With the future of American democracy at stake, the first presidential debate of 2024 was an embarrassing trip to the nursing home. One old man struggled to answer questions and finish his sentences. The other defied logic and spewed relentless lies.
“We had great H20,” former President Donald Trump said, inexplicably.
“We finally beat Medicare,” President Joe Biden touted, mistakenly.
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The string of gaffes threatened to eclipse the most frightening aspect of the night: the fact that the only thing standing between Trump’s increasingly brazen authoritarianism and the White House is a wheezy octogenarian.
Asked if he would accept the result of the presidential election this time around, Trump dodged the question—then remained defiant when pressed.
“I shouldn’t have to say that, but of course I believe that. If the election is fair, free,” Trump started, qualifying his answer repeatedly.
“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” Trump later added, only to reassert the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him when in reality it was he who tried to fake the results. “The fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”
“I doubt you’ll accept it, because you’re such a whiner. You can’t stand loss,” Biden shot back.
But the cheap entertainment approach to American politics might refocus the voting public’s attention on both candidates’ verbal blunders.
Biden got off to a bumpy start. His voice was hoarse and difficult to hear. At one point he appeared to lose his train of thought and left an awkward silence when he reached the end of his time.
Donald Trump makes a point.
Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesBiden was calling out Trump for running up the national debt more than any other president in a single term when the wheels began to fall off. The president said he wanted to make sure “every single solitary person” was eligible for “what I’ve been able to do with the COVID—excuse me, with, dealing with everything we had to do with, look… we finally beat Medicare.”
“Well he’s right,” Trump said with a grin, “he did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”
‘More to be done’
The first presidential debate of 2024—and the first in American history between an incumbent and a convicted felon— kicked off in Atlanta with Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, looking just as old as they are.
CNN host Jake Tapper started by asking about relentless inflation and rising prices.
Biden cleared his throat and said, “There’s more to be done. Working class people are still in trouble.” With his lips shaking, he promised to bring down housing prices.
Trump maintained a sleepy frown as he waited to respond. When it was his turn, the business tycoon praised the soaring economy the country experienced during his administration before the COVID pandemic—but didn’t offer any new ideas.
“We had given them back a country where the stock market was higher than it was pre-COVID,” he said with a smirk.
When Tapper questioned Trump’s plan to impose a massive 10 percent tariff on goods from less-than-friendly countries like China, Trump assured the measure wouldn’t drive up prices for everyday Americans.
“It’s just going to cost countries that have been ripping us off for years. It’s just going to force them to pay us a lot of money,” Trump said.
Neither Tapper—nor Biden—pointed out how that notion would violate the basic economic theories that show imported products will cost more domestically and the costs will be borne by buyers, not producers.
As the debate went on, Biden continued to clear his throat. And when Trump railed against current government policies as “absolutely criminal,” Biden seemed to struggle to breathe as his shoulders rose and fell. Meanwhile, Trump’s signature blonde coif appeared comically flat, an embarrassing combover.
CNN’s strict rules for this one-of-a-kind debate—no audience, muted mics for the candidate not answering a question—kept things more civil than the last time these two men argued face-to-face, four years ago. Each candidate took turns answering and abiding by time limits. More importantly, Trump didn’t yell over his opponent.
However, Tapper and co-host Dana Bash didn’t do what other moderators have done: counter politicians’ answers and provide on-the-spot fact checks. When Trump repeated the false assertion that abortion rights would allow women to “rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month,” neither moderator took him to task. It was up to Biden to assert, “That’s not true.”
More to the point, Biden committed a costly gaffe. In a rambling remark on health care, he said: “We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do. Look, if we finally beat Medicare.”
Trump pounced. In contrast to Biden, he appeared focused.
When the moderators brought up the rise in undocumented immigration and the waves of desperate migrants fleeing troubled nations for the U.S. southern border, both candidates took their sharpest jabs.
Biden defended his administration’s handling of the crisis and pointed out one of the darkest chapters of the Trump years: “He was separating babies from their mothers, putting them in cages.”
But Trump seized on Biden’s inability to finish his answer in a coherent way, pointing out how Biden mumbled something about a “total initiative” and “more Border Patrol.”
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows either,” Trump shot back.
‘Those people are patriots? Come on’
It took 40 minutes for moderators to even hint at the elephant in the room: Trump’s attempt in 2020 to remain in office after losing the election and the way he encouraged MAGA followers on Jan. 6, 2021 to attack the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to halt certification of presidential election results.
Asked what he would say to voters who thought he violated his oath to defend the Constitution on January 6, Trump blamed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for turning down his offer to bring in the National Guard. But he also doubled down on the notion he would use unchecked presidential pardons to give many of the insurrectionists a ticket out of prison.
“The idea that those people are patriots? Come on,” Biden said.
Joe Biden delivers remarks during the CNN Presidential Debate in Atlanta, Georgia.
Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesWhen Trump suggested that members of the U.S. House January 6 committee should go to jail, Biden finally brought up Trump’s recently-incurred vulnerability—his conviction on 34 criminal charges in his hush-money trial—replying, “The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.”
Continuing the topic of Trump’s support for right wing extremists, Biden took him to task for claiming that the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally of tiki-torch-wielding white supremacists in Virginia in 2017 was misreported or fake. Trump called the rally “debunked,” despite the unquestionable fact that it happened—and that Trump expressed mild support for the racists who showed up.
Biden didn’t, however, seize on one of Trump’s biggest gaffes, when the former president spoke about policies meant to slow down human-caused global warming and merely praised his own past administration for keeping water clean, saying, “We had H2O.”
Moderators saved the most obvious subject for near the very end, when they questioned both candidates about their old age.
“This guy’s three years younger and a lot less competent,” Biden jabbed.
“I took two cognitive tests… I just won two club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart,” Trump said, pointing to his head as he began to talk about his performance on the fairways and greens.
The back-and-forth then morphed into a bragging session, both men boasting about their golf handicap. Biden challenged Trump to a game, as long as the obese business tycoon carried his own bag. Trump assured he would take the bet.
If only the future of the country weren’t at stake.
