One of the evening's moderators, ABC News's David Muir, had wisely prepared for this digression—a reference to a vile, racist, dangerous lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating family pets, which Trump's vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, enthusiastically boosted earlier on Tuesday. ABC News had reached out to the city manager of Springfield, Muir told Trump, and confirmed that they'd received no credible reports of animal abuse in the local immigrant community.
Trump, undeterred, responded to this revelation with perhaps his most honest response of the night. 'Well, I've seen people on television,' he told Muir. 'We'll find out.'
The last presidential debate was a dread-inducing redux of the same uninspiring choice that voters faced four years earlier: President Joe Biden, a moderate Democrat who struggled to keep his train of thought, and Trump, an aspiring authoritarian whose strength was telling lies confidently and then grinning for the camera afterwards.
Biden's dismal showing prompted him to pull out of the race under pressure from voters, donors, and elected Democrats, and the party quickly united behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee.
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