Live Updates: Biden and Trump Trade Attacks as Debate Begins (2024)

— Former President Donald J. Trump

This is false.

Mr. Trump was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans continue to disagree with that decision.

The split-screen is not kind to Biden. While Trump is speaking, the president is watching, mouth agape, as his eyes dart back and forth. But while Biden speaks, his own voice is clearly hoarse and he is having trouble delivering complete thoughts. If Biden hoped to dispel the age concerns by goading Trump into an early debate, he has not done so in the first 30 minutes.

— President Biden

This is misleading.

Mr. Biden is referring to a White House study, released in 2021, that used a “more comprehensive measure of income” than is currently assessed.

This discussion of immigration is where Trump feels strongest, and where he’s trotting out lines from his stump speech he has been practicing for months. He is now accusing Biden of presiding over a “migrant crime” wave endangering American citizens, though statistics do not bear that assertion out, and blaming him directly for the deaths of Americans at the hands of those crossing illegally.

Trump is now attacking Biden over the border. Biden has overseen more than 7.9 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, nearly triple the number that occurred under Trump. Migrants have fled their homes for a variety of reasons, including the pandemic’s toll on Central American economies and natural disasters. And yes, I’ve interviewed migrants who said they were encouraged by the prospect of a more welcoming administration.

Biden mentions that the Border Patrol union endorsed him. It actually endorsed a bipartisan Senate bill Biden endorsed that would have invested in border security measures. Republicans blocked the legislation, taking a cue from Trump, who did not want Biden to gain an election-year victory.

Donald Trump is on the one hand saying that he supports a state’s right to put restrictions on abortion while on the other hand arguing, based on false assertions about late-term abortions, that Democratic-run states, left to their own devices, are not imposing stringent enough restrictions.

— Former President Donald J. Trump on whether tariffs would increase prices

This is false.

Tariffs are designed to protect domestic industries by raising the price of foreign products, and economists anticipate that any increase in tariffs would result in some increase in prices.

Economic studies found that the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods during his first term were largely paid by American consumers, rather than Chinese companies. In a recent letter, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote that there was concern that Trump’s policies, including his plan to impose blanket tariffs on most imports, would reignite inflation.

— Former President Donald J. Trump

False.

Unauthorized immigrants actually improve the financial health of both Social Security and Medicare. Federal law bars them from receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits, but they pay into both programs. In a 2013 report, the Social Security Administration estimated that 3.1 million unauthorized immigrants were working and paying Social Security taxes. They contributed about $12 billion to the trust in 2010 and about $100 billion over a decade. A 2016 study estimated that unauthorized immigrants contributed about $35.1 billion to Medicare from 2000 to 2011.

And Mr. Biden has proposed plans to shore up Social Security and has vowed for years not to cut the program. During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden proposed increasing taxes on high-income earners to pay for additional Social Security benefits and reduce the program’s financial shortfall. This election cycle, Mr. Biden has also said he would raise taxes on the wealthy, make no cuts to the program and opposes raising the retirement age.

We’ve seen the first use of the muted microphone. Trump tried to tack on a riposte to Biden’s last answer, but the people watching at home could not hear him. The camera flipped to Tapper, who went ahead and asked his next question to Biden. It seems like Trump eventually relented.

Watching Trump, he looks confused at points at Biden's answers. “I really don’t know what he said on this, and I don’t think he knows what he said either,” he says after a question on immigration.

— President Biden

This is misleading.

Mr. Biden said that he inherited a broken economy when he took office. While employment collapsed at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, jobs had begun to bounce back rapidly relatively quickly, and the recovery was well underway by the time Mr. Biden took office in early 2021.

Biden says he supports Roe, and if he’s elected, he will restore it. His voice, which has been hoarse, strengthens as he suggests that Trump would restrict abortions if he is elected.

Biden is, again, visibly angry delivering an answer on if he would support limits on abortion, but he does not answer the question until Trump accuses Biden of supporting abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy. Biden’s mic comes back on. “We are not for late-term abortion,” Biden said.

