The first general election debate of the 2024 season was defined by personal attacks after U.S. President Joe Biden delivered rambling answers and his Republican rival, Donald Trump countered with falsehoods.
They passed on a handshake at the start, and from there, Biden and Trump went right to mixing it up on policy — and each other — in their first 2024 presidential debate on Thursday night.
Biden arrived with a raspy voice and spoke softly, the result, his campaign said, of a cold. Biden sometimes mumbled, got tongue-tied or lost his train of thought, a performance unlikely to calm anxiety among Democrats and many Americans about the 81-year-old president.
The 78-year-old Trump, as he often does, spoke with force but with plentiful falsehoods.
The debate was a critical moment in Biden and Trump’s presidential rematch to make their cases before a national television audience. Here's a look back at how the night unfolded, reaction and more.
Supporters, campaigns for both candidates each claim victory
The Biden campaign is insisting that the president “started slow but finished strong” as it tries to claim victory in the debate.
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In a memo, Biden advisers argued that Trump’s performance reminded independent voters “why they dislike him,” while suggesting that Biden improved as the night wore on.
Vice President Kamala Harris made similar suggestions in TV appearances after the debate.
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Biden’s voice was particularly raspy in the debate’s early going, and he repeatedly cleared his throat throughout the night. But the president was also hard to understand in his closing statement, undermining suggestions that he made much improvement.
MORE: Democrats are talking about replacing Joe Biden. That won't be so easy.
Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley weighed in on Biden’s debate performance, repeating her campaign trail line that the Democratic president won’t ultimately be his party’s 2024 nominee.
Trump’s final competitor in the Republican primary, who dropped out in March, said on X after the debate, “Mark my words….Biden will not be the Democrat nominee.”
Haley repeatedly said during her own presidential campaign that Biden would not end up representing his party in this year’s election, making critiques of the president’s age and her perceptions of his stumbles in office.
Trump’s supporters, by contrast, were giddy, arguing that Biden looked befuddled and confused and that their candidate was the clear winner.
False claims made during Biden, Trump's first debate
Trump falsely represented the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as a relatively small number of people who were ushered in by police and misstated the strength of the economy during his administration.
Biden, who tends to lean more on exaggerations and embellishments rather than outright lies, misrepresented the cost of insulin and overstated what Trump said about using disinfectant to address COVID.
Here's a look at some of the claims made.
JAN. 6
TRUMP: “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol and in many cases were ushered in by the police.”
THE FACTS: That’s false. The attack on the U.S. Capitol was the deadliest assault on the seat of American power in over 200 years. As thoroughly documented by video, photographs and people who were there, thousands of people descended on Capitol Hill in what became a brutal scene of hand-to-hand combat with police.
In an internal memo on March 7, 2023, U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said that the allegation that “our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides’” is “outrageous and false.” A Capitol Police spokesperson confirmed the memo’s authenticity to The Associated Press. More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot. More than 850 people have pleaded guilty to crimes, and 200 others have been convicted at trial.
TRUMP, on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s actions on Jan. 6: “Because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard and she turned them down.”
THE FACTS: Pelosi did not direct the National Guard. Further, as the Capitol came under attack, she and then-Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called for military assistance, including from the National Guard.
The Capitol Police Board makes the decision on whether to call National Guard troops to the Capitol. It is made up of the House Sergeant at Arms, the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol. The board decided not to call the guard ahead of the insurrection but did eventually request assistance after the rioting had already begun, and the troops arrived several hours later.
The House Sergeant at Arms reported to Pelosi and the Senate Sergeant at Arms reported to McConnell. There is no evidence that either Pelosi or McConnell directed the security officials not to call the guard beforehand. Drew Hammill, a then-spokesperson for Pelosi, said after the insurrection that Pelosi was never informed of such a request.
TAXES AND REGULATIONS
TRUMP, on Biden: “He wants to raise your taxes by four times.”
THE FACTS: That’s not accurate.
Trump has used that line at rallies, but it has no basis in fact. Biden actually wants to prevent tax increases on anyone making less than $400,000, which is the vast majority of taxpayers.
More importantly, Biden’s budget proposal does not increase taxes as much as Trump claims, though the increases are focused on corporations and the wealthy. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for individuals are set to expire after 2025, because they were not fully funded when they became law.
TRUMP, referring to Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s victory: “On January 6th we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever on January 6th.”
THE FACTS: The current federal income tax was only instituted in 1913, and tax rates have fluctuated significantly in the decades since. Rates were lower in the 1920s, just prior to the Great Depression. Trump did cut taxes during his time in the White House, but the rates weren’t the lowest in history.
Government regulations have also ebbed and flowed in the country’s history, but there’s been an overall increase in regulations as the country modernized and its population grew. There are now many more regulations covering the environment, employment, financial transactions and other aspects of daily life. While Trump slashed some regulations, he didn’t take the country back to the less regulated days of its past.
