Debate 2024: All the Highlights From the First Biden-Trump Showdown
Minutes after the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden wrapped up on CNN, veteran political journalist John King said “there is a deep, wide, and very aggressive panic in the Democratic party.” That was on display on the CNN panel: David Axelrod noted a “sense of shock” at Biden’s raspy opening, as Van Jones called the debate “painful,” and Kate Bedingfield, a former Biden spokesperson, called the president’s performance “very disappointing.”
Of course, debates are about policy, and on issues ranging from abortion to democracy, the differences were stark. Donald Trump downplayed the Jan. 6 attacks and tried deflecting blame for the assault on the Capitol, while also repeating the baseless claim that Democrats support abortion “after birth” and that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned (which clearly isn’t the case). Trump failed to provide a substantive response to how he’d address the climate crisis. He turned repeatedly to immigration and inflation.
But debates are also about performance, and while Trump rambled and spouted false claims, he did so in a booming manner that was in sharp contrast to Biden. Though the president did rebound, his slow and halting start might have been the end. “This debate was over in the first five minutes,” said Mark McKinnon, who believes “no one is going to remember a single policy issue debated tonight.”
Biden Set All the Rules in the Debate—And Still Got Trounced by Trump
It was an awful night.
Donald Trump is an aspiring authoritarian, a liar, a bigot, a criminal—not to mention an idiot. His presidency was an unmitigated disaster. But most people knew that going into Thursday night’s debate. The question heading into the evening was whether President Joe Biden could overcome the stubborn concerns that have been a storm cloud over his election bid: the unfavorable poll numbers, the intra-party divisions, and, of course, the matter of his age and vigor.
That last part was, unfortunately, the story of the night Thursday. Biden struggled. His voice was hoarse. He strained to make an impression. Trump lied and lied and lied, spewed bullshit and bullshit and more bullshit—but Biden seemed unable to block the blows, let alone land any haymakers of his own.
Trump was as mendacious and horrifying as ever—and looked every one of his 78 years, under the caked-on makeup and curiously coiffed hair. But he came out of the gate with more energy than Biden, and that energy overpowered the 81-year-old president’s efforts to bring him back to reality. “I really don’t know what he said,” Trump said after one Biden attack. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Rachel Maddow: Biden Campaign Will Want Debate Remembered in Reverse
In the moments after the presidential debate ended, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow said that the Biden campaign will want the night to be remembered in reverse.
The network's panel of anchors discussed how Biden’s voice was hard to hear toward the beginning of the debate. Those early moments, Maddow said, has “got to put a shock into the campaign, at least at the start, before he started to get stronger” in the later part of the evening.
The Trump campaign, Maddow continued, will want the inverse, saying that the former president started off stronger, then trickled off.
Democrats Witnessed Their Worst Nightmare
No one is going to remember a single policy issue debated tonight. Democrats had their greatest concerns confirmed. And now are in a full-blown panic. Republicans were reassured that their guy can keep his composure and is ready to take the wheel. And if you’re an independent, you probably didn’t see much of anything you liked, but you sure didn’t see anything in Joe Biden that would persuade you he’s ready for another term.
The View from Aspen
The unusually early timing of the debate meant that it coincided with another milestone on the American political and media calendar: the Aspen Ideas Festival, the annual summit of elites and do-gooders (and elites masquerading as do-gooders) held every summer in the shadow of the Rockies. Organizers of the festival, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, arranged a watch party, where a pro-Biden crowd gathered tonight inside a jam-packed pavilion.
Outside, an overcast afternoon gave way to a light drizzle, providing a sense of mountain calm. But inside, nerves ran high. Everyone I spoke to seemed to agree: Biden needed a performance.
I sat next to Denny Bales, a cardiologist who came to the festival from Hawaii.
“It feels like the fate of the world is riding on this one event,” he told me.
The watch party played out like it would in Park Slope or any other liberal enclave, a steady supply of mocking laughter for Trump and eager cheers for Biden.
But when Biden came out with a hoarse voice and lost his train of thought early on, the crowd squirmed and groaned.
Biden rallied somewhat, making it to the first commercial break without any more serious pratfalls. Bales was relieved. Sort of.
“He rebounded,” he said. “But he still looks like a sick old man.”
There was palpable anxiety about the debate here in Aspen this week: the fear of a second Trump presidency felt in near-equal measure with doubts over Biden’s ability to stop it.
Hours before Biden and Trump took the stage, the Democratic strategist James Carville channeled the mood around the festival campus.
“I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m afraid,” Carville said in a Q&A with the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart.
