President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump presented two very different visions of America in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, fighting bitterly over immigration, the economy and their respective terms in the White House.
But it was the 81-year-old Biden's faltering performance that is likely to resonate with Americans on both sides of the aisle.
When the conversation turned to Biden’s age, Trump, 78, called on him to take a cognitive test and touted his own health.
“We knock on wood, wherever we may have wood, that I’m in good health,” Trump said. “He can’t hit a (golf) ball 50 yards.”
Biden, who at times stumbled over his words, defended his ability to govern more effectively than Trump despite being in his 80s, saying "this guy is three years younger and a lot less competent."
After the debate, the White House tried to tamp down concerns that Biden had performed poorly onstage against his Republican rival.
“Yes, it was a slow start,” Vice President Kamala Harris said on CNN after the debate. “But it was a strong finish.”
Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said Biden "showed exactly why he deserves to be fired."
"President Trump is spot-on when he says that if Joe Biden is too incompetent to stand trial (in a classified documents case), then Biden is too incompetent to be President," the Trump advisers said in a post-debate written statement.
The Thursday night face-off, moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, marked a new phase for an election cycle that is all but guaranteed to be a nasty fight from now until Nov. 5. It was the first time that Trump and Biden met onstage since their dramatic 2020 election battle, the fall of landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade and Trump’s felony conviction in a New York court.
Trump used inflammatory rhetoric about the southern border and abortion and played coy about whether he will accept the 2024 election results, while Biden called the former president a liar, warned that Trump will seek “retribution” and cause a recession if reelected and at times stumbled over his words during the 90-minute program.
Trump attacked Biden as “not equipped to be president” while Biden slammed Trump as having “no sense of American democracy.” The incumbent Democratic president painted a positive image of the United States under his leadership and said there is more work to do during his time at the podium.
“We are doing better than any other nation in the world,” Biden said about the economy. “If Trump is elected, we’re likely to have a recession.”
Trump knocked down that view. “The whole world is blowing up under him,” the Republican former president said.
The debate hit on high- and low-level concerns: The pair accused one another of bringing the country to the brink of World War III and at points also clashed on p*rn stars and who has the better golf game.
Immigration is a top debate issue
Trump was eager to attack Biden on immigration, asking why he has allowed millions of migrants into the country, even when the debate had turned to other topics. Trump erroneously claimed many of these individuals were coming from prisons and mental institutions in other countries and attempting to enroll for federal benefits like Medicare. There is no data to support either of those claims.
“We have a border that is the most dangerous place anywhere in the world,” Trump said. However, government statistics show border communities are among the safest areas of the country because of the additional presence of federal and state law enforcement agencies.
Questioned about the record number of border crossings and the security and housing challenges at destination cities like Chicago and New York, Biden argued he has increased resources and supported a bipartisan bill that Trump and congressional Republicans rejected.
Biden credited his executive action for a 40% decrease in migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border, though many analysts say Mexico’s immigration crackdown has played a greater role in reducing migrant flows.
Trump claimed that under his presidency the country had one of the safest borders and cited some of his policies like the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which Biden repealed when he took office.
The number of migrants reaching the U.S.-Mexico border decreased significantly under the Trump administration because of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions on migrant crossings under Title 42. However, the numbers began to increase steadily once lockdown restrictions eased, reaching record levels in 2022 and 2023.
Since last year, migrant flows have shifted to Arizona. The Tucson Sector, which covers the eastern two-thirds of the Arizona border, remains the busiest crossing route along the border.
Asked whether he would follow through with mass deportations, Trump declined to answer directly. Instead, he shifted his remarks to crimes committed by migrants, referring to destination cities for migrants as “rats’ nests.”
“We have to get a lot of people out,” Trump said.
Trump, Biden clash on abortion
Trump reiterated during the debate that he wants abortion laws to be left to individual states and praised the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
"It's been a great thing," he said of the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago. Trump nominated three of the justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who voted to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in June 2022.
Leaving abortion laws to states is like leaving civil rights up to individual states, Biden responded.
Abortion rights advocates say leaving abortion rights to individual states has created a patchwork of laws that has created an unequal country, where some states have complete bans while others have full access to abortion care. Arizona has endured intermittent pauses in abortion care since the U.S. Supreme Court decision because of court challenges.
Trump dodges election question
Trump narrowly leads Biden in Arizona, according to the latest polls. Both campaigns expect the margin of victory could be razor-thin here in November, especially after Biden carried the state in 2020 by fewer than 11,000 votes. That election result has been questioned for years by Trump and his supporters, despite no proof of widespread voter fraud or foul play at the polls.
Debate moderators asked Trump multiple times whether he would accept the 2024 presidential election result. Trump said he would do so if the election is “fair” and “free,” before claiming that he had been indicted for political reasons. The former president also offered a sympathetic view of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, some of whom have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy in court.
Biden said Trump will not accept the election result if he loses because he is a “whiner.” Biden also said that something “snapped” inside the former president when he lost four years ago.
Aging Americans, aging presidents
The candidates gave vague answers about how to keep Social Security afloat over the next several decades, with Biden proposing more taxes for the wealthy and Trump blaming undocumented immigrants for putting pressure on the system.
“Make the very wealthy begin to pay their fair share,” Biden said. “That one enough will keep it solvent.”
Biden said that Trump and Republicans in Congress want to cut Social Security, which the former president disputed. Trump claimed that Biden is gutting Social Security by allowing undocumented immigrants to come into the country.
“I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy,” Trump said. “Everything he does is a lie.”
Inflation, immigration, abortion:Presidential rivals spar over top Arizona issues
Both Trump and Biden will have their eye on undecided, independent voters, a small slice of the electorate that could decide the 2024 race. Since many voters say they already know plenty about Trump and Biden, appealing to them may be as simple as seeming slightly more palatable than the opposition, former Trump pollster Brett Lloyd said.
“Undecided voters aren’t undecided because they're waiting to find out something more about these candidates. It looks more like they’re waiting to find out who they’re going to vote against,” Lloyd said. “Who is worse? … That’s the bar America has set.”
