Biden stumbles in first presidential debate as Trump avoids key questions

• Joe Biden gave a stumbling performance in a 90-minute showdown with Donald Trump – the first televised debate of the 2024 presidential election campaign

• Democrats expressed concern at the president’s performance – with party insiders saying his early answers triggered panic

• Top Biden allies told the BBC his campaign team overworked the president, and senior White House officials said they are meeting to discuss options

• But Vice-President Kamala Harris defended Biden, saying it “was a slow start, but there was a strong finish”

• Trump repeatedly attacked Biden on the economy and his foreign policy record, while Biden took aim at his rival’s criminal conviction and alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election

• Trump also repeated falsehoods – from abortion, to taxes and the deficit – and at first avoided answering if he would accept the 2024 election result

• Biden called Trump a “sucker”, a “loser,” and said he had the “morals of an alley cat”

Live Reporting

Edited by Phil McCausland

1. Former Biden aide: Not a good debate for Joe Bidenpublished at 04:52

   Courtney Subramanian
   Reporting from the debate in Atlanta

   Kate Bedingfield, President Biden’s former White House communications director, called her old boss’ debate performance “really disappointing”.

   “I don’t think there’s any other way to slice it. His biggest issue was to prove to the American people that he had the energy, the stamina — and he didn’t do that,” she said on CNN following the debate.

   Bedingfield, Biden’s 2020 deputy campaign manager, didn’t mince words.

   “There are no two ways about it. That was not a good debate for Joe Biden,” she added.

2. CNN pundit says ‘very aggressive panic’ among some Democrats over Bidenpublished at 04:45

   Image source, Getty Images

   With the debate over, CNN pundits started to weigh in – and some of their verdicts on Biden’s performance were damning.

   The cable network’s veteran chief national correspondent, John King, said: “this was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic party.

   “It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now. It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers, and they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal.

   “Some of those conversations include ‘Should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside?’ Other conversations are about, ‘Should prominent Democrats go public with that call because they feel this debate was so terrible?’”

   He says the tenor of the conversation was “‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ to ‘What do we do about this?’”

   CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod said Biden beat Trump on substance, but conceded: “There are going to be discussions about whether he [Biden] should continue.”

   Another pundit, Van Jones, said: “That was painful.”

3. VP Harris: ‘Slow start’ but a ‘strong finish’published at 04:40

   Courtney Subramanian
   Reporting from the debate in Atlanta

   Vice-president Kamala Harris appeared on CNN after the debate to weigh in on the president’s performance, arguing that the debate showed a clear contrast on policy.

   “Yes, there was a slow start but there was a strong finish,” she conceded of Biden’s performance on the debate stage.

   “People can debate on style points, but ultimately this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance and the contrast is clear,” she said.

4. Lara Trump says Stormy Daniels attack was ‘below the belt’published at 04:37

   Kayla Epstein
   Reporting from the debate spin room in Atlanta

   Image source, Reuters

   Lara Trump, co-chair of the RNC and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, has just defended the former president from one of Biden’s harshest attacks of the night.

   “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one,” Biden had said, in reference to Trump’s alleged sexual encounter with adult film star Stormy Daniels in the mid-2000s. Trump denied the encounter during the debate.

   “What else is he going to talk about?” Lara Trump told reporters in the spin room just now.

   “I guess his only option is to go below the belt,” she says.

5. 

   A more focused Trumppublished at 04:34

   Anthony Zurcher
   BBC North America correspondent

   Trump largely offered a disciplined, nimble performance. He avoided the kind of interruptions and belligerence that undermined his first debate showing in 2020 and turned the discussion back to attacks on Biden’s record whenever possible.

   He repeatedly made assertions that weren’t supported by facts as well as outright falsehoods, but Biden largely was unable to corner him on them.

   When the topic turned to abortion, for instance, the former president repeatedly shifted attention to what he said was Democratic extremism. He claimed, incorrectly, that Democrats support abortions after babies are born.

   But Biden’s attacks in an area where he could have scored points fell flat.

   “It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done,” Biden said.

6. 

   Fact check: Trump claims Biden wants to quadruple taxespublished at 04:31

   We just had a look at the context around one of Biden’s claims during the debate, now let’s look at something Trump said earlier.

   Trump had claimed that Biden “wants to raise your taxes by four times… He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire”.

