The Making of the President 2024: The First Debate
The first debate between the presidential candidates for the two major political parties in the 2024 US Presidential election was held on June 27, 2024. It was sponsored by the Cable News Network, better known as CNN. At the time the political parties had not formally nominated their candidates but Joe Biden and Donald Trump were the presumptive nominees for the Democratic and Republican parties respectively because each of them had won enough delegates in the primaries and caucuses sufficient to secure their parties' nominations when conventions would later be held.
Four general election debates sponsored were originally scheduled by the Commission on Presidential debates, and were scheduled to be held between September 16 and October 9, 2024. But both candidates were opposed to the commission's debate format and schedule and in May of 2024, both campaigns agreed to bypass the CPD and hold the alternative debates.
In April 2022, the Republican National Committee (the RNC) voted unanimously to withdraw from the debates arranged by the commission because committee chair Ronna McDaniel accused the organization of being "biased." Former president Trump did not participate in any debates during the Republican primaries, and he had also accused the commission of unfair treatment in 2016 and in 2020.
Joe Biden had also not committed to attending the debate organized by the commission and he was upset with the commission for failing to enforce its rules against Trump. Both candidates had offered to debate the other, but were not precise about what rules or circumstances would apply to the debates.
Both Biden and Trump became the presumptive nominees of their respective parties in March of 2024. On April 14, 2024, a number of major news organizations signed an open letter to the presumptive nominees urging them to attend the debates. All of the major news networks were signatories to the letter.
In 2020 President Trump had refused to attend the second debate with Biden because it would have been virtual rather than in person following Trump's Covid-19 diagnosis. This had occurred previously in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter refused to attend the first debate with Ronald Reagan due to the presence of independent candidate John Anderson. Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump had made statements that he would debate Biden "anywhere, anytime, anyplace."
The CPD announced the schedule for its four debates on November 20, 2023. All debates would have started at 9 p.m. ET and would have run for 90 minutes uninterrupted. Participation in the debates required support of at least 15% of the national electorate as determined by five national public opinion polling organizations selected by the commission, using the average of those organizations' most recently reported results at the time of determination.
On May 15, 2024, the Biden campaign announced that it would not participate in the CPD-hosted debates and instead invited Trump to participate in two alternative debates to take place in June and September, each hosted in a TV news studio without an audience. The Biden campaign complained that the CPD could not "enforce its own rules."
On July 9, Trump challenged Biden to a debate with no moderators that would be done that week, as well as an 18-hole golf match.
The first debate was the only one in which Biden participated before he dropped out of the race for President. The debate was held on Thursday, June 27, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. EDT in CNN's studios at the Techwood Turner campus in Atlanta, Georgia. Six weeks earlier, on May 15, Biden and Trump had agreed to debate on June 27 with CNN and again on September 10 with ABC News. The arrangement did not include the CPD, the organization that had sponsored debates for every presidential election since 1988.
In the months prior to the debate, Trump had called Biden "the worst debater I have ever faced; he can't put two sentences together" and he also criticized Biden's performance in his recent State of the Union Address. But in the days before the debate, Trump said "I'm not underestimating him... I assume he's going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater."
Biden prepared for the debate at Camp David, arriving there on June 20, 2024 and he remained there for the remainder of the week. Conversely, Trump is said to have done little preparation. One campaign adviser said that Trump "views his rallies as debate prep."
The first debate ran for 90 minutes, with no audience members present. The moderators were Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN. Trump's and Biden's microphones were only turned on when it was their turn to speak. Debate rules written by CNN allocated two minutes for answering the question posed by the moderators, and one minute for rebuttals and responses to the rebuttals. The primary issues of the debate were immigration, the economy and inflation, abortion, foreign policy and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the candidates' legal issues, social security, the January 6th Capitol riot, and the participants' ages.
The moderators asked 20 questions, excluding the closing. Four questions centered on the economy, four on democracy, three on foreign policy, two on immigration, two on abortion, and one each for climate change, age, opioids, race, and tax reform.
Biden walked with stiff, short strides as he was introduced onto the stage. Moderator Jake Tapper began the debate with inflation figures. Biden spoke in a hoarse, rapid whisper, attributing the state of the economy to Trump's presidency. Trump rebutted by claiming he built the "greatest economy in the history of our country" before the pandemic hit. Trump accused Biden of supporting job growth for illegal immigrants, and he criticized Biden for the 2021 US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
After a question regarding the national debt, Biden trailed off and appeared to lose his train of thought, saying:
"Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to deal with ... the COVID ... Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with ... look ... if we finally beat Medicare."
On illegal border crossings, Biden said, "I'm going to continue to move until we get to total ban - on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers." Trump responded, "I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either."
At one point in the debate, Trump and Biden briefly had an argument over golfing abilities in response to a question regarding their fitness as president due to age.
Trump spoke more than Biden in the debate, with CNN reporting the former to have spoken 40 minutes and 12 seconds, and Biden 35 minutes and 41 seconds. Trump went off topic about 50% of the time, while Biden went off topic about 30% of the time. Trump and Biden both made personal attacks against each other. Trump described Biden as "a very bad Palestinian." NBC News found that Trump made 106 attacks during the debate, while Biden made 72.
The New York Times reported that Trump made many "misleading attacks" and false statements, while Biden struggled to respond and appeared shaky. The Times described his performance as "meandering and mumbling".
CNN reported that 47.9 million people watched the first debate, down from 73 million viewers during the first 2020 presidential debate. Nielson Media Research reported the number of viewers at 51.3 million, not including those who watched the debate through social media, streaming services, or listened through radio.
According to a CNN flash poll, 67% of text message respondents believed Trump won the debate, while 33% felt Biden won. Other polls found that 60% believed Trump won, versus 21% that said Biden won. These same poll found that, among the viewers, the debate did not significantly change support for either candidate, though Biden slightly lost support while Trump marginally gained support. A poll by Morning Consult released on June 28 indicated that 60% of voters were in favor of replacing Biden.
As a result of Biden's extremely poor debate performance, many Democrats were unsure whether Biden should continue his campaign and be the Democratic nominee. CNN's chief national correspondent John King sad that there was "a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic" in the Democratic Party that started a few minutes into the debate. During the debate, unnamed elected officials, party strategists, and fundraisers were reported to have discussed replacing Biden as the party's candidate due to fears about him potentially hurting other Democrats.
The day after the debate, Biden admitted that his debate performance was weak, leading to an increase in questions as to whether or not he should remain as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate. The editorial board of The New York Times called for Biden to exit the presidential race. stating that "the burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man". Biden spoke about his debate performance on July 2 and claimed that his "foreign travel" beforehand caused it.