As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris face off in their debate Tuesday night, one likely area of contention will be their mutual accusations of flip-flopping — a charge that politicians have long deployed to portray their opponents as lacking principle.

It is true that both have changed some of their policy positions, as politicians often do — whether for political expediency or because their thinking has evolved with new information. But while Harris has moderated a number of progressive stances she took in the 2020 Democratic primary, Trump has reversed himself entirely, gone back and forth or avoided taking clear stands on a host of important issues.

Here is a look at some areas where they have shifted noticeably.

Trump on Abortion

1999-2022

Long before he ran for president, Trump described himself as “very pro-choice.” That stance changed when he decided to seek the 2016 Republican nomination. He needed evangelical voters, so he recast himself as a staunch opponent of abortion and promised to — and did — appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

That he was a newcomer to the movement was clear in his call in 2016 for women who have abortions to be punished, a position anti-abortion activists tend to reject, saying it is providers who should be punished. When he realized that he had gone beyond the movement’s line, he backtracked.

2022-24

Since the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe, with abortion rights now more of a motivator for supporters than opponents, Trump has tried to reinvent himself again.

He now says he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban, though as president he endorsed a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He also suggested that he might vote for a ballot measure in Florida that would increase abortion access, then said he opposed it — part of a series of politically motivated contortions.

Trump on Gun Control

Trump once supported red-flag laws, which allow law enforcement to remove firearms from people deemed to pose an imminent threat to themselves or others. “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” he said after the Parkland school shooting in 2018.

That December, his administration banned bump stocks, which let semiautomatic rifles fire more rapidly. (The Supreme Court struck down that ban this past June.)

But he now disavows any restrictions on guns. In February, he said he would rescind every Biden administration restriction. That would include a bipartisan bill that created incentives for state red-flag laws.

Trump on Vaccines

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration launched “Operation Warp Speed,” which enabled the rapid development of vaccines. In 2021, he told rallygoers: “I recommend taking the vaccines. I did it. It’s good.” The crowd booed.

He later backed away, returning to a position more in line with the one he espoused before the pandemic when he promoted debunked claims that childhood shots cause autism. He seldom takes credit for Operation Warp Speed, and he has vowed to withhold funding from schools that require vaccinations.

Trump on Criminal Justice

Trump signed the bipartisan First Step Act, which reflected a shift away from “tough on crime” policies that have led to mass incarceration. The legislation reduced some mandatory minimum sentences and expanded early-release programs, among other provisions.

But this year, he refused to say whether he still supported the law, and he has called for brutal and extralegal punishments, including suggesting that shoplifters should be shot.

He has also said that drug dealers should be executed, a policy that would have resulted in the death of Alice Marie Johnson, a nonviolent drug offender whose sentence he commuted and whose story was featured at the 2020 Republican National Convention. When a Fox News host noted this last year, Trump replied: “She wouldn’t be killed. It would start as of now.”

Trump on Marijuana

Trump’s administration took steps against allowing marijuana use, including reversing an Obama-era policy that had protected states that legalized marijuana from federal crackdowns.

However, he recently said that he supported reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug (meaning medical use would be allowed) rather than Schedule I (the same category as heroin). He also endorsed a constitutional amendment in Florida to legalize recreational marijuana.

Trump on Social Security

Earlier in his career, Trump called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and said it should be privatized. He dropped that position during his 2016 campaign and now says he opposes cuts to the program.

He has made conflicting statements, however. In 2020, he suggested he would be open to cuts, then backtracked. In March, he told CNBC, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements”; his campaign then said he had been referring to “waste.”

Trump on Health Care

One of Trump’s central promises in 2016 was to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

While congressional Republicans’ repeal attempts failed, Trump did not abandon his effort, urging the courts in 2019 to strike down the law. (The Supreme Court didn’t.) As recently as last November, he said that Republicans should “never give up” on repeal and that he was “seriously looking at alternatives.”

This year, though, he has tried to distance himself from that position, which is unpopular: More than 60% of Americans support the Affordable Care Act. In April, he said he was “not running to terminate” it.

Trump on Immigration

Antipathy toward immigrants is a consistent theme of Trump’s campaigns and presidency. But there are policies on which he has vacillated.