   President Biden’s most recent US budget, external makes no reference to the quadrupling of taxes. In fact, it proposes tax cuts for families earning less than $400,000 a year, along with increases for higher earners.

   Trump introduced sweeping tax cuts in 2017, and many of these are due to expire in 2025. Even if these aren’t extended, that wouldn’t amount to anything like a four-fold increase in household taxation.

   An analysis carried out by the Tax Policy Center, external based on the 2024 Budget concluded that the top 1% of earners would see an increase in taxation of 9.7%.

7. 

   Fact check: Biden claims black unemployment at its lowestpublished at 04:27

   With the debate over, let’s take a moment to look back at some of the claims made by the candidates.

   At one point tonight, Biden said black unemployment “is the lowest it’s been in a long, long time”.

   While it is true that the unemployment rate for African Americans reached a record low during one month of the Biden administration, the claim lacks context.

   According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, external, the unemployment rate for black Americans was 4.8% in April 2023 under Biden, a record low at the time.

   Since then, it’s gone back up, standing at 6.1% in May.

   However, the jobless rate for African Americans during the Trump presidency fell to 5.3% in August and September 2019, both of which were also record lows at that point.

8. Reporters ask California governor if he will replace Bidenpublished at 04:22

   Kayla Epstein
   Reporting from the debate in Atlanta

   The Biden campaign took a few extra minutes to send surrogates into the spin room, giving Trump’s team the opportunity to flood the zone with advocates.

   When they did show up, the group stuck together and quite literally got backed into a corner as a mob of media surrounded them.

   California Governor Gavin Newsom, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the former president’s niece Mary Trump fielded questions about Trump

   Several reporters asked Newsom if he would step in to replace Biden as the nominee (at this point in the race, that would be very unlikely).

   He ignored those questions and told reporters that he was “old fashioned” because he cared about “substance and facts” and believed Biden provided both.

   Congressman Garcia, another relatively young Democrat, launched the most forceful defence of Biden.

   He told reporters that Trump: “Lied, lied, and lied, again”.

   Garcia claimed Trump was misleading about Covid and the pandemic, and said the former president “doubled down” on anti-immigrant rhetoric.

9. 

   Biden stumbles in testy debatepublished at 04:18

   Anthony Zurcher
   BBC North America correspondent

   Image source, Reuters

   Coming into Thursday evening, many Americans had expressed concerns about Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office. To say that this debate did not put those concerns to rest may be one of the greatest understatements of the year.

   The president came into the debate with a low bar to clear, and he stumbled. He was flat. He was rambling. He was unclear.

   Roughly midway through the debate, the Biden campaign told reporters that the president has been battling a cold – an attempt to explain his raspy voice. That may be so, but it also sounded like an excuse.

   Though he landed some blows on Donald Trump, more often than not, Joe Biden was on the ropes.

10. ‘A clear win for Trump’: political watchers react to debatepublished at 04:07

    Republicans and Democrats who closely watched the debate are sharing their thoughts with our reporters.

    Stephanie Murphy, a former Democrat congresswoman, tells the BBC that were moments where Joe Biden did show his age.

    “It was difficult to understand him.”

    But on the other hand, she says Donald Trump made comments that “weren’t exactly true” and that would require fact-checking. She adds that she had concerns about Trump’s unwillingness to say he would accept the outcome of the election.

    She says that overall, the debate highlighted Biden’s old age, while the controlled format helped Trump deliver a more measured performance.

    Rodney Davis, a former Republican congressman, tells the BBC the debate was “a clear win for President Trump,” adding that he solidified himself as the clear front-runner.

    “Unfortunately for Democrats across America, the format did help President Trump,” he says.

11. Biden surrogates start to appearpublished at 04:02

    Kayla Epstein
    Reporting from the debate in Atlanta

    Here in the spin room, the Biden team has finally sent out some surrogates. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock and California Governor Gavin Newsom are being swarmed by reporters now.

    Stick with us, we will bring you their reactions to the debate shortly.

12. Watch: Debate key momentspublished at 03:59

    Just in case you missed it, let’s take a look at some of the video highlights from tonight’s debate.

13. Election question has special significance here in Georgiapublished at 03:58

    Kayla Epstein
    Reporting from the debate in Atlanta

    Trump was asked – more than once – whether he would accept the results of this election after he repeated election fraud falsehoods in 2020.

