High-stakes showdown begins
The ABC News presidential debate is now underway.
It is a crucial moment for both candidates with exactly eight weeks until Election Day.
Harris and Trump are sparring in the high-stakes showdown.
The first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump turned into a heated matchup that lasted more than 90 minutes.
The night started with a handshake initiated by Harris, but quickly escalated as the vice president bashed Trump over his policies and comments, contending that it was time to "offer is a new generation of leadership for our country."
Trump criticized Harris throughout the debate on topics such as Afghanistan and immigration issues, drawing comparisons between the vice president and President Joe Biden.
With Election Day just eight weeks away, the debate came at a critical point as polls show a neck-and-neck race between the candidates.
The ABC News presidential debate is now underway.
It is a crucial moment for both candidates with exactly eight weeks until Election Day.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat who represents Pennsylvania’s 4th District in the Philadelphia suburbs, said today’s debate is an opportunity for Harris to introduce herself to swing voters outside the political “bubble” who may not have tuned into the campaign earlier, and share her record as a prosecutor, attorney general, senator and now vice president.
“She is an able public servant, and so she has the chance to introduce that part of herself to those who are too busy to actually know all of those granular details,” Dean told reporters in the spin room.
—538’s Tia Yang
The presidential debate is now just 15 minutes away.
Both candidates have arrived in Philadelphia, and their campaign surrogates are already on the ground providing spin and setting expectations for tonight's matchup.
New York City Councilman Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated "Central Park Five" who was wrongfully incarcerated in connection with a 1989 rape, is in the spin room.
Salaam, who spoke at the DNC, has been a staunch Trump opponent after the former president took out a full-page ad in several New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for the five suspects at the time.