President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump faced off Thursday night in the first of two debates announced ahead of the Nov. 5 election. CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash served as moderators at CNN’s studios in Atlanta.
The matchup between Biden and Trump was unique, not only because it pitted a president opposed to his predecessor, but also because it didn’t have a live audience and both candidates’ microphones were muted when it wasn’t their time to speak.
Trump and Biden were allowed to take the stage or props, where they traded blows on issues such as the economy, illegal immigration, abortion, and foreign policy toward China, Iran, Israel, and terrorist groups.
Trump and Biden tried to use the 90-minute debate, well before the Nov. 5 election, to highlight their respective successes as presidents and criticize the policies of others.
Some of the statements made at the level were misleading or lacked context. Here’s a pattern of 17.
Trump said the U. S. border was more secure during his presidency than at any other time in history, adding that, under Biden, “we now have the worst border in history. “
Under the Biden administration, U. S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 9. 7 million illegal extraterrestrial beings at U. S. borders. Under Biden’s presidency, another 1. 8 million “known refugees” crossed the border into the country.
In fiscal year 2020, the last full year of Trump’s presidency, CBP encountered 458,088 illegal extraterrestrial beings at the U. S. southern border. So far, in fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, more than 1. 6 million illegal extraterrestrial beings have been found at the southern border.
In fiscal year 2020, they were found at the U. S. borders. There are a total of 199 illegal extraterrestrial beings on the National Terrorist Watch List. Since the beginning of fiscal year 2024, they have been found at the U. S. borders. There are a total of 316 immigrants on the terrorist watch list.
On his first day in Array, Biden signed an executive order halting the structure of a border wall and reversing Trump’s border and immigration policies, which he called “harsh and extreme. “When he took office in January 2021, Biden suspended Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. , which required asylum seekers to stay out of the country, and officially ended the program in the spring of 2021.
Former Border Patrol leader Rodney Scott said Mexico’s drug and crime cartels benefit from the Biden administration’s border policies.
Biden began by stating that Trump had said that Americans “drink bleach” to combat COVID-19. In July 2020, the left-wing newspaper PolitiFact deemed this claim “essentially false. ”
At the time, Trump spoke at a briefing with William Bryan, then the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy secretary for science and technology. Bryan spoke of a study that found that sun exposure and disinfectants like bleach could kill the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. 19 when it remains on surfaces.
Trump said at that briefing, “I see the sanitizer, which knocks him unconscious in a minute. And is there a way to do something like that, by internal injection or almost by cleaning?Because, as you can see, it reaches the lungs and hurts tremendously in the lungs. It would be attractive to check it, so I have to call the doctors, but I find it attractive.
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When Biden blamed Trump for the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and abortion-on-demand, in part because he had appointed 3 of the nine justices, Trump claimed that “everyone needs to go back to the states. ”
In July 2022, shortly after the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 ruling legalizing requested abortion nationwide and nationalizing the issue, a vote found that a majority of Americans opposed overturning Roe.
The High Court’s Dobbs ruling has returned the abortion issue to other people and their state representatives, conservatives say.
However, it is clear that all Americans are aware that this is a national problem.
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At one point, Biden said of Roe v. Wade in 1973: “The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional experts supported Roe. This concept that everyone was opposed is ridiculous.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known as a liberal jurist, criticized Roe v. Wade and its legal basis.
In addition, many other lawyers who claimed to be pro-abortion criticized Roe v. Wade as bad law, including law professors Laurence Tribe and John Hart Ely and former Kennedy attorney general and Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
However, it may be true that most constitutional law scholars Roe. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, told PolitiFact: “It’s very transparent that the vast majority of legal scholars oppose the final results of Roe v. But Somin added, “Some have disorders with the main points of Roe’s reasoning. “
Days after a fact check called this repeated claim false, Biden again claimed that in 2017, Trump said white nationalist rioters in Charlottesville, Virginia, were “good people. ”
“He said, ‘I think there are other smart people on both sides,'” Biden said. “What would the American president say that the Nazis who came out of the camps, gave the same anti-Semitic speech, dressed in swastikas, were intelligent?”Friends? He’s the guy who says [Adolf] Hitler did clever things. I would like to know what they are. . . This guy has no sense of American democracy.
Trump responded, “He made up the Charlottesville story. . . This has been completely demystified. On Sunday, the liberal Snopes headlined: “No, Trump didn’t call neo-Nazis and white supremacists ‘very good people. ‘
The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017 in protest of the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the city. But it turned into an insurrection that led to clashes with white nationalists and Antifa.
Trump then at a press conference:
You had an organization in one aspect and an organization in the other, and they fought each other with batons and it was cruel and terrible and it was a terrible thing to see, but there’s some other aspect. There is an organization in this aspect, we can call it left. You simply called them left, which came here to violently attack the other organization. So they can say whatever they want, but that’s how it is.
One reporter went on to say, “It was the neo-Nazis who started this case. They appeared in Charlottesville.
