atlanta.- President Joe Biden made several verbal gaffes in the opening minutes of his debate with Republican rival Donald Trump on Thursday as the two took the stage seeking to hammer out their presidential rematch.
Biden had a raspy voice, repeatedly struggling to clear his throat, and had a halting delivery as he tried to defend his economic record and criticize Trump. Biden appeared to lose the thread while giving an answer, veering from an answer about tax policy to health policy, at one point using the word “COVID,” and then saying, “sorry, with, dealing with,” and turning away. diverted again.
“Look, we finally beat Medicare,” Biden said, as time ran out for his response.
Trump picked up the theme and said, “That’s right, he beat Medicaid, he beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare.”
Trump falsely suggested that Biden was weakening social services programs because of the influx of immigrants into the country.
Biden, the 81-year-old Democrat in office, entered the debate with a chance to reassure voters that he is capable of leading America through a series of challenges, while moving to fine-tune the choice voters will face in November. Trump, 78, had a chance to try to put his felony conviction in New York behind him and convince an audience of tens of millions that he is temperamentally fit to return to the Oval Office.
Trump and Biden entered the evening facing stiff headwinds, including a public tired of the tumult of partisan politics and widely dissatisfied with both, according to polls. But the debate underscored that the two have very different views on virtually every core issue — abortion, economics and foreign policy — and a deep hostility toward each other.
The two candidates took the stage and headed straight to their lecterns, eschewing handshakes. The debate began with none of the heated exchanges that defined their first encounter on the debate stage in 2020. Instead, each remained relatively restrained as he defended his record and blamed the other for leading the country astray.
Biden, under pressure to defend the rise in inflation since taking office, blamed it on the situation he inherited from Trump amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump lashed out at Biden’s withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, saying: “It was the most shameful day in the history of the life of our country.”
Biden said that when Trump left office, “things were chaos.” Trump disagreed, stating that during his tenure in the White House “everything was balanced well.”
The current president and his predecessor had not spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his defeat that culminated in his supporters’ insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Trump has promised radical plans to remake the US government if he returns to the White House and Biden maintains that his opponent would pose an existential threat to the country’s democracy.
Thursday’s CNN broadcast, moderated by hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, was the earliest general election debate in history. It is the first televised general election presidential debate hosted by a single media outlet after both campaigns left the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which had hosted every matchup since 1988.
Seeking to avoid a repeat of their chaotic 2020 clashes, Biden insisted — and Trump agreed — on holding the debate without an audience and allowing the network to mute the candidates’ microphones when it was not their turn to speak. The debate’s two ad breaks marked another departure from modern practice, while the candidates have agreed not to consult with staff or others while the cameras were off.
Trump and his aides have spent months denouncing what they see as signs of Biden’s waning resistance. In recent days, they have begun to predict that Biden will be stronger on Thursday, with the aim of raising expectations for the current candidate.
Biden’s team also predicted he would rise to the occasion, expressing hope that Trump would be forced to address positions they consider anathema to voters.
“Joe is prepared. He’s prepared. He’s confident,” his wife, Jill Biden, told donors before the debate. “You know he’s a great debater.”
After the debate, both Biden and Trump will travel to states they hope will swing to their side this fall. Trump is headed to Virginia, a former battleground that has tilted toward Democrats in recent years.
Biden is set to travel to North Carolina, where he is expected to hold the largest rally of his campaign in a state that Trump narrowly won in 2020.
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