INSULIN
BIDEN: “It’s $15 for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400.”
THE FACTS: No, that’s not exactly right. Out-of-pocket insulin costs for older Americans on Medicare were capped at $35 in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law. The cap took effect last year, when many drugmakers announced they would lower the price of the drug to $35 for most users on private insurance. But Biden regularly overstates that many people used to pay up to $400 monthly. People with diabetes who have Medicare or private insurance paid about $450 yearly prior to the law, a Department of Health and Human Services study released in December 2022 found.
MIGRANTS
TRUMP, referring to Biden: “He’s the one that killed people with a bad border and flooding hundreds of thousands of people dying and also killing our citizens when they come in.”
THE FACTS: A mass influx of migrants coming into the U.S. illegally across the southern border has led to a number of false and misleading claims by Trump. For example, he regularly claims other countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions to send to the U.S. There is no evidence to support that.
Trump has also argued the influx of immigrants is causing a crime surge in the U.S., although statistics actually show violent crime is on the way down.
There have been recent high-profile and heinous crimes allegedly committed by people in the country illegally. But FBI statistics do not separate out crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. Studies have found that people living in the country illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes. For more than a century, critics of immigration have sought to link new arrivals to crime. In 1931, the Wickersham Commission did not find any evidence supporting a connection between immigration and increased crime, and many studies since then have reached similar conclusions.
Texas is the only state that tracks crimes by immigration status. A 2020 study published by the National Academy of Sciences found “considerably lower felony arrest rates” among people in the United States illegally than legal immigrants or native-born.
Some crime is expected given the large population of immigrants. There were an estimated 10.5 million people in the country illegally in 2021, according to the latest estimate by Pew Research Center, a figure that has almost certainly risen with large influxes at the border. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated the foreign-born population at 46.2 million, or nearly 14% of the total, with most states seeing double-digit percentage increases in the last dozen years.
TRUMP also claimed that the U.S. had the "safest border in the history of our country" under his administration.
THE FACTS: This is clear exaggeration. In 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic brought down border crossings, there were roughly 860,000 illegal border crossings, far more than in any year during the Obama administration.
BLACK JOBS
TRUMP claimed immigrants who entered the country illegally are taking "Black jobs" and "Hispanic jobs."
THE FACTS: After Trump made the unsubstantiated claim, "Black jobs" was trending on X, formerly known as Twitter, as users questioned what the former president meant by the comment.
There's no evidence that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from Black Americans, according to NBC News. The Black unemployment rate actually fell to an all-time-low 4.8% in April 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
'NO TERROR'
TRUMP Thursday night claimed there was ‘no terror' during his tenure. “That’s why you had no terror, at all, during my administration. This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him," Trump said.
THE FACTS: That is false.
There were two ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks while Trump was president. The first occurred in October 2017 when Sayfullo Saipov killed eight people and injured a dozen more in a vehicle ramming attack on the West Side Highway bike path in New York City. The second occurred in December 2017, when Akayed Ullah injured four people when he set off a bomb strapped to himself.
INFLATION
TRUMP claimed Biden said he inherited 9% inflation when he came president. "He also said he inherited 9% inflation," Trump said. "Now, he inherited almost no inflation, and it stayed that way for 14 months, and then it blew up under his leadership."
THE FACTS: The inflation rate when Biden took office in January 2021 was not 9%. It was 1.4%. It has risen on his watch, peaking at about 9.1% in June 2022, but by this May had come down to 3.3%. Pandemic-related stimulus policies put in place by both Trump and Biden were blamed, in part, for the rise in the inflation rate. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The oldest presumptive nominees in history say they’re still sharp
More than 80 minutes into the debate, Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, were asked about their age and ability to serve well into their 80s.
Biden spotlighted a litany of policy achievements and said Trump is “three years younger and a lot less competent.” Biden also used the answer to slap at Trump for bad-mouthing the United States.
“The idea that we are some kind of failing country? I’ve never heard a president talk like that before,” Biden said.
In his retort, Trump said he was in as good a shape as he was 25 years ago and perhaps “even a little bit lighter.” He said he’s “aced” cognitive tests.
Trump pointed to his golf prowess in tournaments at his golf club, and cognitive tests he had taken.
"I took tests, two cognitive tests, and I aced them, both of them," Trump said. " "I took physical exams every year. And we knock on wood, wherever we may have wood, that I'm in very good health. I just won two championships, club championships - not even senior! To do that, you have to be quite smart, and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way."
Though the men are not far apart in age, more voters worry that Biden is too old.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they are “very concerned” that Biden is too old to be president, according to Gallup data collected in June. Only 18% had the same level of concern about Trump.