Trump responded:
They were not neo-Nazis themselves, and there were other very bad people in that organization. But there were other very intelligent people as well, on both sides. There were other people in that organization; Excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same shots you saw: there were other people in that organization who were there to protest the dismantling, for them, of a very, very vital statue and the recalling of a Robert E. Read on another call.
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Biden said of inflation and his leadership, “A mix of what I have left and corporate greed is why we face this challenge right now. “
“What I Had Left” was referring in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused economic damage to the United States, but Biden approved $4. 3 trillion in new loans over 10 years. During his presidency, Trump added $8. 4 trillion in new loans over 10 years. or $4. 8 trillion in COVID-19 relief.
The price increase is partly due to supply chain issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but Biden’s post-pandemic spending has also contributed to inflation. “Corporate greed” has not reached the 20% inflation since January 2021.
Biden said, “We are in favor of late-term abortion. Period. Period. Period”.
If Biden opposes late-term abortion, it would mark a departure from his previous position.
The president has defended the Women’s Health Protection Act, which states in particular that the right to abortion “shall not be limited or violated”.
The bill would allow abortion providers to determine whether a pregnancy is considered “viable,” allowing abortion at any time.
The Women’s Health Protection Act would have allowed abortion beyond the point of “fetal viability” when a health care provider makes a “good faith medical judgment” that “continued pregnancy would pose a threat to the life or health of the pregnant patient. “”.
Trump said of Biden, “He’s paid through China. “
While there is no evidence that Biden was paid directly through the Chinese, various members of the family circle have conducted business transactions in China and other countries.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee discovered through bank statements that Biden, in September 2017, before becoming president and after eight years as vice president, had won a check for $40,000 in laundered cash from his brother, James Biden, from a Chinese energy conglomerate known as CEFC China Energy. A note on the check stated that this was a loan repayment.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee also produced bank statements about more of the Biden family’s business transactions with Chinese entities involving sums of money.
In 2013, presidential son Hunter Biden, the Chinese, and investors agreed to create Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co. Ltd. While serving as vice president, Joe Biden traveled with Hunter on Air Force Two to China and met with CEO Jonathan Li. of the company.
In 2017, after Biden resigned as vice president, State Energy HK Ltd. transferred $3 million to the account of a Biden associate.
Biden’s family earned about $1 million in three months in bank accounts.
In 2015, Bohai Harvest partnered with an entity connected to the Chinese Communist Party to acquire North Carolina-based Henniges Automotive in a $600 million deal, according to the Oversight Committee.
In 2015, Hunter Biden and CEFC President Ye Jianming began talks about a partnership with the United States.
CEFC China Energy created a joint venture with the Bidens in 2017.
In response to Biden’s accusations that he was guilty of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Trump said, “On Jan. 6, we had the lowest taxes in history, the lowest regulations in history. “
Trump cut taxes through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and ordered the federal bureaucracy to reduce regulations, but taxes and regulations during Trump’s tenure still outperformed many issues in American history.
Before 1913, the United States had no federal source of income taxes. As a result of the progressive movement, the federal government exploded; bureaucracy has added more than 150,000 pages to the Federal Register from the year of Trump’s presidency.
However, the bureaucracy enacted 2,964 final regulations in 2019 under Trump, the lowest number since recordkeeping began in the 1970s and the only one overall below 3,000, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
In 2022, Biden’s first full calendar year, the federal bureaucracy issued 4,429 final rules.
Trump’s general argument (that taxes and regulations were lower during his presidency than under Biden) is correct, but his claim that he had the “lowest taxes ever seen” and the “lowest regulations ever seen” in American history is categorically false.
At one point, Biden said of Trump, “He’s the guy who says Hitler did things. I’d like to know what they are. “
The left-wing fact-checking site, Snopes, considered that this is “not proven”.
CNN correspondent Jim Sciutto quoted retired Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, in his e-book “The Return of the Great Powers. “
Kelly told Sciutto that Trump said, “Well, Hitler still did things” and that Trump clarified that Hitler “rebuilt the economy. “
As Snopes noted, Trump’s spokespeople have denied those claims. Kelly, whom Trump fired in 2019, has not presented any corroboration that Trump made such a statement.
Kelly’s claim first came to light in 2021. Trump’s former chief of staff said Trump praised Hitler on a vacation in Paris in 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the World War I armistice.
In 2021, Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington denied that this had ever happened.
“This is completely false,” he said. President Trump never said that. This is fake news invented by an incompetent general who has been fired. “
Biden made this claim.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reports that under his administration, “Trump approved $8. 4 trillion in new loans over 10 years over his entire term. ”
In the first 3 years and months of his term, according to the same organization, Biden approved $4. 3 trillion in new loans over 10 years.
David Ditch, senior policy analyst at the Grover M. Hermann for the Heritage Foundation’s Federal Budget wrote, “President Biden and some allied economists are going to whitewash their record on inflation. ”
“Compared to February 2021 budget projections, deficits for 2021-2024 are $2. 58 trillion higher in total, and 2024 represents $1. 01 trillion,” Ditch wrote.
