NPR fact-checked the Harris-Trump presidential debate. Here's what we found
Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off Tuesday in their first — and possibly only — debate of the 2024 campaign, taking questions on key issues like the border, the economy and abortion.
With the candidates virtually tied in the polls, and just 55 days until Election Day, Trump and Harris sought to define their visions for America in front of a national audience and deflect attacks from the other side.
NPR reporters fact-checked the candidates' claims in real time. Here's what they found:
Economy
TRUMP: "I had no inflation, virtually no inflation. They had the highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country, because I've never seen a worse period of time. People can't go out and buy cereal or bacon or eggs or anything else."
Inflation soared to a four-decade high of 9.1% in 2022, according to the consumer price index. While inflation has since fallen to 2.9% (as of July), prices — particularly food prices — are still higher than many Americans would like.
Other countries have also faced high inflation in the wake of the pandemic, as tangled supply chains struggled to keep pace with surging demand. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also fueled inflation by driving up energy and food prices worldwide.
Government spending in the U.S. under both the Biden-Harris administration and Trump also may have contributed, putting more money in people’s pockets and enabling them to keep spending in the face of high prices.
While high prices are a source of frustration for many Americans, the average worker has more buying power today than she did before the pandemic. Since February 2020 (just before the pandemic took hold in the U.S.), consumer prices have risen 21.6% while average wages have risen 23%.
Many prices were depressed early in the pandemic, however, so the comparison is less flattering if you start the clock when President Biden and Vice President Harris took office. Since early 2021, consumer prices have risen 19.6%, while average wages have risen 16.9%. Wage gains have been outpacing price increases for over a year, so that gap should eventually close.
— NPR economics correspondent Scott Horsley
HARRIS: "Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression."
At the height of the Great Depression in 1933, the national unemployment rate was near 25%, according to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.
At the start of the COVID pandemic, the unemployment rate peaked at 14.8% in April 2020, a level not seen since 1948, according to the Congressional Research Service.
But by the time Trump left office, unemployment had fallen to a lower, but still elevated, level. The January 2021 unemployment rate was 6.3%.
Immigration
TRUMP: "You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio, you look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They're taking over buildings. They're going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country, and they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out."
Trump attacked Harris and Biden's records on immigration, arguing that they're failing to stem people from other countries from entering the U.S. and causing violence.
In the last two years, more than 40,000 Venezuelan immigrants have arrived in the Denver metro area. And it is true that many now live in Aurora.
A few weeks ago, a video of gang members in an Aurora, Colo., apartment building had right-wing media declaring the city's takeover by Venezuelan gangs. NPR looked into these claims.
Shortly after the video appeared, Colorado's Republican Party sent a fundraising letter claiming the state is under violent attack, and Venezuelan gangs have taken over Aurora.
It's also true Aurora police have recently arrested 10 members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua. But Aurora's interim police chief, Heather Morris, says there's no evidence of a gang takeover of apartment buildings in her city.
What's more, violent crime — including murder, robbery and rape — is way down nationwide, according to the most recent data from the FBI. Notably, analysts predict violent crime rates this year will fall back down to where they were before they surged during the pandemic and may even approach a 50-year low.
Trump also claims that migrants are driving up crime rates in the U.S. That is not true. Researchers from Stanford University found that since the 1960s, immigrants have been 60% less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the U.S. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found undocumented immigrants in Texas were 37% less likely to be convicted of a crime.
— NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd and criminal justice reporter Meg Anderson
TRUMP: "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there."
This remark refers to a debunked, dehumanizing claim that Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio, are abducting pets and eating them.
The claim, which local police say is baseless, first circulated among far-right activists, local Republicans and neo-Nazis before being picked up by congressional leaders, vice presidential candidate JD Vance and others. A well-known advocate for the Haitian community says she received a wave of racist harassment after Vance shared the theory on social media.
The Springfield News-Sun reported that local police said that incidents of pets being stolen or eaten were "not something that's on our radar right now." The paper said the unsubstantiated claim seems to have started with a post in a Springfield Facebook group that was widely shared across social media.
The claim is the latest example of Trump leaning into anti-immigrant rhetoric. Since entering the political arena in 2015, Trump accused immigrants of being criminals, rapists, or "poisoning the blood of our nation."
— NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd
TRUMP: "A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, [Democrats] are trying to get them to vote."
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and there is no credible evidence that it has happened in significant numbers, or that there is an effort underway to illegally register undocumented immigrants to vote this election.
Voter registration forms require voters to sign an oath — under penalty of perjury — that they are U.S. citizens. If a noncitizen lies about their citizenship on a registration form and votes, they have created a paper trail of a crime that is punishable with jail time and deportation.
“The deterrent is incredibly strong,” David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told NPR.