As president, he restricted H-1B visas for skilled workers. But when he met with business leaders in June, he emphasized the importance of letting skilled workers remain in the United States. Shortly after that, he called for giving green cards to students who graduated from U.S. colleges “automatically as part of your diploma.”

Then his campaign said that this policy would not apply to all graduates, but only to the “most skilled,” and that the government would vet their political ideologies.

Trump on Transgender Rights

In 2016, Trump criticized a North Carolina bill that barred transgender people from using public restrooms matching their identity, saying people should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate.”

But in 2017, his administration rescinded protections allowing transgender students to do so.

During his current campaign, he has embraced a host of anti-transgender proposals, including a federal ban on transition care for minors, and has called on the Justice Department to investigate hospitals and pharmaceutical companies involved in transition care.

He has done so as conservatives have seized on opposition to transgender rights as a wedge issue, and the Republican base has responded. “I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy,” he said last year. “Who would have thought?”

Trump on His Appointees

Trump has a long history of praising his appointees and his own talents at personnel selection, only to turn against officials when they push back on his policies or criticize him.

Among the people caught in this pattern are former defense secretaries Mark Esper and James Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former Attorney General Bill Barr, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former national security adviser John Bolton and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump on TikTok

Trump spent much of his final year as president denouncing TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app that some experts call a national security risk. He called for banning it from U.S. app stores.

But this year, he condemned a bipartisan majority in Congress for passing a bill to ban TikTok unless its Chinese owner sells it. Several major Trump donors, including billionaires Larry Ellison and Jeffrey Yass, had a stake in the app’s success under the current ownership.

Trump made a TikTok account in June.

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote Trump,” he recently said. “The other side is closing it up.”

Trump on Harris

Trump has called Harris “weak,” “fake,” a “loser,” a “radical left Marxist,” “inept,” a “fraud” and “crazy.” And that’s just in the past month.

But when Harris was the attorney general of California, Trump donated $6,000 to her.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, explained that Trump — who has given to politicians in both parties over the years — “was a global businessman and knew how to play the game.”

Harris on Fracking

During her first campaign for president, Harris endorsed a ban on hydraulic fracturing, a gas and oil extraction procedure known as fracking. In 2019, she said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

But in addition to its environmental implications, the technology has economic benefits, and it is a significant part of the economy in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.

Harris now opposes a fracking ban. She said in August that her experience in the Biden administration, which enacted billions of dollars in funding for renewable energy through the Inflation Reduction Act, had shown her that driving clean energy development was possible without banning fracking.

Harris on Immigration

In 2019, when running for president, Harris said she supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, meaning they would be civil offenses. She also said the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be re-examined, and in a candidate questionnaire by the American Civil Liberties Union, she endorsed decreasing funding for ICE.

She no longer supports decriminalizing crossings, and she has taken a tougher stance on border security after illegal immigration skyrocketed and became a liability for her and President Joe Biden.

She has vowed to resurrect a bipartisan border deal that Trump helped torpedo, which would close the border under certain conditions, fund thousands of new border agents and continue funding the construction of a border wall.

Harris on Health Care

Harris once supported a single-payer health care system. “In America, health care should be a right, not a privilege only for those who can afford it,” she wrote in 2019. “It’s why we need Medicare for All.”

That stance put her on the left side of a divide between candidates who supported “Medicare for All” and candidates who supported a public option within a private system.

Her campaign has indicated that she no longer supports such a plan. Her website still uses the “right, not a privilege” language but proposes “expanding and strengthening the Affordable Care Act” and making permanent tax credits that the Biden administration enacted.

Harris on Policing

During the protests in 2020 over the police murder of George Floyd, Harris expressed qualified support for the “defund the police” movement. She did not endorse eliminating police departments but suggested that she was open to reducing funding. “This whole movement is about rightly saying, we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities,” she said.

Today, her campaign says she never advocated cuts to police funding. “The only candidate running for president who has ever advocated for defunding the police or proposed cutting funding for law enforcement is convicted felon Donald Trump,” a Harris campaign spokesperson, James Singer, said in a statement.

Harris on Guns

In 2019, Harris supported a requirement that owners of assault weapons sell them to the government. She was one of five Democratic candidates who supported mandatory buybacks.

Her campaign said in July that she didn’t support that position anymore. She still wants to ban assault weapons but not to require buybacks.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Maggie Astor and Simon J. Levien
c. 2024 The New York Times Company