Trump and Harris attend same 9/11 memorial after fierce debate

Father says Trump used son killed by Haitian driver for 'political gain'

A man whose 11-year-old son was killed when a Haitian immigrant hit his school bus last year has said that Trump and Vance are "morally bankrupt" for using the boy's death for political gain.

Both Vance and Trump have invoked Aiden Clark's death in Springfield, Ohio, in recent weeks to attack immigrants and Harris's record on the border.

“You look at Springfield, Ohio,” Trump said during the debate last night. "These are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they’re destroying our country."

There are up to 15,000 Haitian immigrants now living in Springfield, according to local government figures.

Speaking during public comment at a meeting of the Springfield City Commission just an hour before the debate, Aiden's father, Nathan Clark, said he did not blame the Haitian community and condemned Vance and Trump for invoking his son's name.

“Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose,” he said.

“My son was not murdered,” he added. “He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.”

The former president also repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were "eating people's pets" - a claim Vance has promoted as well.

"This needs to stop now," Clark said at the comment period. "They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members.

"However, they are not allowed - nor have they ever been allowed - to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them (Trump and Vance) one more time to hear their apologies.”

What did US voters make of the debate?

The full picture remains to be seen - but a limited snap poll that came immediately after the debate, which focused only on the showdown itself, suggested that Harris had a favourable showing.

In a CNN/SSRS poll of 600 registered voters who watched the TV spectacle, 63% said Harris was the better performer, while 37% went with Trump. Prior to the debate, the same voters were evenly split on who they thought would perform best.

That does not necessarily translate to votes, though. Only 4% said the debate changed their minds about who they might vote for.

The Washington Post polled a group of 25 swing state voters in real time during the debate. Twenty-three of them said that Harris had won the debate by the end, while only two voted for Trump's performance.

Those are just snapshots, however. We will have to wait a few days until the bigger national and state-level polls reflect any changes in the overall picture ahead of the US election.

You can see BBC's round up of the latest US election polling here.

‘We’re more hopeful than ever,’ says Harris supporter

For Sohali Vaddula from the College Democrats of America, Kamala Harris “most definitely won this debate – without a doubt”.

She says Trump was “off topic” at points and “attacking [Harris] personally regarding her identity”.

“She responded well by not allowing him to define her.”

And it’s given Sohali a boost after the last head-to-head in June, which saw President Joe Biden - then the party’s nominee -falter against Donald Trump.

“My friends are more hopeful than they’ve ever been,” Sohali tells Newsbeat.

Like Harris, Sohali has South Asian heritage and says “being represented at the highest level of the national stage is an incredible feeling”.

“I see myself in Kamala Harris so much,” she says. “We have truly come so far.”

Inflation eases further - to Harris's benefit

Donald Trump accused Kamala Harris of 'probably the worst [inflation] in our country's history'

New economic numbers this morning are bringing good news for Kamala Harris.

Inflation in the US continued to cool last month, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

Consumer prices rose by 2.5% over the 12 months to August, down from 2.9% in July. It marks the slowest pace of price rises since February 2021.

With the Federal Reserve's official 2% target now within range, analysts expect these figures will convince the Fed that high borrowing costs are working to return inflation back to normal and that it is time to cut interest rates.

Inflation was a major flashpoint of last night's debate, with Donald Trump falsely claiming that Vice-President Harris and President Joe Biden are responsible for "inflation like very few people have ever seen before, probably the worst in our nation’s history”.

Trump - who referred to inflation as "a country buster" - has touted the economic gains and low inflation seen in the first three years of his administration, arguing voters were better off under his leadership.

Harris has pushed back that she and Biden's post-pandemic economy is "the strongest in the world" by several indicators, including job gains and the unemployment rate.

Trump's Ukraine statements add to worry in Kyiv

On the debate stage, Donald Trump was asked by moderator David Muir: "Do you want Ukraine to win this war?"

"I want the war to stop," he responded.

The Republican nominee's failure to say if he wanted Ukraine to win may not have surprised people here, but it adds to their worry about what a second Trump term would bring.

Trump has long boasted he could end in the conflict in 24 hours - a prospect many Ukrainians assume would mean an incredibly bad deal with Kyiv forced to give up huge swathes of the land Russia has seized over the past two-and-a-half years.

Rather than attacking Kamala Harris’s position on Ukraine, Trump took aim at President Biden and criticised him for not phoning President Putin since the full-scale invasion. Trump claimed Biden was missing in action, while failing to get European allies to match US defence spending on Ukraine.

In contrast, Ukrainians will have been reassured by Kamala Harris’s responses, with no sign she would deviate from the current position of staunch American support.

Publicly, there has been a deafening silence from Ukraine’s current ministers and senior military in reaction to the debate.

It’s President Zelensky who so far has gone furthest in articulating, albeit somewhat euphemistically, what a Trump victory would mean for Ukrainians.

Speaking to the BBC in July he said it would mean “hard work, but we are hard workers”.

What was said about the Israel-Gaza war during the debate?

The two candidates did not stray much from their previously stated positions last night, even if Donald Trump did add, with characteristic hyperbole, that Israel wouldn’t exist in two years if his opponent becomes president.

Here in the Middle East, the race for the White House is being keenly watched. With the war in Gaza raging and a ceasefire deal still elusive, some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics suspect that Israel’s prime minister is deliberately stalling until after the election, in the hope that Donald Trump will be more sympathetic to Israel than Kamala Harris.

There’s a whiff of history perhaps being about to repeat itself. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign team was suspected of urging Iran not to release American hostages held in Tehran until after the former California governor had beaten President Jimmy Carter, saying Mr Reagan would give Iran a better deal.