Election officials routinely verify information on voter registration forms, which ask registrants for either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
In 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice surveyed local election officials in 42 jurisdictions with high immigrant populations and found 30 cases of suspected noncitizens voting out of 23.5 million votes cast, or 0.0001%.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger launched an audit in 2022 that found fewer than 1,700 suspected noncitizens had attempted to register to vote over the past 25 years. None were able to vote.
— NPR disinformation reporter Jude Joffe-Block
TRUMP: "[Harris] was the border czar. Remember that she was the border czar."
Republicans have taken to calling Harris the "border czar" as a way to blame her for increased migration to the U.S. and what they see as border security policy failures of the Biden administration.
There is no actual "border czar" position. In 2021, President Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes of migration from Central America.
The "root causes strategy ... identifies, prioritizes, and coordinates actions to improve security, governance, human rights, and economic conditions in the region," the White House said in a statement. "It integrates various U.S. government tools, including diplomacy, foreign assistance, public diplomacy, and sanctions."
While Harris has been scrutinized on the right, immigration advocates have also criticized Harris, including for comments in 2021 where she warned prospective migrants, "Do not come."
— NPR immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd
Abortion
TRUMP: "You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month, and probably after birth."
As ABC News anchor Linsey Davis mentioned during her real-time fact check, there is no state where it is legal to kill a baby after birth (Trump called it "execution"). A report from KFF earlier this year also noted that abortions “after birth” are illegal in every state.
According to the Pew Research Center, the overwhelming majority of abortions — 93% — take place during the first trimester. Pew says 1% take place after 21 weeks. Most of those take place before 24 weeks, the approximate timeline for fetal viability, according to a report by KFF Health News.
A separate analysis from KFF earlier this year noted that later abortions are expensive to obtain and offered by relatively few providers, and often occur because of medical complications or because patients face barriers earlier in their pregnancies.
“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That isn’t happening; it’s insulting to the women of America,” Harris said.
Harris also invoked religion in her response, arguing that “one does not have to abandon their faith” to agree that the government should not control reproductive health decisions.
As Davis also noted, Trump has offered mixed messages about abortion over the course of the campaign. He has bragged about his instrumental role in overturning Roe v. Wade, while appearing to backpedal on an issue that polling makes clear is a liability for Republicans.
— NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon
Afghanistan
TRUMP: The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan "was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen."
Trump and Republicans in Congress say President Biden is to blame for the fall of Kabul to the Taliban three years ago, and the chaotic rush at the airport where 13 U.S. troops died in a suicide bomb attack that killed nearly 200 Afghan civilians trying to flee. Of late, Republicans have been emphasizing Harris’ role. But the Afghanistan war spanned four U.S. presidencies, and it's important to note that it was the Trump administration that signed a peace deal that was basically a quick exit plan.
Trump regularly claims there were no casualties in Afghanistan for 18 months under his administration, and it’s not true, according to Pentagon records.
— NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence
Military policy
HARRIS: “There is not one member of the military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.”
This is a common administration talking point, and it's technically true. But thousands of troops in Iraq and on the Syrian border are still in very dangerous terrain. U.S. troops died in Jordan in January on a base that keeps watch over the war with ISIS in Syria.
— NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence
Fracking
HARRIS: "I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president United States, and in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the inflation Reduction Act which opened new leases for fracking."
When she first ran for president in 2019, Harris had said she was firmly in favor of banning fracking — a stance she later abandoned when she joined President Biden’s campaign as his running mate.
In an interview with CNN last month, Harris attempted to explain why her position has changed from being against fracking to being in favor of it.
“What I have seen is that we can grow, and we can increase a clean energy economy without banning fracking,” Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. produced a record amount of oil last year — averaging 12.9 million barrels per day. That eclipsed the previous record of 12.3 million barrels per day, set under Trump in 2019. 2023 was also a record year for domestic production of natural gas. Much of the domestic boom in oil and gas production is the result of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” techniques.
In addition to record oil and gas production, the Biden-Harris administration has also coincided with rapid growth of solar and wind power. Meanwhile, coal has declined as a source of electricity.
— NPR economics correspondent Scott Horsley
Health care
TRUMP: "I had a choice to make: Do I save [the Affordable Care Act] and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot? And I saved it."
During his presidency, Trump undermined the Affordable Care Act in many ways — for instance, by slashing funding for advertising and free "navigators" who help people sign up for a health insurance plan on HealthCare.gov. And rather than deciding to "save" the ACA, he tried hard to get Congress to repeal it, and failed. When pushed Tuesday on what health policy he would put in its place, he said he has "concepts of a plan."
The Biden administration has reversed course from Trump's management of the Affordable Care Act. Increased subsidies have made premiums more affordable in the marketplaces, and enrollment has surged. The uninsurance rate has dropped to its lowest point ever during the Biden administration.
The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 and is entrenched in the health care system. Republicans successfully ran against Obamacare for about a decade, but it has faded as a campaign issue this year.
