Fact-Checking First 2024 Presidential Debate: Harris vs. Trump

 

On Tuesday, the highly awaited first presidential debate of the election year 2024 between incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, was held at Philadelphia, National Constitution Center. A live debate of 90 minutes was organized where the candidates debated on major concerns of the country to win the White House seat.

Highlights of the Debate and Fact-Checking
Meanwhile, as the Democratic and Republican nominees debated, ABC News fact-checked their claims and assertions in real-time. Here’s a look at this process designed to spot over-generalized answers, answers that required more detail or provisos, and plain old lies.

Harris on Nobel Laureates and Economic Predictions
Vice President Harris spoke about Nobel laureates’ views on inflation and Trump’s presidency. According to the fact-check :

- Harris said appropriate repetitions from the Nobel laureates: “There is rightly a concern that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation.”

- She was only half right when she brought up that economists have called for a recession by mid-2025.
The Nobel Lecture: What did Nobel Laureate say
Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists came out to have their say on economic consequences of a possible second Trump term:

-They claimed that Harris had far better objectives in her mind than the latter did.
- “We believe the re-election of Trump will impose negative change on the US status in the global economy and seriously disturb the domestic economy,”- the group argued.
-As has been mentioned above, the economists did not predict a recession by the middle of 2025 per se, as Harris mentioned.
The Nobel Laureates
The following 16 economists signed the letter: Of the 24 laureates, including: George Akerlof, Angus Deaton, Claudia Goldin, Oliver Hart, Eric S. Maskin, Daniel L. McFadden, Paul R. Milgrom, Roger B. Myerson, Edmund S. Phelps, Paul M. Romer, Alvin E. Roth, William F. Sharp, Robert J. Shiller, Christopher A. Sims, Joseph Stigl

This first head-to-head presidential debate established the tone of the continuing 2024 election campaign in the sense that it underlined the importance of truth-checking and good journalism in political debates.