In this combination photo, Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a debate, Oct. 7, 2020, in Salt Lake City, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a debate, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Kamala Harris and Donald Trump showcased starkly different visions for the country Tuesday on abortion, immigration and American democracy as they met for the first time for perhaps their only debate before November’s presidential election.

The Democratic vice president tried to get under the skin of the Republican former president, provoking him with reminders about the 2020 election loss that he still denies and delivering derisive asides at his other false claims. Harris’ needling prompted Trump to launch into the sort of freewheeling personal attacks and digressions from which his advisers and supporters have tried to steer him away.

The pair outlined sharply opposite visions of where the nation is and where they intend to take it if elected. Harris promised tax cuts aimed at the middle class and said she would push to restore a federally guaranteed right to abortion overturned by the Supreme Court two years ago. Trump said his proposed tariffs would help the U.S. stop being cheated by allies on trade and said he would work to swiftly end the Russia-Ukraine war, even if it meant Ukraine didn’t achieve victory on the battlefield.

The debate, Trump’s seventh as a presidential nominee as he mounts his third run for the White House and Harris’ first, was perhaps the best opportunity by Harris to define herself on her own terms to voters. Their debate concluded hours before the first ballots of the election will begin to be mailed Wednesday in Alabama. Election Day is Nov. 5, less than two months away.

Harris’ performance by nearly every measure seemed to be the opposite of President Joe Biden’s in June, with sharp, focused answers designed to hit her talking points while needling Trump, whereas Biden at times was muddled, halting and at times incoherent. Harris used her body language and facial expressions to confront Trump and express that she found his answers ridiculous or amusing — or both — while Biden at times had a slack-jawed expression while Trump attacked him.

In one moment, Harris turned to Trump and said that as vice president, she had spoken to foreign leaders, “And they say you’re a disgrace.”

Trump in turn tried to link Harris to Biden, questioning why she hadn’t acted on her proposed ideas while serving as vice president. “Why hasn’t she done it?” he said. Trump also focused his attacks on Harris over her assignment by Biden to deal with the root causes of illegal migration.

He repeatedly dismissed her and Biden as weak, and cited the praise of Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán to show that he is a widely respected by leaders around the world, saying Orbán calls him the “most feared person.”

Trump again denied his loss to Biden four years ago, when his efforts to overturn the result inspired the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said, “So let’s be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

Saying it’s “time to turn the page,” Harris delivered an appeal to Republicans and independents turned off by Trump’s style and his efforts four years ago to overturn the 2020 presidential election, saying there’s a place in her campaign for them “to stand for country, to stand for our democracy, to stand for rule of law and to end the chaos.”

Trump twice declined to say that it was in the best interest of the U.S. for Ukraine to win its war against Russia. Harris said it was an example of why America’s NATO allies were thankful he was no longer in office, as she and Biden have sent tens of billions of dollars to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s invasion.

As the former president made a series of false claims about migrants, Harris seemed to smirk as he said that migrants are “taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics.”

“Talk about extreme,” Harris responded, when Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats.

The candidates met in a small, blue-lit amphitheater converted into a television studio, with no live audience, meaning there was no rowdy applause, cheers or jeers. The intimate setting — with the candidates’ lecterns positioned less than 10 feet from each other — belied the contentious debate to follow.

As Harris seemed to try to interject during one of his responses, Trump replied, “I’m talking now, sound familiar?” harkening back to a moment when Harris shut down an interruption from then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Harris sharply criticized Trump for the state of the economy and democracy when he left office, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the nation and after his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess,” Harris said. She opened her answer by saying she expects voters to hear “a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling” from her GOP opponent during their 90-minute debate.

Trump, meanwhile, quickly went after Harris for abandoning some of her past liberal positions and said: “She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.” Harris smiled broadly and laughed.

Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.”

As the debate opened, Harris walked up to Trump’s lectern to introduce herself, marking the first time the two had ever met. “Kamala Harris,” she said, extending her hand to Trump, who received it in a handshake — the first presidential debate handshake since the 2016 campaign.

Harris, in zeroing in on one of Trump’s biggest electoral vulnerabilities, laid the end of a federally guaranteed right to abortion at Trump’s feet for his role in appointing three U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving more than 20 states in the country with what she called “Trump abortion bans.”

Harris gave one of her most impassioned answers as she described the ways women have been denied abortion care and other emergency care and said Trump would assign a national abortion ban if he wins.

Trump declared it “a lie,” and said, “I’m not signing a ban and there’s no reason to sign a ban.”

The Republican has said he wants the issue left to the states.

Harris used a question about her plans to improve the economy by saying she would extend the tax cut for families with children and a tax deduction for small businesses while attacking Trump’s plans to impose broad tariffs as a “sales tax” on goods that the American people will ultimately pay.

Trump was stone-faced during her answer but retorted: “I have no sales tax. That’s in incorrect statement. She knows that.”

Trump, who is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House continued to call Harris a “Marxist,” and said “Everyone knows she’s a Marxist.”

Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.

“I read where she was not Black,” Trump said when asked about comments questioning Harris’ race, and then he added a minute later, “and then I read that she was Black.” He seemed to suggest her race was a choice, saying twice, “That’s up to her.”

“I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,” Harris responded.

Harris said Trump has a long history of racial division, going back to when his family’s company was investigated for refusing to rent to black people decades ago. She also mentioned that he called for the death penalty for the “Central Park Five,” who were falsely accused of rape, and spread false “birther” theories about President Barack Obama.

“I think the American people want better than that, want better than this,” she said, nodding toward Trump.