    A question about Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results has special significance here in Georgia. Trump and his allies are accused of trying to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state, allegedly going so far as to call the Secretary of State and ask him to “find” the votes necessary to defeat Biden.

    In fact, the courthouse where Trump was indicted for allegedly conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results is just a short drive away from the venue where the debate is being held.

    Trump says if the election is “fair” and “legal” then he would “absolutely” accept the results.

14. Biden flops on age questionpublished at 03:51

    Courtney Subramanian
    Reporting from the debate in Atlanta

    One of the questions many American voters are asking is about both candidates’ ages.

    When asked about this during the debate, Biden, who is 81, briefly mentioned that for the first half of his career, he was one of the youngest politicians elected to the US Senate. He then veered into his economic record, including his administration’s efforts to produce more semiconductor computer chips through a deal struck with South Korea.

    It’s typical for a politician to answer the question they want instead of the one they’re asked, but Biden has been dogged by concerns about whether he’s up for another four years (he would be 86 years old at the end of a second term).

    The debate was a chance to provide a clear and sharp answer on why his age is an asset and not a vulnerability to millions of voters tuning in, and unfortunately, it was an opportunity missed.

15. A Republican viewer from Florida checks in with the BBCpublished at 03:47

    Ana Faguy
    US Reporter

    Throughout the debate, BBC News was texting voters across the country to hear what they think.

    Here’s what one Florida voter told us:

    

16. What just happened?published at 03:46

    Image source, Reuters

    The two candidates have just wrapped up the CNN Presidential Debate after about one hour and 40 minutes.

    If you missed it, let’s recap the evening’s event

    • Both candidates have accused the other of lying on topics ranging from veteran’s affairs and the border to the state of the US economy and inflation.
    • Trump repeatedly attacked Biden on his handling of the economy and his foreign policy record, as well as immigration and border crossings.
    • Biden, for his part, took aim at Trump’s recent criminal convictions and what he says is a threat to democracy.
    • Biden, at times, seemed to lose his train of thought and stumbled at various points, causing what some observers are calling a “panic” in the Democratic Party and Biden-Harris campaign.
    • In fundraising emails, Trump claimed victory in tonight’s debate, even as fact-checkers questioned many of his claims.

17. Trump closes by saying Americans have been ‘living in hell’published at 03:44

    In his closing remarks minutes ago, Trump started off by calling Biden “a complainer” who has made the US unsafe and who has worsened the country’s reputation on the international stage.

    He also claimed that Biden’s policies on Iran allowed Hamas to carry out their attacks against Israel, and that “Ukraine should have never happened.”

    “For three and a half years, we’ve been living in hell,” Trump says of Biden’s time as president.

    He brought up the series of pro-Palestinian protests in the US since the Israel-Gaza war erupted on 7 October, saying to Biden that “the whole country is exploding because of you, because they don’t respect you.”

    Trump then defended his track record on jobs, the economy and healthcare.

    “We’re a failing nation, but it’s not going to be failing anymore. We’re going to make it great again,” he concluded.

18. So, who won? Not viewerspublished at 03:42

    Katty Kay
    US special correspondent

    The format for this debate worked much better for the American public. The two candidates couldn’t and didn’t talk over each other. We got to hear them clearly.

    But there was no effort from the moderators to fact check the many things that weren’t true. And it was a bad night for Joe Biden.

    Many of his answers were not coherent, he looked old, and his open mouth when he wasn’t talking has got a lot of unflattering attention.

    Biden had a better second half and found some energy, but it was too late. Donald Trump “won” this debate. But will it help him win the election?

19. Debate endspublished at 03:40

    The CNN Presidential Debate has now ended.

    Stick with us as we bring you all the reactions and analysis from the last hour and a half.

20. Biden pledges child care, reduced inflationpublished at 03:39

    Image source, Reuters

    With the ad break over, Biden has been given two minutes for closing statements.

    He focuses on the policy changes he says he plans to bring to the American people.

    He talks about his efforts to reduce the price of Insulin and pledges to help families get childcare at a reasonable price.

    He also pledges to bring down inflation, a key issue for many Americans.

    He says he also wants to keep taxes down for everyday Americans – and claims Trump will raise them.