Biden-Trump presidential debate: Highlights, fact check, reactions

The Biden campaign is insisting that the president “started slow but finished strong” as it tries to claim victory in the debate.

In a memo, Biden advisers argued that the Trump’s performance reminded independent voters “why they dislike him,” while suggesting that Biden improved as the night wore on.

Vice President Kamala Harris made similar suggestions in TV appearances after the debate.

Biden’s voice was particularly raspy in the debate’s early going, and he repeatedly cleared his throat throughout the night. But the president was also hard to understand in his closing statement, undermining suggestions that he made much improvement.

Trump’s supporters, by contrast, were giddy, arguing that Biden looked befuddled and confused and that their candidate was the clear winner.

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is weighing in on Biden’s debate performance, repeating her campaign trail line that the Democratic president won’t ultimately be his party’s 2024 nominee.

Trump’s final competitor in the Republican primary, who dropped out in March, said on X after the debate, “Mark my words….Biden will not be the Democrat nominee.”

Haley repeatedly said during her own presidential campaign that Biden would not end up representing his party in this year’s election, making critiques of the president’s age and her perceptions of his stumbles in office.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential Trump vice presidential pick, says he doesn’t know yet whom Trump will pick to join him on the Republican ticket.

“I don’t know the answer to that and no one’s told me that I am,” he said on CNN after the debate from the spin room. “But we’ll know who it is at some point during the next two weeks.”

Rubio said that he thinks there are eight or nine people who could do a good job in the role and that, “It really comes down to who the president thinks would do a good job.”

“That’s his decision to make,” he says.

Biden, and his wife, Jill, are on the way to a Waffle House restaurant to pick up food for the plane before they fly to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a postdebate rally later Friday, the White House says.

Vice President Harris in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow again acknowledges it was a slow start, “but I thought it was a strong finish.”

“What we had in Joe Biden is someone who wanted to have a debate based on facts, based on truths, and in Donald Trump, we have what we’ve come to expect, which is someone who is going to push lies and distract from the reality of the damage he has created and continues to create in our country,” Harris said.

More than 50 minutes after he arrived at his watch party, Joe Biden finally departed near midnight to whoops from an emptying hotel ballroom.

Biden shook hands and took pictures with many supporters along a rope line.

Biden has another packed day on Friday.

After he leaves Atlanta, Biden will touch down in Raleigh, North Carolina, to be in place for a post-debate campaign rally on Friday afternoon.

After that, he’ll head to New York and New Jersey for campaign fundraisers on Friday and Saturday.

Harris seemed annoyed by the focus on Biden’s performance, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I got that this is the after play for the debate, this conversation that I’m in, and I understand why everyone wants to talk about it.”

“But I think it’s also important to recognize that the choice in November between these two people that were on the debate stage involved extraordinary stakes. And there’s one person on that stage who has the endorsement of their vice president, and that’s Joe Biden. Mike Pence is nowhere to be found.”

Wondering how the second debate might differ from tonight’s? You’re going to have to wait awhile.

Biden and Trump’s second debate is scheduled for Sept. 10 on ABC. The network hasn’t yet released details on the format.

Thursday’s faceoff was the earliest general election presidential debate ever. The second one is also early, and will be held more than six weeks before Election Day.

Trump and Biden used issues of race, immigration and crime to trade personal barbs that often distorted facts and sidestepped issues central to the concerns of many Black and Hispanic voters.

“As Black Americans face some of the most challenging obstacles of our time, we need candidates who are less focused on attacking each other and more focused on attacking the issues,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“There have been some comments here from Donald Trump that our members here have rejected outright,” said Juan Proaño, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Shortly before the debate, Biden started selling cans of water labeled, “Dark Brandon’s Secret Sauce,” on his campaign website, mocking the suggestions from Trump and his advisors in the days leading up to the debate that Biden would appear firey and perhaps even use drugs to enhance his performance.

“The secret to a good debate performance? Staying hydrated,” Biden’s campaign website still read after the debate.

Vice President Kamala Harris is weighing in on the presidential debate.

“Listen, first of all, what we saw tonight is the president making a very clear contrast with Donald Trump on all the issues that matter to the American people,” she said.

“Yes there was a slow start but it was a strong finish.”

Asked if she’s concerned in wake of Biden’s debate performance, she repeated: “It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone.

“I’m not going to debate that point. I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”

You can rewatch the full CNN presidential debate using the livestream below.

Biden told supporters in his brief appearance after the debate: “Look we’re going to beat this guy. We need to beat this guy and I need you in order to beat him.”

“God love you all,” he said before stepping off the stage to greet some of those supporters.

Biden continued to work the crowd at his watch party in downtown Atlanta for more than 15 minutes after making a brief statement.

At his watch party, Biden is trying to focus on Trump’s falsehoods.

“I can’t think of one thing he said that is true,” the president told supporters.

“Tonight, President Biden presented a positive and winning vision for the future of America,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote, adding, “On the other side of the stage was Donald Trump, who offered a dark and backwards window into what America will look like if he steps foot back in the White House.”