Biden just promised to “restore Roe v. Wade” if he wins a second term. This is highly unlikely given the votes it would require in the Senate.

— Former President Donald J. Trump

False.

Economic research suggests that the tax cut Mr. Trump signed in 2017 spurred some additional economic growth and income growth, but nowhere close to what Mr. Trump and Republicans promised.

Researchers from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department found in an analysis this year that the cuts delivered wage gains that were “an order of magnitude below” what Trump officials predicted: About $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker.

— Former President Donald J. Trump

This is misleading.

It is certainly true that Mr. Trump often said, in the 2016 campaign, that he wanted to pull American troops out of Afghanistan. But at the end of his presidency, a small force remained, and while he said on social media that all forces should be home by Christmas 2020, he never executed on that promise. President Biden did pull them out. But it was poorly executed.

— President Biden

This needs context.

Mr. Biden is accurate that former President Donald J. Trump is the only president since World War II to leave office with a negative jobs record, but he did not make clear that this occurred, of course, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In case you are just tuning in, Biden and Trump started off with a round of questions on the economy.

Biden argued that Trump left him an economy in shambles, while Trump said the economy was the “greatest in the world” before Covid. The two clashed over who did a better job handling the pandemic.

Trump defended his tax cuts and said that they spurred economic growth and that the U.S. was about to start paying down its debt before he was forced to enact trillions of dollars in Covid relief money. Biden hit back and said that Trump just wants to give more tax cuts to the rich, trying to undercut his populist message.

Biden had some stumbles early on, misstating how many jobs were created on his watch and saying, incongruously, that he “finally beat Medicare.”

CNN’s producers are mostly sticking with a split-screen of both candidates, so we can see their reactions to each other’s answers. Trump has frowned a few times at Biden; Biden seems to be staring at Trump in disbelief at some moments.

Biden seemed to just pivot from talking about abortion — a point his team wants him to focus on — to immigration, one of his primary political vulnerabilities. That was surprising.

Trump has long refrained from stating a clear position on mifepristone, a widely available abortion pill, despite promising to unveil how his administration might approach it. But just now, he voiced support for the Supreme Court’s decision that maintained access to it.

Trump says he supports exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and the life of the mother, and suggests that not doing so is politically untenable. “Some people don’t, follow your heart, but you have to get elected also,” he says.

“It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done,” Biden says, pinning the blame for the state of post-Roe v. Wade health care in America on Trump.

— Former President Donald J. Trump

This needs context.

The economy has added more than 15 million jobs since Mr. Biden took office in January 2021, but it is true that some of that has been a bounce back from a sharp drop in employment during the pandemic.

That said, employment has now completely recovered to where it would have been had the pace of hiring that prevailed in the year leading up to the pandemic held steady, and employment growth has remained robust. In fact, the pace of job gains has surprised many economists, regularly beating expectations.

Trump just also made the misleading statement there that Biden has allowed waves of people from prisons to come into the U.S. Yes, Biden has overseen a record number of illegal border crossings, but studies have found that migrants commit fewer crimes than legal residents. Most of those crossing the border are vulnerable families fleeing poverty and persecution, although the recent killing of a 12-year-old in Houston has become a flash point for Republican attacks against the Biden White House. Two Venezuelan migrants were charged with the killing.

Trump says he would not block access to abortion medication, in response to a question from Dana Bash.

Biden just tried to speak but his mic was off. He appeared overwhelmed by the information he was trying to convey to the public on the latest answer on the economy, and is getting crowded out by Trump, who seems calm and does not seem to be raising the temperature.

Biden appeared to just lose his train of thought, concluding with “we finally beat Medicare.” Trump immediately pounced: “He did beat Medicare, he beat it to death.”

— Former President Donald J. Trump

False.

The $1.5 trillion tax cut, enacted in December 2017, ranks below at least half a dozen others by several metrics. The 1981 tax cut enacted under President Ronald Reagan is the largest as a percentage of the economy and by its reduction to federal revenue. The 2012 cut enacted under President Barack Obama amounted to the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion a year.