Harris hit Trump on one of his biggest sources of pride, his freewheeling campaign rallies. Harris noted how at the events, Trump, as he meanders through subjects, will sometimes muse on “fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” and whether “windmills cause cancer,” and then said that if you watch his events “you will also notice that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

“The one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. Your needs, your dreams and your desires.”

Trump tried to use his next question to respond by accusing Harris of having no one attending her rallies except the people that he claimed, without evidence, that she has bused in and paid to be there.

“She can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” he said.

In rapid fashion after the June 27 debate between Trump and Biden, the incumbent bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and both sides chose their running mates.

The debate subjected Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.

Trump at one point launched into an attack on Biden, questioning his mental acuity by making the claim that Biden “doesn’t even know he’s alive.”

Harris quickly tried to turn it around to make Trump look less than sharp.

“First of all, I think it’s important to remind the former president, you’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me,” she said.

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Price and Miller reported from Washington. AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Here’s a look at false and misleading claims made by the candidates.

Trump falsely touts his economy

TRUMP: “I created one of the greatest economies in the history of our country. … They’ve destroyed the economy.”

THE FACTS: This is an exaggeration. The economy grew much faster under Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan than it did under Trump. The broadest measure of economic growth, gross domestic product, rose 4% a year for four straight years under Clinton. The fastest growth under Trump was 3% in 2018. The economy shrank 2.2% in 2020, at the end of Trump’s presidency. And a higher proportion of American adults had jobs under Clinton than under Trump. During the Biden-Harris administration, the economy expanded 5.8% in 2021, though much of that reflected a bounce-back from COVID.

Inflation has trekked down

TRUMP: “They had the highest inflation perhaps in the history of our country, because I’ve never seen a worse period of time.”

THE FACTS: While praising the strength of the economy under his presidency, Donald Trump misstated the inflation rate under Biden. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 after rising steadily in the first 17 months of Biden’s presidency from a low of 0.1% in May 2020. It’s now seeing a downward trend. The most recent data shows that as of July it had fallen to 2.9%. Other historical periods have seen higher inflation, which hit more than 14 percent in 1980, according to the Federal Reserve.

Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025

HARRIS: “What you’re going to hear tonight is a detailed and dangerous plan called Project 2025 that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected again.”

THE FACTS: Trump has said he doesn’t know about Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for another Republican presidential administration.

The plan was written up by many of his former aides and allies, but Trump has never said he’ll implement the roughly 900-page guide if he’s elected again. On the contrary, he has said it’s not related to his campaign.

Trump’s taxing and spending plan examined

HARRIS: “What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump’s plan would actually explode the deficit.”

THE TRUTH: The Penn-Wharton Budget Model did find that Trump’s tax and spending plans would significantly expand the deficit by $5.8 trillion over ten years. But it also found that Harris’ plans would increase the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the same period.

Harris’ record on fracking examined

TRUMP: “If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on Day 1.”

THE FACTS: Trump’s statement ignores the fact that without a law approved by Congress, a president can only ban fracking on federal lands.

The federal government owns about 2% of Pennsylvania’s total land, and it is not clear how much of that is suitable for oil or gas drilling.

Republicans have criticized Harris for “flip-flopping” on the issue, noting that Harris said in the 2020 campaign that she opposed fracking, a drilling technique that is widely used in Pennsylvania and other states.

Harris has since said repeatedly that she won’t ban fracking if elected, and she reiterated that in Tuesday’s debate.

Trump misrepresents crime statistics

TRUMP, criticizing the Biden administration: “Crime is through the roof.”

THE FACTS: In fact, FBI data has shown a downward trend in violent crime since a coronavirus pandemic spike. Violent crime surged during the pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% between in 2020 over the previous year — the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records

Violent crime was down 6% in the last three months of 2023 compared with the same period the year before, according to FBI data released in March. Murders were down 13%. New FBI statistics released in June show the overall violent crime rate declined 15% in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year. One expert has cautioned, however, that those 2024 figures are preliminary and may overstate the actual reduction in crime.

Trump endorses false rumor about immigrants eating pets

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.”

THE FACTS: There’s no evidence to support the claim, which Trump and his campaign have used to argue immigrants are committing crimes at a higher rate than others.

Authorities in Ohio have said there are no credible or detailed reports to support Trump’s claim.

Jobs created under the Biden administration

“TRUMP: “Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”

THE FACTS: This is a mischaracterization of the government’s process of counting jobs. Every year the Labor Department issues a revision of the number of jobs added in a 12-month period from April through March in the previous year. The adjustment is made because the government’s initial job counts are based on surveys of businesses. The revision is then based on actual job counts from unemployment insurance files that are compiled later. The revision is compiled by career government employees with little involvement by politically appointed officials.

Trump repeats false claims immigrants that noncitizens are being sought to vote

TRUMP: “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.”

THE FACTS: In recent months, Trump and other Republicans have been repeating the baseless claim that Democrats want migrants to come into the country illegally so they will vote.

There’s no evidence for this, nor is there any evidence that noncitizens illegally vote in significant numbers in this country.

Voting by people who are not U.S. citizens already is illegal in federal elections. It can be punishable by fines, prison time and even deportation. While noncitizens have cast ballots, studies show it’s incredibly rare, and states regularly audit their voter lists to remove ineligible voters from the rolls.

Trump’s comments suggest that not speaking English is somehow prohibitive for voting in the U.S. — and that’s also not the case. In fact, the Voting Rights Act requires certain states to provide election materials in other languages depending on the voting-age population’s needs.

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Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin, David Klepper, Ali Swenson, Matthew Daly and Chris Rugaber contributed to this story.

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.