Key takeaways from the U.S. presidential debate with Biden and Trump – National

U.S. President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump clashed in the first presidential debate in the 2024 presidential election campaign.

They argued over the fate of American democracy, abortion and the other candidate’s family and legal trials.

Trump, often saying things that weren’t true, accused Biden of opening the border and allowing into the country migrants who are murdering Americans, claimed there was no terror during his presidency and that he did not incite a riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

“(Biden) decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorists — we have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now,” Trump said.

“We call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime. They’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before.”

Biden repeatedly pointed out that many of Trump’s claims were not true and attacked the former president over his convictions, his encouraging rioters to enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 and the affair allegations against Trump from porn star Stormy Daniels.

“The idea that you have a right to seek retribution against any American just because you’re president is wrong, is simply wrong,” Biden said, referring to Trump saying he sought revenge against political foes if he returns to office.

Here are the main flashpoints.

Moderator CNN’s Dana Bash asked Biden, who will be 86 at the end of a second term if he were to win, how he would handle the world’s toughest job.

“(Trump) is three years younger and a lot less competent,” Biden responded.

Biden then pointed to his record, saying he has brought billions of dollars in investment to the U.S. for microchip production and created millions of jobs.

Trump, when asked the same question, said he aced two cognitive tests used to detect early dementia.

“I’m in very good health,” he continued.

“I just won two club championships, not even senior two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way.”

The two then debated who could hit a golf ball farther.

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“I don’t think that either man actually did what was needed to convince the American people that either one of them should be president,” political scientist and author Lara Brown told Global News.

She said the debate represented “why so many Americans are distressed and despondent that these are their choices.”

“There is no doubt that what we saw was one president who was stuttering and stumbling over the truth and was presentationally-weak,” she said of Biden, “but who was actually making reasonable arguments.”

She said Trump was “a strong, energetic and rhetorically, apparently coherent. And yet everything that he said was full of falsehoods.”

In a heated exchange over Trump’s role on Jan. 6, when many Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building, Biden warned another Trump presidency could result in a “bloodbath” because the former president has downplayed his role, the role of many people now charged in the attempted insurrection and spoken about pardoning them.

Trump said he had “virtually nothing to do” with the riot, saying he told those assembled before the Capitol building was breached they should go there “peacefully and patriotically.” He then blamed the attack on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who sought shelter on that day.

“The fact is that there was no effort on his part to stop what was going on up on Capitol Hill,” Biden said, adding later, “He didn’t do a damn thing (to stop it).”

“And these people [the rioters] should be in jail.”

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When asked if he would respect the outcome of the upcoming election, Trump said he would if the contest was “fair (and) free,” and then said Biden will drag the U.S. into World War Three.

When asked again, Trump said Putin would conquer Ukraine with Biden in the Oval Office.

Pushed a third time, he said “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”

Brown said she didn’t think Biden’s attacks would resonate with voters because they came so late in the debate, and because CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, she said, didn’t ask a key question – if Trump believed he lost the 2020 election.

She said, without Tapper and Bash fact-checking the candidates, especially Trump, ill-informed viewers would go away thinking many things both candidates said were true when they weren’t.

“My son was not a loser. He’s not a sucker. You’re the sucker.

“Biden slammed Trump as a loser for his reported comments about dead American soldiers, sparking a personal attack exchange between the two candidates. Trump accused Biden of encouraging Russia to invade Ukraine and claimed his son Hunter was a convicted felon. Biden hit back, criticizing Trump for his support of white nationalists and false statements about abortion. The debate also touched on immigration, with Trump making unsubstantiated claims about migrant crime and luxury hotels for illegal migrants. Brown noted that most undecided voters likely did not watch the debate and that surprises are needed for attacks to land effectively.” “They have a slight interest,” she mentioned.

“The conversation about the debate afterwards matters more than the debate itself,” she added. She informed Global News that both campaigns are likely to use clips from the debate in their social media campaigns, showcasing their candidate’s strong moments or the opponent’s weaknesses.

Given Biden’s raspy voice and occasional lack of focus compared to Trump’s energy, she believes that Biden may lose some undecided voters.

The televised debate held on Thursday was the earliest in a presidential election. Brown suggested that while debates may result in short-term boosts in support, there are still many upcoming events that could sway voters, especially in a year filled with significant occurrences like protests on college campuses, and elections in France and the United Kingdom.

“It may be premature to make decisions because every week seems to bring a new crisis that is hyped up as a game-changer in the race, only to be forgotten or dismissed shortly after,” she concluded. Please rewrite this sentence.