President Biden and former President Donald Trump clashed repeatedly Thursday night in their first debate of the 2024 presidential election.
The candidates sparred over numerous topics, including the economy, abortion, immigration and health care costs.
Hosted by CNN at the cable network’s studios in Atlanta, the debate featured a new set of rules: there was no studio audience, the candidates’ microphones were muted when their opponent spoke, no prewritten notes were allowed and neither candidate presented opening statements. Trump had the final word during closing statements, as determined by a coin flip.
Nevertheless, the rhetoric got heated at times. Biden at one point referred to Trump as a “felon,” a reference to his recent 34 guilty counts in a hush money trial. Trump called Biden “Brandon,” a derogatory nickname his followers have adopted for the president. The two called each other the worst president in the history of the country.
The debate was atypically early — more than four months before voters head to the polls on Nov. 5 — and marked the first major showdown between the two candidates. In a sign of how early in the election cycle Thursday’s debate occurred, both Trump and Biden have yet to officially receive their party’s nominations, which will come at the party conventions later this summer.
Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, have been running close in polls all year. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll earlier this month showed Biden leading Trump by a scant 46%-44% margin. Only the two frontrunners appeared on stage Thursday night, with independent and third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West failing to qualify.
Biden and Trump are currently scheduled to meet one more time on the debate stage before the election, on Sept. 10. That debate will be hosted by ABC News.
Live42 updates
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Trump slams Biden and touts record in closing statement
Trump at the debate Thursday night. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images) “This man is just a complainer,” Trump said, in his closing statement in the first presidential debate. “He doesn’t do anything.”
Ripping into Biden over various foreign policy issues, Trump pointed to Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and China, as well migration across the U.S. southern border. “Our military doesn’t respect him,” Trump said.
He went on to tout his own four years in office.
“What we did was incredible. We rebuilt the military,” he claimed. “We’re in a failing nation. But it’s not going to be failing anymore. We’re going to make it great again.”
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Fact check: Trump says Biden indicted him
Trump: “I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political opponent. He indicted me because I was his opponent.”
This claim is false: Trump has repeatedly said, without evidence, that his recent indictments were part of a strategy by President Biden and his administration to keep Trump out of the White House. Biden has no control over the Manhattan criminal court. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case against Trump, does not work for the Justice Department or any other White House office.
Read more from the Associated Press: Fact Focus: Trump responds to guilty verdict with attacks and false claims
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Fact check: Trump brags about how he ‘aced’ cognitive tests
Trump: “I was willing to take a cognitive test … and I aced them.”
This claim needs context: Trump has repeatedly boasted about his performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment for ears, but that test is intended to detect signs of dementia or cognitive decline, not a measure of intelligence or the kind of test one can “ace.”
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Fact check: Biden claims Trump wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act
Biden: “[Trump] wants to get rid of the [Affordable Care Act] again. And they’re gonna try again if they win.”
This claim needs context: After years of railing against the Affordable Care Act, asking the Supreme Court to overturn it while in office, and promising to come up with a better alternative to it, Trump said in April that he was “not running to terminate” the law commonly known as Obamacare.
“We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you,” Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social in April.
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Fact check: Biden claims Trump is the worst president in U.S. history, cites historian survey
Biden: “Look it up, go online, 159, or 58, don’t hold me to the exact number presidential historians, they had meetings and they voted who was the worst president in American history, best to worst. They said he was the worst in all of American history. That’s a fact.”
This claim needs context: Biden is likely referring to the results of the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, which did rank former President Donald Trump at the bottom.
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Fact check: ‘China’s going to own us’
Trump: “China’s going to own us if you keep allowing them to do what they’re doing to us as a country. They are killing us as a country, Joe. And you can’t let that happen — you’re destroying our country.”
This claim needs context: On May 14, Biden placed tariffs on a number of Chinese goods, including EVs, solar panels, steel, aluminum and medical equipment. For his first three years in office, Biden also elected to leave many of the tariffs in place that Trump had slapped on China.
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Fact check: Biden falsely claims that Trump wants to ‘get rid of’ Social Security
Biden: “He wants to get rid of Social Security. He thinks that there’s plenty to cut in Social Security.”
This claim is false: Trump has said that there may be some room to reduce spending on Social Security and proposed a budget that included some cuts to the program, but has not stated any intention to eliminate Social Security.
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The scene inside the ‘Spin Room’ during the debate
CNN’s “Spin Room.” (Dylan Stableford/Yahoo News) While the candidates debate inside CNN’s debate hall across the street, hundreds of media members including this one are watching a live feed of the event that is being simulcast on dozens of temporary flatscreens scattered around the McCamish Pavilion — and on the JumboTron above the floor of the “Spin room,” which is currently almost empty.
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Fact check: Trump says there was ‘no terror at all’ during his presidency
Trump: “You had no terror at all during my administration. This place — the whole world is blowing up under him.”