Carville was confident that Biden would be prepared, but…
“Preparation is one thing,” he said. “Execution is another thing.”
Biden is a “great guy,” Carville told Capehart, but “not a great communicator.”
“He’s not Obama or Reagan,” he said.
At a Q&A earlier in the afternoon, Katie Couric took the pre-debate temperature of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“How nervous are you?” Couric asked.
Whitmer paused for a few seconds.
“I mean, you know, I’m nervous about everything,” she said. The crowd laughed uneasily.
How Will MSNBC Respond?
Earlier today I was talking with a MSNBC anchor about how I’ll be tuning into Fox News immediately after the debate to see how Fox spins Biden's performance. It’s usually fascinating to see how Fox's alt-reality machine deals with Trump's distortions and dysfunction. But tonight MSNBC will be the more interesting channel to watch. What will the Democratic stars say about Biden's performance? How bluntly will they critique the president and how loudly will they echo the calls from some prominent liberals (like Nicholas Kristof and Andrew Yang) for Biden to withdraw?
Trump's Hitler Imbroglio
Did Donald Trump really say Hitler had good ideas? According to his former chief of staff, John Kelly, yes. Speaking to CNN anchor Jim Sciutto for the book The Rise of Great Powers, Kelly recounted that Trump said “Hitler did some good things” and then proceeded to note that the German dictator “rebuilt the economy.” In response, Kelly says he had to tell the then president of the United States, “Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.”
Democratic Strategist Weighs In
A Democratic strategist who I trust, who is not a Pollyanna, doesn't see this debate doing lasting damage to Biden's campaign, and thinks the political class is overreacting to the president's halting performance. "We tend to make more of these events than is real. Obama got 'trounced' by Romney, and Hillary won all the debates."
“Suckers” and “Losers”
Donald Trump angrily claimed that Joe Biden made up the story about him calling dead soldiers “suckers” and “losers” and demanded an apology.
But, in fact, it was The Atlantic that reported Trump’s comments, which the outlet said he made to then chief of staff John Kelly during a 2018 trip to France. (“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,” the president reportedly said, later referring to the 1,800-plus marines who died at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.) But you don’t have to take The Atlantic or Biden’s word for it: Kelly has gone on the record to confirm Trump actually said these things to him.
A Missed Opportunity on Federal Abortion Protections
When CNN moderator Dana Bash turned to the topic of abortion and Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, she asked Donald Trump whether he'd preserve access to the abortion drug mifepristone, which anti-abortion advocates have been trying to undermine in the courts. The former president said he would—a break with social conservatives, including those who want to criminalize mailing abortion pills or have the drug's regulatory approval yanked by the Food and Drug Administration.
But there was no follow-up on whether Trump would preserve Joe Biden’s current position: his administration’s protections for emergency abortion care in states with strict abortion bans. Earlier on Thursday, the Supreme Court punted on that very question in a case out of Idaho; there, pregnant patients facing medical emergencies are being airlifted to neighboring states because doctors fear the threat of incarceration if they perform medically necessary abortions.
The realities on the ground in these anti-abortion states are so dire, and the conflict between state bans and federal healthcare protections still the subject of litigation, this was a prime opportunity to probe if a new Trump administration would reverse course on these legal challenges and let these extreme bans run their course.
What Really Happened With Capping Insulin?
Donald Trump and Joe Biden both claimed to have helped scores of Americans who need insulin.
Here’s the fact-check, via CNN: “Trump’s claims that Biden did nothing to lower insulin costs and ‘it was all done’ before Biden became president are both false. Trump did get a $35-per-month cap on insulin for some seniors, through a voluntary program that Medicare prescription drug plans could choose to participate in. But Biden ensured that all 3.4 million-plus insulin users on Medicare got $35-per-month insulin—through a mandatory cap that not only covers more people than Trump’s voluntary cap but also applies to a greater number of insulin products and stays in effect at a level of individual drug spending at which Trump’s cap disappeared.”
The American Diabetes Association found that the total annual cost of diabetes in 2022 was “$412.9 billion, including $306.6 billion in direct medical costs and $106.3 billion in indirect costs.” Those diagnosed with diabetes account for one of every four health care dollars spent in this country.
Outside of the Debate in Atlanta, Pro-Palestinian Protestors Call for a Ceasefire
As Donald Trump and Joe Biden go back and forth on questions about the war in Gaza and the death counts in the region, protesters are calling for a ceasefire outside.
