Joe Biden and Donald Trump both walked into the presidential debate on Thursday hoping to sway the so-called “double haters”, those voters who disapprove of both candidates and could play a decisive role in the outcome of the election.
In the end, those voters probably walked away from the debate with a more visceral understanding of why they hate their options.
Trump spent the night spouting lies about immigration, abortion and foreign policy while deflecting moderators’ questions on the climate crisis and election denialism. But Biden largely failed to capitalize on Trump’s vulnerabilities and struggled to offer concise and coherent answers.
Biden’s gravelly voice became such a distraction that the White House had to clarify that he was suffering from a cold. When asked early in the debate about tackling the national debt, Biden offered a rambling answer in which he stumbled through his words before concluding, “Look: we finally beat Medicare.”
The bizarre slip of the tongue caught the attention of Trump, who retorted: “He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death, and he’s destroying Medicare.”
Trump then pivoted to the subject of immigration, a tactic that he deployed repeatedly throughout the night. Trump’s successful rebuttal may have obscured the fact that his claim about Biden “destroying Medicare” is false; the president has actually taken steps to expand Medicare benefits, including lowering enrollees’ prescription drug costs.
That dynamic played out over and over again on Thursday. Biden’s attempts to call out Trump’s endless stream of lies often missed the mark because of his uneven delivery, while CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to the network’s previously stated plan of not fact-checking the candidates in real time.
Biden may have been at his strongest when he was discussing foreign policy, as he defended his robust support for Ukraine and mocked Trump’s claims that he would have the war resolved before his inauguration.
“[Vladimir Putin] wants all of Ukraine. That’s what he wants,” Biden said. “And then you think he’ll stop there? You think you’ll stop when he takes Ukraine? What do you think happens to Poland?”
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But perhaps Trump’s greatest vulnerability – his recent felony conviction in New York – went unmentioned for the first half of the debate. Trump tried to deflect attention from his legal battles and threats of political retribution by referencing Hunter Biden’s recent conviction, and he oddly suggested that Biden “could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office”.
Biden replied by listing off some of the many criminal charges and civil penalties that Trump faces, including damages for his sexual abuse and defamation of E Jean Carroll. Referencing Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels, Biden delivered the zinger: “You have the morals of an alleycat.”
In a historic first for a presidential debate, Trump then uttered the words “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one.”
The comment was one of several that stirred up memories of Trump’s chaotic first term, along with his reference to the “peaceful and patriotic” Americans who attacked the US Capitol on January 6. When pressed by Bash on whether he would accept the results of this election regardless of the outcome, Trump offered a halfhearted response: “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”
The debate culminated in Biden and Trump bickering over their golf skills, an appropriate end to a disappointing spectacle that probably amplified many Americans’ dismay about the election.
According to a Gallup poll conducted this month, less than half of Americans view either Biden or Trump favorably. The poll found that 59% of voters believe Biden, 81, is too old to be president while just 18% said the same of Trump, 78. Although Americans express fewer concerns about Trump’s age, an NBC News poll conducted in April showed that his criminal and civil trials could be his largest liability heading into November.
Many Americans went into tonight’s debate believing that Biden was too old for a second term and that Trump was too chaotic to return to the presidency. It seems unlikely that their performances on Thursday will do anything to dispel those fears.
