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.
Biden spoke haltingly at times and his voice was hoarse, which his campaign attributed to a cold. His performance caused immediate concern among the Democratic ranks.
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.
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RFK Jr. stages his own debate in Los Angeles
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. watches a live feed of the presidential debate from a campaign event in West Hollywood, Calif. (Damian Dovarganes/AP) Over on X, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, streamed his own debate after not qualifying for CNN’s debate. The network required participating candidates to be on enough state ballots to secure 271 electoral votes and have at least 15% support in four approved national polls. Kennedy is officially on the ballot in only seven states and achieved 15% support in only three polls.
Called “The Real Debate,” Kennedy’s event streamed from Los Angeles in front of a large screen that streamed CNN’s debate. John Stossel, a former ABC and Fox Business host, was Kennedy’s moderator — although, since Kennedy was responding to CNN’s questions, Stossel’s main job was to make sure Kennedy didn’t go over time.
The stream ran close to three hours and accumulated 6 million views, according to X.
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Trump campaign surrogates flood the ‘spin room’
Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks to reporters following the CNN Presidential Debate. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Moments after the debate concluded, Trump’s surrogates — a flurry of them, in fact — were on the floor of the CNN “spin room.” And they were in a great mood.
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, Reps. Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz of Florida and Elise Stefanik of New York, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, advisers Cory Lewandowski, David Bossie and Stephen Miller — even Sen. Lindsey Graham — fanned out across the McCamish Pavilion.
“As president of the United States, you have to adapt, you have a lot of things coming at you at all times,” Lara Trump said, questioning whether Biden is fit for office. “If he had a cold, maybe that’s what they’re gonna tell people. But I don’t think that the cold is the problem.”
“Joe Biden was lost in several topics,” Donalds said. “They kept asking, I think the moderators asked him several times, ‘You have 89 seconds left, you have 34 seconds left, President Biden. Do you want to add to your answer?’ You can’t have that in our country.”
“I think anybody who loves the United States of America today recognizes it is a national security threat for this man to be responsible for defending the United States of America,” Ramaswamy said. “This isn’t just funny anymore. This is dangerous.”
When Biden’s surrogates, including Sen. Raphael Warnock and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, arrived about 20 minutes later, they were swarmed by reporters and camera crews. The scrum was too deep for this reporter to get to hear their spin.
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Biden speaks to supporters at Atlanta debate watch party
Biden speaks at a Biden-Harris campaign debate watch party after leaving CNN’s studios. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) Following the debate, Biden briefly spoke to his supporters at a watch party in Atlanta and thanked them multiple times for their support.
He started by attacking the false claims Trump made during the debate, saying, “I can’t think of one thing he said that was true.
“We’re going to beat this guy and I need you in order to beat him. You’re the people I’m running for,” Biden added.
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Biden delivers closing statement
President Joe Biden, speaks during a presidential debate in Atlanta. (Gerald Herbert/AP) Each candidate was allotted two minutes for a closing statement. Biden went first, criticizing Trump. “This guy has increased your taxes,” Biden said before moving on to say that Trump wants to get rid of key parts of Medicare.
As he had earlier in the debate, Biden struggled with his delivery.
“He wants to get rid of, the ability, to, for, the ability, to, for the ability for us to be able to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma companies,” said Biden, who has had a stutter since childhood.
Biden’s campaign said during the debate that he had a cold, but had not tested positive for COVID.
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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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