Newsman: President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump participated in the first-ever presidential debate of the 2024 elections. Biden and Trump began without a handshake. Neither candidate is the official nominee yet. The national political conventions haven’t happened but it’s almost impossible that Democrats would be able to replace Joe Biden.
Joe Biden (81) struggles in the debate but Donald Trump had some difficult moments too, especially in the second half of the debate. Biden’s voice was raspy and low from the start. (His campaign said he has a cold.) He stumbled over words and had to correct himself with numbers. On one occasion, the president appeared to lose his train of thought, concluding with “we finally beat Medicare.”
Trump, who is 78, was energetic and clear. He jumped at that moment saying: “He did beat Medicare, he beat it to death.”
Trump’s main mission was to continue seizing on Americans’ anxieties about the economy and security at the U.S. southern border.
Voters continuously rank the economy and inflation as among the top issues on their minds, and it was the first subject raised by the CNN moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.
Biden’s response was trying to note his economic achievements without discounting the sting of high prices. He started off by blaming any economic woes on Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 virus in 2020, arguing a free fall started when unemployment spiked on his predecessor’s watch. The president also called out the 2017 tax cuts as a giveaway to the rich.
“Things were in chaos,” he said.
For much of his answer, Biden spotlighted the gains under his administration such as record-low unemployment and lowering prescription drug costs. But he acknowledged: “there’s more to be done.”
Compared to four years ago, Donald Trump took a more methodical approach in his responses throughout the debate, but he didn’t take that lying down. He argued the U.S. economy was roaring before the pandemic and that currently, “Inflation is killing our country.”
Asked about his proposal to impose 10% tariff on all imports, Trump defended the idea against criticism that it will drive prices even higher. Instead, he said, it will stop foreign countries from, “ripping us off.”
In the first-ever debate between a current and former president, “You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” Biden said at one point, referring to reports that Trump used those words to describe American service members.
“Our veterans and our soldiers can’t stand this guy,” Trump fired back. “They can’t stand him.”
One of the more substantive exchanges during the 90-minute debate was when the conversation turned to abortion.
President Joe blamed Trump for the overturning of Roe v. Wade with his three Supreme Court justice appointments.
“It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done,” Biden said, adding that he would reinstate the protections of Roe v. Wade if reelected.
The former president Donald Trump accused Biden and the Democrats of wanting to: “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby.”
Biden said Democrats only favor legal late-term abortions when the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
Trump said he won’t block abortion medication and that he “believes in exceptions” to allow abortions in cases of rape and incest.
“We think the Democrats are the radicals, not the Republicans,” he said.
When the debate turned to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump flexed his muscles accusing Biden of allowing a wave of crime endangering Americans.
“We are living right now in a rat’s nest,” Trump said. “Every state is now a border state and it’s because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies.”
Biden responded blaming Trump for the policy separating families.
“When he was president, he was separating babies from their mothers and putting them in cages, making sure they were the families were separated,” Biden said.
He outlined how his administration sought a bipartisan border security deal in Congress earlier this year, but that Trump torpedoed the plan. He also reminded viewers about Trump’s past controversies.
Trump stopped answering the question pressed by moderators to explain his plans to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation” in U.S. history, and whether his next administration would deport all undocumented immigrants.
“We’re literally an uncivilized country now,” Trump returned to his attacks instead.
Biden brought up Trump’s conviction in a case that allegedly involved “having sex with a porn star,” and that Trump lost a $83.3 million civil judgment for “molesting a woman.”
Trump responded by calling out the president’s son, Hunter Biden, who has been convicted on federal gun charge and claimed that without evidence Joe Biden will be a convicted felon in the future.
When both were asked about their age, Biden and Trump both said their physical health isn’t an issue. But at one point the two men rabbled about their athletic prowess, and even fought over who had a better golf handicap.
“Let’s not be children,” Trump said.
Biden replied: “You are a child.”
First Presidential debate for 90 minutes on Thursday without a studio audience at CNN’s studios in Atlanta Biden and Trump attacked each other’s records on the issues facing the nation, including abortion, childcare costs, the spread of opioids and other challenges. Moderators and CNN anchors Dana Bash and Jake Tapper also pressed the candidates on the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ahead of the debate, Biden joked about being on “performance enhancers” in a social media post shortly before the start of the debate – mocking the conspiracies pushed by Trump and some Republicans that Biden would have to take drugs to keep up.