In projections for the 2021-2031 budget window, “deficits combine into another $7. 15 trillion, or $650 billion on an annual average,” Ditch said, referring to a chart from the Congressional Budget Office.
The accumulation of the budget deficit “is due to new spending/subsidies and administrative decisions that Biden has supported,” he said.
Trump took credit for denying Iran investments and said the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel “would never have happened” under his leadership.
“Iran is bankrupt,” he said. Anyone who has done business with Iran, including China, may simply not do business with the United States. They all succeeded. They will go bankrupt. They had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah. “
The Trump administration has begun a tough sanctions crusade against Iran, and Biden has eased sanctions. According to an investigation by the Daily Signal, Iran earned more than $70 billion more under the Biden administration before Oct. 7 than under the Trump sanctions regime.
However, Trump would have possibly exaggerated his case. Iran continued to allocate funds to the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah while Trump was president, although even the leftist CNN reported that the amount of money Tehran went to terrorist groups had decreased in the second part of Trump’s term.
However, the investment never stopped completely.
Trump claimed that the value of food had “doubled, tripled, and quadrupled” under Biden’s presidency.
Food is up 21. 2% since January 2021, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Louis.
The average value of gasoline increased from $2. 39 per gallon on January 20, 2021, peaking at $5. 016 per gallon in July 2022 before reaching the current average value of $3. 225 per gallon, based on the AAA average.
When Biden asked about the “30 percent” increase in food costs in an earlier interview with CNN, the president blamed “corporate greed. ”
The average weekly wage for a U. S. employee has risen about 14% under Biden, according to E. J. Antoni, a researcher at the Grover M Center. Hermann for the Heritage Foundation’s federal budget. This increase is lower than the general inflation rate. of 20% and inflation of 21. 2% for food, according to Antoni.
Trump said at one point that “the amount of drugs crossing our border is now, by far, the largest ever recorded. “
The total number of drugs seized at the southern border has declined over the past four years, according to data from U. S. Customs and Border Protection.
However, the amount seized of fentanyl, a highly lethal drug, went from 11,200 pounds in fiscal year 2021 to 27,000 pounds in 2023.
Just 2 milligrams is enough to kill an American adult. According to the data, fentanyl poisonings and overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45 and older.
Tapper insisted on Trump’s plan to impose a 10% tariff on U. S. goods.
“How are you going to make sure that this doesn’t increase costs even more?” Tapper asked Trump.
“It will just push them up, it will just galvanize countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China and many others,” Trump responded. “In all honesty with China, it will simply force them to pay “It will give us a lot of money, significantly reduce our deficit and give us a lot of strength for other things. “
The Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of Economic Freedom states:
The tariffs. . . They increase the costs that local consumers pay for foreign imports, but they also distort production incentives for local producers, forcing them to produce a smart product for which they have no comparative advantage, or a smart product that is more than it is. economically ideal. This undermines economic power and growth in general.
Biden claimed that “the Border Patrol supported me. ” Trump responded that the Border Patrol Agents Union supported him.
Moments later, that union, the National Border Patrol Council, wrote in X, “To be clear, we have never and never will with Biden. ”
In February, the Border Patrol union introduced a border security bill led by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Arizona; James Lankford, R-Okla. ; and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
The bill failed to gather enough votes in the Senate to pass.
After the debate, some experts expressed outrage that Trump did not take office on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, when many Trump supporters entered the building and some tried to prevent a joint congressional consultation to certify Biden’s 2020 victory. Trump in the Electoral College.
During the debate, Trump brought up a recent news report about new photographs of Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. , then speaker of the House.
“Nancy Pelosi, if you watch the news from two or three days ago, taped, with her daughter, who is a documentary filmmaker, that’s what they say, she says, ‘Oh no, it’s my responsibility. ‘”Trump said. . . ” Because I presented her with 10,000 infantrymen or infantrymen of the National Guard, and she turned them down. “
Last week, House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga. , released a documentary recorded by the former president’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, on Jan. 6, 2021, and produced for the subcommittee via HBO.
In the video, Pelosi says, “I take responsibility” for security at the Capitol that day.
“We had no duty for what was going on down there, and we have been,” Pelosi says in the video. “It’s ridiculous. They are going to ask me in the middle of all this, when they have already violated the inauguration. “device [sic], we call the Capitol Police – I mean the National Guard?Why wasn’t the National Guard there at first?. . . Obviously they didn’t know and I take it my duty not to let them prepare for more.
Ken McIntyre contributed to this report, which was amended 15 hours after its original publication to upload Trump’s comments about Pelosi after they were inadvertently omitted.
Virginia Allen is a senior producer for The Daily Signal and host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problemmatic Women. Email Virginie.
Fred Lucas is a lead news correspondent and assigned director of investigative reporting for The Daily Signal. He is the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections. “Email Fred.
Tyler O’Neil is editor of the Daily Signal and “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “