Trump-Harris debate fact check: 7 questionable claims made in ABC News face-off

During Tuesday’s presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a pattern emerged in which the vice president sometimes stretched the truth and sought to reframe her political weaknesses as strengths and the former president fired off a flurry of demonstrably false statements.

Here’s a sampling of some of the claims that stood out during the ABC News showdown.

New Trump ‘sales tax’?

At the start of the debate, Harris tried to portray Trump’s proposal of across-the-board tariffs on foreign goods as a “sales tax.” Tariffs are distinct from sales taxes, which are fees leveled on the sale of goods or services.

“My opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax, which would be a 20% tax on everyday goods that you rely on to get through the month,” Harris said.

“First of all, I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement. She knows that we're doing tariffs on other countries,” Trump responded.

While many economists note that tariffs raise prices for American consumers, President Biden has also levied them on some Chinese goods.

Haitian migrants ‘eating the pets’?

In one of the more bizarre moments of the debate, Trump repeated a false claim spread by right-wing social media users (including Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance) that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating pets.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

This rumor appears to have been started in a Facebook post. City officials and local police, meanwhile, have denied there is any evidence to support it.

No U.S. military members are on active duty in a combat zone?

Despite the fact that U.S. troops continue to serve in global hot spots like Iraq, Syria and Somalia, Harris made a claim that made it sound as if America’s soldiers were not deployed in combat zones around the world.

“And as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world, the first time this century," Harris said.

Aborting live babies?

Trump repeated one of his oft-repeated falsehoods on the subject of abortion, saying that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is “OK” with abortions being performed after a child is born.

“He also says execution after birth — it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born — is OK.”

Infanticide is illegal in all 50 states and Walz has never said he supports that practice.

Invested $1 trillion in the clean energy economy?

Harris took some liberties with math when she touted the amount of money the Biden administration has invested in clean energy.

“Over the last four years, we have invested $1 trillion in a clean energy economy,” she said.

While passing the Inflation Reduction Act put in place tax incentives and credits designed to spur the transition of the U.S. economy to renewable sources of energy, clean energy investments have only added up to $700 billion, according to Clean Investment Monitor.

Venezuelan gangs taking over a Colorado apartment complex?

Trump also ran with a story purporting that a violent gang of Venezuelan migrants had seized control of an apartment building in Aurora, Colo.

"They are taking over the towns. They are taking over buildings. They are going in violently," Trump said, perhaps unaware that the claims, which were sparked by a video posted to social media, had been debunked.

While Aurora police have confirmed that a handful of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua are indeed operating in the area, local authorities strongly rejected assertions that the gang is in control over any apartment buildings.

“I’m not saying that there’s not gang members that don’t live in this community, but what we’re learning out here is that gang members have not taken over this complex,” Aurora’s interim Police Chief Heather Morris said in a recent video filmed at that complex.

Residents of the building at the center of the controversy held a news conference last week to dispute the claims.

Proof the 2020 election was rigged?

Perhaps no false claim is more central to Trump’s 2024 candidacy than his assertion that voter fraud cost him the presidency in 2020.

“There's so much proof,” he said Tuesday. “All you have to do is look at it.”

The proof goes in the opposite direction. More than 60 state and federal courts, his own attorney general, independent investigators and election watchdogs have investigated claims made by Trump and his allies, determining that the election was fair and square. Despite Trump’s frequent assertions of widespread voter fraud, he has never put forward credible evidence and he failed to do so again at the debate.