President Biden and former President Trump duked it out in Atlanta in their first and perhaps only debate of the 2024 presidential election Thursday night.
The high-stakes event was defined early on by a halting performance by Biden, while Trump also leaned into some positions that risk turning off swing voters.
Here are five takeaways from the debate:
1. Disastrous opening for Biden sets tone
The president stumbled repeatedly in the opening minutes of the debate, tripping over his words and sounding hoarse, apparently from a cold.
In one answer early on, he ended by unwittingly declaring, “We finally beat Medicare.”
Trump immediately pounced.
“He’s right. He did beat Medicare, he beat it to death,” Trump said.
Later in the debate, Trump mocked Biden for his rambling answers.
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either,” Trump said.
Biden eventually found his voice and confronted Trump over a litany of issues, including his positions on abortion and NATO amid Ukraine’s war with Russia.
“This guy has no sense for American democracy,” Biden said.
Still, the president was caught wide-eyed in the debate split screen, often seen staring off-camera as his opponent rattled through attack lines and giving the impression he was struggling to follow.
2. Sparks over abortion, immigration signal attacks ahead
Biden, in one of his strongest moments of the debate, vowed to restore Roe v. Wade and laid into Trump for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn it.
Trump retorted by claiming Biden and Democrats want to “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby.”
“That’s simply not true,” Biden fired back. “We are not for late-term abortion. Period, period, period.”
Democrats found success focusing on abortion in the 2022 elections and are hoping to fire up voters on the topic again this year.
For his part, Trump’s answers about sending the issue back to states and touting his judicial appointments will only serve as fodder for Democrats.
In a particularly salient attack of his own, Trump laced into Biden over the crisis at the southern border, asserting the president was allowing people into the U.S. from “prisons, jails and mental institutions.”
“They call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime,” Trump said.
3. Trump dodges on Jan. 6, parries “losers” attack
Trump initially sidestepped when confronted about his comments seeking to undermine the results of the 2020 election leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and whether it violated his oath of office.
“On Jan. 6, we had a great border, nobody coming through. On Jan. 6, we were energy independent,” he said, touting lower taxes and fewer regulations.
Gesturing toward Biden, Trump added, “And then he comes in, and we’re laughed at, we’re a bunch of stupid people.”
Pressed to answer the question, Trump maintained, “I said peacefully and patriotically.”
Trump World is bracing for a decision any day from the Supreme Court on whether the former president is immune from federal prosecution over his efforts to undermine the election results before Jan. 6.
When asked Thursday night whether he would accept the results of the 2024 election, Trump responded, “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”
Biden has made a concerted effort to portray Trump as unmoored with no respect for democratic institutions or law enforcement, pointing to Jan. 6 as a prime example.
During another segment of the debate Thursday, Trump was put on the defensive when Biden brought up his reported comments from 2018 characterizing dead soldiers buried in France as “losers” and “suckers.”
Trump has repeatedly denied making the remarks, but Biden showed he is sharpening his line of attack, telling Trump, “You’re the sucker, you’re the loser.”
4. Age questions linger for Biden; legal challenges loom for Trump
Biden’s performance in Thursday’s debate will supercharge chatter among Democrats about whether he should continue carrying the party’s mantle heading into the party’s convention and leading up to November.
“I think you are going to hear discussions, that I don’t know will lead to anything … there are going to be discussions about whether he should continue,” former Obama strategist David Axelrod said in a CNN panel discussion immediately after the debate.
While age questions will consume talk about Biden in the coming days, the debate also underscored the reality that the other major party candidate remains engulfed in legal issues that aren’t going away anytime soon.
Biden swiped at Trump as the only person on stage who had been convicted of a felony and forced Trump to deny salacious allegations from his hush money case.
In a signal of potential lingering damage from Thursday’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris went on CNN late Thursday to defend Biden’s performance.
“Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish,” she said.
5. A win for debate moderators
Thursday’s debate was the first in more than three decades to be put on without input from the commission that has organized presidential debates going back to 1988.
Concerns about rampant mic-muting largely fell by the wayside, and candidates mostly stuck to allowing each other to get out complete thoughts without interruption. Several times moderators even noted candidates had more speaking time available.
It was a marked contrast from Trump and Biden’s first debate in 2020 and put extra emphasis on the content of the candidates’ remarks.
Elaine Hadley is a dedicated journalist covering the ever-evolving landscape of U.S. news. With a keen interest in politics and a commitment to uncovering the truth, she provides insightful commentary and in-depth analysis on domestic issues. When not reporting, Elaine enjoys exploring the diverse cultures and landscapes of the United States.
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