Incompetence and Weakness – Our Country is being laughed at all over the World!” Trump posted. “The Tyrants are laughing at her, she’s weak and ineffective, and for three and a half years she has done nothing except enabled them to get STRONG, RICH, and POWERFUL!” he said in another post. He also declared that Harris “HATES ISRAEL” and “wouldn’t even show up to Congress for Netanyahu’s session,” and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “would have never started if I were President.”
The reality and context: On the issue of Gaza, Harris has tried to walk a fine line between supporting Israel and calling attention to the humanitarian costs of the war. While Harris did not show up for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address in Congress last month, amid growing division in Washington over Israel’s war in Gaza, she condemned the anti-Israel protests in the capital during Netanyahu’s visit and has maintained the Biden Administration’s position that Israel has a right to defend itself, while facing ongoing criticisms for not standing up more for Palestinians.
Harris’ claims that Trump has threatened to abandon NATO and encouraged Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade allies are true. Trump has also expressed, as recently as last week, admiration for autocrats including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi Jinping, and Putin, and the New York Times has reported that China and Russia are indeed hopeful of a Trump return to the White House. (Trump has also promised to be a “dictator” on “day one” of a second term, though he later said the comment was only meant to trigger the left.)
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Harris has continuously engaged with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on U.S. support; Trump, meanwhile, has blamed the Biden administration for not being able to deter the invasion in the first place and promised to end the war without specifying how—though he has been publicly critical of Zelensky and complained that the wartime leader’s requests for U.S. support “never ends.”
On Project 2025
What Harris said: “We know what a second Trump term would look like,” Harris said, pointing to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 presidential transition playbook that many Democrats at the DNC have used to attack the former President. “Its sum total is to pull our country back to the past. But America, we are not going back.”
What Trump said: “LYING AGAIN ABOUT PROJECT 2025, WHICH SHE KNOWS, AND SO DO ALL DEMOCRATS, THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH!” he posted.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump told Fox. “I have no idea what it is,” he told Newsmax.
The reality and context: Trump and his campaign have been trying to distance themselves from Project 2025 for months, while the Biden-turned-Harris campaign has tried to tie him to it. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said in early July. “Some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” While the project is technically independent from the official platforms of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party, Project 2025 remains closely associated with what a Trump Administration would likely look like: Among the hundreds of conservatives who came up with its policy proposals are some of Trump’s closest advisors.
On the economy
What Harris said: Harris shared her experience of growing up in a middle-class household and talked about the importance of having a “strong middle class,” which she identified as a “defining goal” of her presidency. She outlined her vision of creating an “opportunity economy,” in which people from different backgrounds can have a “chance to succeed.” She also pledged to end the country’s housing shortage, protect Social Security and Medicare, and pass a middle-class tax cut. “Now compare that to Donald Trump,” Harris said. “He doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends. And he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt. And all the while, he intends to enact what, in effect, is a national sales tax—call it, a Trump tax—that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year.”
What Trump said: “She’s talking about the Middle Class, but she’s the one who broke the Middle Class, and made it UNSAFE AND UNAFFORDABLE!” Trump posted on Truth Social. He also claimed that houses were more affordable under his presidency and, in response to Harris’ “opportunity economy” pitch, said that he “created Opportunity Zones, the Most Successful Economic Development Policy in years.”
During his interview on Fox News, Trump claimed that Harris’ economic policies would send the country into a “depression,” because she was going to “give a tax increase of four to five times what people and companies are paying right now” and “people can’t go to the American Dream and buy a house because they can’t afford the interest rate.” He also accused Harris of not addressing the $35 trillion national debt, which he said was going to start paying off with “liquid gold that we have right under our feet”—a reference to his proposal to tackle economic woes by increasing oil and gas drilling.
The reality and context: While Trump has often pitched oil and gas drilling in opposition to Democrats’ push for renewable energy, U.S. crude oil production has actually soared to record levels under the Biden-Harris Administration. And the Opportunity Zones, often cited by Trump as one of his best economic policy achievements, have delivered uneven opportunities to residents of low-income areas, and the program’s effectiveness in alleviating poverty in these neighborhoods is unproven.
Trump is right that home affordability is currently at a low point, but economists say his constant harping about inflation under the Biden-Harris Administration is misleading and that his plans could actually worsen the situation. While Harris said his “national sales tax”—a label her campaign has given to his tariffs plan—would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year, an August estimate by the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress placed the annual burden per household between $2,500 and $3,900, while the Peterson Institute for International Economics’ estimated the cost on middle-income households to be more than $2,600 per year.
As for the national debt, an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, as Republicans have proposed, would add an estimated $4.6 trillion to the national debt, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, the Brookings Institution reported in May, when Biden was the Democratic candidate, that Biden’s alternative policies would raise about $5 trillion in revenue by 2034.
On the state of the race
What Harris said: Harris did not address the state of the presidential race during her speech. The most she said on the topic was: “To the delegates and everyone who has put your faith in our campaign—your support is humbling.”
What Trump said: In response to a question on Fox News about his strategy to win back the women and minority voters whom the Harris campaign has managed to sway, Trump said: “Now she’s not having success. I’m having success. I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters. I’m doing great with Black men. I’m doing great with women because women want safety.”
“We’re doing very well in the polls, we’re leading in most of the polls,” he said. “And in the swing states, we’re leading in almost every one of them.”
And when asked if he was ready to debate Harris on Sept. 10, “given what you’ve heard tonight,” Trump said that he was “ready, willing, and able” to debate and that Harris was the one that had previously turned down an offer to do so.
The reality and context: Trump previously had a substantial lead in opinion polling before Biden dropped out of the race last month leading Harris to take over the top of the ticket. But since then, Harris has made significant headway and was leading in polling averages at the start of the convention this week—and is expected to receive even more of a bump after.
The question about debate participation has gone back and forth for weeks, with Trump initially reluctant to agree to a debate on ABC News due to feeling the network was biased against him but ultimately accepting its invitation to debate Harris on Sept. 10. Trump has said he is also willing to debate on Fox News and on NBC News, while the Harris campaign has said it will do one more debate other than the one on ABC but without specifying yet which.