In the hours before the debate, pro-Palestinian protestors gathered in downtown Atlanta near the CNN debate site to call for an end to Israel’s offensive and critique the US government’s ongoing involvement in the conflict. “Everything that’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is horrific,” said Georgia House candidate Gabriel Sanchez, a democratic socialist who ousted incumbent Democratic state Representative Teri Anulewicz in last month’s primary. “We have to do everything we can to stop it.”
“Both Trump and Biden support the genocide going on in Palestine and so we don’t support, we reject both candidates,” a protester said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"The Morals of an Alley Cat"
For the first time in the history of presidential debate, the topic of sex with a porn star has come up. “How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties?” Joe Biden asked Donald Trump. “For molesting a woman in public, for having sex with a porn star while your wife was pregnant with your son? You have the morals of an alley cat.” (Trump responded be denying having had sex with Stormy Daniels; he has long claimed the affair with the porn star never happened, though admitted to paying her $130,000 in hush money.)
Belcher's Fearsome Forecast
Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher was the lone voice who called the 2022 midterms right, telling me there were no signs of a Republican red wave. Earlier today, I asked Belcher about tonight's debate and the stakes for Biden. “For a lot of his 2020 coalition who are holding back because they aren’t sure he’s up to the job because he’s too old, this is all about performance. He has to come across as sharp, strong, in command of the facts and still up for the fight. No popular policy proposal is going to work if they think he’s fundamentally not up for the job.”
Belcher is looking prescient again, and not in a good way for Biden and the Democrats.
The AP’s Framing
The AP's wire service recap of the first third of this forum summarized it thusly: “In first half-hour of debate, a raspy Biden delivers rambling answers while Trump counters with energy and falsehoods.” The implication is that Biden has been weak while Trump has been strong—mirroring the conventional wisdom all across Politics Twitter.
“Energy and falsehoods” doubles as one of the best, tightest summaries of Trump's four years in office.
Biden’s Greatest Weakness
This debate was over in the first five minutes.
I listened to the opening on radio, and Biden sounded raspy and scratchy like a 1940s overseas radio broadcast. As when I actually saw him, I thought it was Jack Nicholson in the snow in the last scene of The Shining.
Biden's greatest weakness is his age. People were worried about him being 80. Well, tonight he looks 90.
Biden Finally Says the Word “Abortion,” Only to Prop Up Abortion Myth
Joe Biden has a hard time saying the word “abortion.”
During the State of the Union, he skipped over the word and instead opted for “reproductive freedom” or “freedom to choose.” Tonight, in response to Donald Trump’s baseless claim that abortions were happening post-birth, Biden clarified, “We are not for late-term abortion. PERIOD.”
According to the CDC, 93 percent of abortions occurred during the first trimester. Only about 1 percent were performed at 21 weeks or more of gestation. These terminations often occur due to lack of health insurance or health complications for the pregnant person or the fetus.
Trump All Over the Map on Abortion Rights
Donald Trump, who has bragged about ending Roe, said he agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision in EMTALA which allows pregnant people in Idaho to access emergency abortion care—for now. Trump said he will not block medication abortion, and continues to say the issue is up to the states.
Yet, when states have enacted bans or restricted reproductive access, Trump changed his tune.
In Florida, he called the 6 week ban a “terrible mistake.”
In Alabama, Trump said he supported IVF.
In Arizona, he said the Civil-War era ban that was enacted went too far.
In Florida, he called the 6 week ban a “terrible mistake.”
Former president Trump still can’t quite figure out how to talk about his involvement in overturning Roe and decimating access to abortion across this country.
At the debate, he repeated almost verbatim what he told a crowd of evangelical voters last week:
“I believe in exceptions for the life of the mother, rape, and incest.” But also, “You have to go with your heart. You have to also remember you have to get elected.”
Dismantling Donald's Disinfo
Joe Biden just bluntly called Donald Trump a liar over the former president's claims about border security. Maybe the directness makes an impact with the debate’s viewers.
On a bigger scale, the Biden campaign team’s rapid response operation, led by Ammar Moussa, is also trying to push back on the flood of Republican disinformation. “This is a space where Democrats, not just the Biden operation, are systemically at a disadvantage, thanks to the right-wing echo chamber,” says Kate Bedingfield, who was a top advisor on the 2020 Biden campaign. “But no, it isn’t a waste of time. You have to combat lies.”
Team Biden is also working a couple of innovative angles tonight: It has invited a group of “creators/influencers” to the spin room in Atlanta to interview Biden surrogates, and it has brought 18 outside social media creators to campaign headquarters in Wilmington for a pre-debate briefing, in the hopes that they will shoot and distribute pro-Biden content. But Biden's shambling performance so far is giving them little to work with.