Could something similar be afoot now? Certainly Mr Netanyahu’s opponents believe he is now the chief obstacle to a ceasefire deal. Kamala Harris has indicated that she might be tougher on Israel than Joe Biden, something Donald Trump has seized on, saying last night that the vice president “hates Israel” (though, typically wanting to have it both ways, he said she also hates Arabs).

Palestinians, deeply sceptical about Donald Trump (based on his previous record as president), but dismayed by the Biden administration’s inability to stop the war in Gaza, are possibly inclined to see Kamala Harris as the lesser of two evils. They’ve long since abandoned any notion of the US as an honest broker in the Middle East, but will have noticed that Ms Harris, unlike Mr Trump, says she’s committed to Palestinian statehood.

Israel-Gaza war an issue for some undecideds

Maryam Issa watched the debate from New York and says she is leaning towards Kamala Harris, but she is put off by the vice-president’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war.

“Her approach to it is not what I like, so I’m deciding to be undecided,” she tells BBC Asian Network.

“Kamala has to do more for Palestine. Our money [tax dollars] is being used to kill people in Gaza.”

Issa, 23, says that she and her friends have been looking at the Green Party, led by Jill Stein, as an alternative.

“I feel our leaders can do better. They have to bring out their empathy and love for humanity.”

She noted, however, that she felt she could not support Trump after his presidency - particularly when she reflected on "how he responded when he was defeated" - and did have some kind words for the vice-president.

“Kamala did well, came up with the facts and I liked her approach to the abortion [issue]. I also liked the way she talked about immigration.”

Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump attended a 9/11 memorial in Manhattan on Wednesday morning.

The two had never met before they debated each other in Philadelphia on Tuesday, but they shook hands when they saw each other at the New York City ceremony.

Harris appeared alongside President Joe Biden, and Trump stood next to his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio.

Trump speaks about the Taliban during debate

Its been 23 years since the 9/11 attack on downtown Manhattan - today both presidential candidates are attending a memorial there. It triggered American's longest war and still resonates politically.

The debacle of America's pullout in August 2021 and the Taliban return made it into in the debate and, not surprisingly, the issues were dodged, dismissed, distorted. It left some wondering who is “Abdul” and why is he meme on the internet this morning?

Trump boasted again that he talked tough with the “head of the Taliban” who is “still the head of the Taliban.” He seemed to be referring to Abdul Ghani Baradar, who signed the deal with the US. But he never headed the Taliban, and has been sidelined since the Taliban takeover.

Kamala Harris veered away from the question “do you bear any responsibility in the way that withdrawal played out?” in August 2021. As a correspondent who followed the chaotic pullout closely, I never heard she was in the room where decisions were taken in those final fateful weeks.

But she made it clear she agreed with President Biden’s decision to leave.

Both contenders shifted their focus to the flawed deal with the Taliban. The truth is - the Trump team negotiated this exit plan; the Biden team hastily enacted it.

Trump said the deal was good because “we were getting out.” There were no good ways to go. But the departure turned into a disaster and all sides are to blame.

All smiles as Trump and Harris meet at 9/11 memorial

At the 9/11 memorial in Manhattan, Americans who lost family members on 11 September 2001 are currently reading out the names of victims and memorialising them.

Both 2024 presidential candidates are attending the event this year. Cameras picked up Kamala Harris walking up to Donald Trump and, as she did in the debate, offering to shake his hand. Her opponent accepted.

Attendees are standing through the event as a sign of respect. Harris is separated from Trump by two people - President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Also seen at the event are Trump's running mate JD Vance; Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who represent New York in the US Senate; New York Governor Kathy Hochul; and, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump ally.

US news organisations agree Harris did better than Trump

Coverage of the debate by news organizations across the political spectrum appeared to come to the same conclusion on who won, Kamala Harris, though some conservative outlets criticised the moderators for fact checking.

The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal published articles and commentary pieces from multiple opinion writers, external that called the debate for Harris. Trump "threw away his chance to deliver some knock-out blows", one commentator wrote.

Opinion pieces in the New York Post, another conservative publication, say Harris rattled Trump and appeared well prepared, external, but it criticised her policy shifts and the moderators for "targeting far more tough questions at Trump than Harris".

Fox News bluntly declared Harris "won" the debate, external but also said she had help from moderators.

The liberal-leaning MSNBC framed the debate as one in which Harris "brushed off" Trump's attacks while pushing the former president's buttons, causing him to be on the back foot.

The New York Times and The Washington Post also noted Harris's attacks and her ability to put Trump on the defense. A Times opinion piece says the former president "made a raving, rambling fool of himself, external".

The Post's opinion writers said Harris did a good job and may have persuaded voters despite coming off as "scripted" to some watching.

Was it Trump’s ‘best debate’? Here's what a young Republican had to say

Donald Trump said last night was his “best debate” - do his supporters agree?

“I think he did very well,” says Patrick Burland from the New Haven Young Republicans, stopping short of calling it the former president's best.

“Some of his 2016 debates were even better,” the Connecticut native adds.

Even if it wasn’t the Republican nominee’s number one performance, Patrick tells BBC Newsbeat that his candidate still came out on top and “skewered” Kamala Harris.

Patrick agrees with Trump’s claims that moderators were against him, arguing there’s a “liberal” bias in the media.

He says it doesn’t mean the media is always wrong, but the moderators "definitely followed up and would try and pin [Trump] down… They gave Harris a lot more leeway.”

His final verdict?

“I think this will be a very close election but Trump will get it over the line.”