President Joe Biden addressed a room full of supporters following the debate on Thursday.

Thanking them for their support, he said: “Let’s keep going. See you at the next one.”

On Biden’s performance and any talk of Democrats turning to another nominee, Miller said a move would be “structurally impossible.”

“Sorry, Democrats. You have your nominee,” Miller said.

Democrats are panicking and wish casting over what could have been following Biden’s uneven debate performance. But David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist who helped propel Barack Obama’s meteoric rise, says the only person who could replace Joe Biden as the party’s nominee is Joe Biden himself.

“He is the nominee of the Democratic Party. This isn’t the ‘60s,” Axelrod said. “Only he can decide.”

“This is a guy with a lot of pride who believes in himself” and probably thinks he had just one bad night,” Axelrod continued. The problem is “it’s one night that helped confirm peoples’ fears.”

Biden has returned to the hotel where he spent much of the day to speak to supporters who are partying after they watched the broadcast of the debate.

Music is playing and people are dancing in a conference room decorated with Biden-Harris signs and images of Biden’s trademark aviator sunglasses.

Trump is on his way back to his private plane as his aides and supporters gloat about his performance Thursday night.

He’s not planning to stop by the spin room, leaving that job to surrogates, which include several of his vice presidential short-listers.

As the debate came to a close, Trump supporter retired police officer Nick Glaub, of Ross, Ohio, watched with his feet kicked up onto a nearby performance stage, a can of Corona sitting on the table.

Glaub was pleased with Trump’s debate performance and said he noticed the lack of attack lines from Trump. “I just think he held his composure,” he said.

Chuck Thompson, a Trump supporter from Mason, Ohio, who came to the watch party decked in an American flag button-down shirt, was also happy with Trump’s debate performance, noting the difference in tone from Trump’s last debate against President Biden in 2020.

“He’s learned how to control his temper,” he said.

Ramaswamy says Trump “hands down” won the decade and may have even swayed independent voters.

The former GOP hopeful says Trump showed more energy than Biden, whom he portrayed as vulnerable and unable potentially to finish his term, let alone win another.

Ramaswamy characterized Biden‘s ongoing presidency as a potential threat to national security for what he argued was showing weakness.

Trump and Biden bickered over how far they can hit a golf ball and their stamina on the course, with Trump bragging about trophies he’s won and Biden claiming he’s been a single-digit handicap.

Trump noted he recently won two championships at a golf course he owns. He then bashed Biden, claiming without evidence that the president can’t hit the ball 50 yards. Biden responded that, as vice president, he had a rather competitive six handicap — and again challenged Trump to a golf match, but only if his foe carried his bag of clubs himself.

“Think you can do it?” asked Biden, whose handicap is listed on the United States Golf Association’s website as 6.7, with the last update in July 2018. Trump’s handicap last updated in June 2021 is listed as 2.5.

Trump then sought to shut down the golf discussion. “Let’s not act like children,” Trump said.

“You are a child,” Biden retorted.

In golf, a handicap is a measure of a player’s skill. The lower the handicap, the better the player is.

Fifteen minutes after the debate ended, there were only Republicans talking to the press in the spin room.

There were at least seven high-profile Republican officials in the room, including Stefanik, Donalds, Ramaswamy and Whatey.

There were no Democrats.

Trump walked straight off the stage alone after the debate.

Biden was joined by his wife Jill, who watched from a green room. They hugged and kissed and she held his hand and seemed to assist him down the stairs as they approached Bash and Tapper to greet the moderators before leaving.

President Joe Biden has finally found some traction on an issue that has dogged much of his presidency – immigration – but he largely avoided it as Trump repeatedly hammered him with unsubstantiated claims that people were coming across the border from prisons and mental health institutions.

In his closing remarks, Biden discussed taxes, child-care credits, lead pipes and inflation but nothing about his recent measures on immigration. On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said arrests for illegal border crossings plunged more than 40% since asylum processing was halted June 5.

The asylum halt infuriated some in his Democratic base, but Biden thrilled them two weeks later by saying he would ease the path to legal status for an estimated 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens.

Trump, as expected, turned to a signature issue in his closing remarks, blaming Biden for “allowing millions and millions of people to pour in.”

Biden has departed the debate hall.

Biden began his closing statement with a voice that was even scratchier than earlier and was at times hard to understand. He said of his administration, “We’ve made significant progress from the debacle that was left by President Trump in his last term.”

Abortion is one of the most important issues for Democrats in this year’s election. The president mischaracterized Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.

When asked if he supports some restrictions on abortion Biden said he, “supports Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters. The first time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the women and the state.”

He added that he thought doctors, not politicians, should make decisions about “women’s health.”

“We’re living in hell,” Trump said about the state of the country in his closing remarks. “You talk about Charlottesville, this is 100 times, Charlottesville a thousand times the whole country is exploding because of you, because they don’t respect you,” Trump said to Biden, equating the state of the country with the neo-Nazi rally and counterprotests that shocked the nation at the start of Trump’s term.

After the debate, Biden was greeted on stage by his wife, Jill. Trump walked off alone.

That’s a wrap on the first presidential debate.