This is false: This is not the first time Trump has claimed the U.S. had no terrorist attacks during his presidency.
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In 2017, Trump’s Justice Department alleged that a mass murder in New York City, which killed eight people, was a terrorist attack in support of ISIS.
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In 2018, the Justice Department claimed there was evidence of a “domestic terrorist attack” when a Trump supporter mailed homemade explosive devices to Democratic officials and CNN offices.
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In 2019, Trump’s Justice Department claimed an attack that killed three U.S. service members and injured others at a military base in Florida was motivated by an “associate” of al-Qaida.
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Also in 2019, a gunman, who was targeting Latinos, killed 23 people in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
Read more from CNN: Fact check: Trump falsely claims the U.S. had no terrorist attacks during his presidency
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Fact check: Trump and Biden blame each other for inflation
Trump: “He caused this inflation. I gave him a country with essentially no inflation. … He destroyed it.”
Biden: “Inflation … he caused it with his tremendous malfeasance in the way he handled the pandemic.”
These claims needs context: Inflation is primarily the result of macroeconomic trends that presidents have little power to influence. Economists blame two recent factors, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, for recent spikes in prices.
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Fact check: Trump presidency had ‘best environmental numbers ever’
Trump: “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O,” Trump said, apparently meaning CO2, a greenhouse gas scientists say is helping to warm the planet. “We had the best numbers ever and we did — we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet, during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”
This claim needs context: While greenhouse gas emissions fell during Trump’s term in office, they fell even more during Barack Obama’s presidency. Experts also note that the modest decline when Trump was president was aided by the decline in economic activity caused by the coronavirus pandemic, not because of any specific actions taken by the Trump administration.
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Biden to Trump: ‘You have the morals of an alley cat’
President Joe Biden and Donald Trump participate in the CNN Presidential Debate at the CNN Studios in Atlanta, (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) At one point during the debate, both Biden and Trump amplified their verbal attacks against one another — with Biden attacking Trump’s character and criminal record.
“The idea that you have the right to seek retribution against any American just because you’re president is wrong. Simply wrong,” he said. “No president in our history has spoken like that before.”
He later touched on Trump’s hush money trial, which centered on accusations of falsifying business records about an alleged affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“You had sex with a porn star. You have the morals of an alley cat,” Biden said.
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Biden refers to Trump as a ‘convicted felon’
President Biden debating on Thursday night. (Gerald Herbert/AP) During an exchange about Jan. 6, Trump argued that his supporters who were charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol insurrection were unfairly targeted, and that Black Lives Matter protesters and other activists in cities such as Portland, Ore., and Seattle are the real “felons.”
Biden used the opportunity to point out Trump’s historic conviction in the New York hush-money case.
“The only person on this stage that is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now,” the president said while glancing in Trump’s direction.
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Fact check: Trump claims he offered Pelosi 10,000 soldiers on Jan. 6
Moderator: What do you stay to the voters who believe you violated your oath of office on Jan. 6 and worry you may do so again?
Trump pointed to recently released documentary footage of then-House Speaker Nancy Speaker on Jan. 6 saying leaders like herself bore responsibility for not having prepared more for the riot. Trump then repeated a claim he’s made multiple times before: “Nancy Pelosi, I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.”
This claim is false: As CNN reported, Pelosi “would not even have had the power to turn down such an offer if she had received one — which she has said she never did.”
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Fact check: Biden falsely claims the Border Patrol has endorsed him
Biden: “By the way the Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position.”
This claim is false: The Border Patrol Union has not endorsed Biden and said in a post on X during the debate, “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”
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Fact check: Trump criticizes Afghanistan withdrawal without mentioning his administration’s role in the U.S. exit
Trump: “[Biden] was so bad with Afghanistan. It was such a horrible embarrassment. The most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.”
This claim needs context: Biden’s administration executed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it did so under terms of an agreement the Trump administration reached with the Taliban during the last year of Trump’s presidency.
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Trump calls Biden ‘Brandon’ during debate
Donald Trump gestures during the debate with President Biden. (Gerald Herbert/AP) During an exchange about border security, Biden pointed out that the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents the U.S. Border Patrol, endorsed a bipartisan bill he backed that included additional staffing for it and other agencies.
“The Border Patrol endorsed me — endorsed my position,” Biden said.
Trump quickly countered, saying the Border Patrol union endorsed him.
“They endorsed me for president,” Trump told Biden before adding a derisive nickname: “Brandon, just speak to them.”
Read more about how “Brandon” came to be via the Associated Press.
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How would Trump and Biden handle the war in Gaza if reelected?
Biden has been asked what additional leverage he would use to get Israel and Hamas to end their war.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been one of the world’s thorniest problems — a bloody, intractable dispute over land and statehood that has riven the region and vexed American presidents ever since the Jewish state was established in 1948.
But Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — and Israel’s brutal response in Gaza — have taken things to a whole new level.
What they’ve done as president:
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