The Daily - A Brutal Debate for Biden

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

In the first debate of the 2024 race, President Biden hoped to make the case that Donald J. Trump was unfit to return to the White House. Instead, Mr. Biden’s weak performance deepened doubts about his own fitness for the job.Astead W. Herndon, who covers politics for The Times, explains what happened.Guest: Astead W. Herndon, a national politics reporter for The New York Times and the host of the politics podcast “The Run-Up.”Background reading: President Biden’s shaky, halting debate performance has Democrats talking about replacing him on the ticket.Here are six takeaways from 2024’s first presidential debate.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, in the first debate of the 2024 presidentories, Joe Biden hoped to make the case that Donald Trump was unfit to return to the White House. Instead, Biden's weak performance deepened doubts about his own fitness for the job. My colleague, Astead Herndon, a political reporter and host of The Run-Up, explains what happened.

It's Friday, June 28th. Instead, good evening, almost good morning. By the time we're done talking, it is definitely going to be Friday morning. Thank you for joining us at what is clearly a very tender hour. No, thank you for having me. Okay, this was always going to be a historic debate. Two single-term presidents debating each other for a chance at a second term, both choosing to opt out of the traditional presidential commission-authorized debates.

We've never had any of this before. But that's not, I would wager, what people are going to remember about this debate. I suspect they're going to remember just how much one of these candidates openly struggled, struggled mightily on the biggest possible stage. Yeah, I mean, there were some things I was expecting for tonight's debate. Bitter insults, an incumbent defending a policy record, a challenger really attacking it. But one thing I didn't expect was for President Biden to kind of live up to the caricature of him that has been really been created over the last six months by Republicans. In the first 10 minutes, he was not even just a poor debater. He seemed like a struggling old man in a way that I think for a lot of people was alarming.

Not even just in a political sense, but in a personal sense. And I think then the low bar that had been created for him for tonight's performance, it immediately raised alarm flags that he was not even clearing it. Well, let's talk about what both Biden and Trump were trying to do in this debate before we return to the question of how Biden did or didn't do and how Trump did or didn't do tonight. You know, for Trump, there is an electoral opening right now for him to really create a coalition that's unique for a Republican candidate. If you believe the polling or the

kind of trend lines that we have seen in polling over the last six months, Donald Trump is not winning back the kind of traditional Republicans he's lost over the last four years. He's winning over people who were considered more traditionally Democratic groups or just more back the kind of traditional Republicans he's lost over the last four years. He's winning over people who were considered more traditionally Democratic groups or just more disaffected voters in general. Younger people, people of color, low-income folks, Black folks. There has been a kind of growth among those margins that's provided Trump with this ability to say that if he can put that together in November, there's a real unique path for him to beat Joe Biden. But that path requires a candidate who's kind of speaking in more

disciplined, controlled tones that I think we're used to Trump talking. And the Trump campaign was eager to put that best foot forward. Now, on the Biden side, they have a fundamental problem, which is that the majority of Americans think the president is too old to serve. And the prospect of an 86-year-old Joe Biden at the end of a second term, frankly, freaks folks out. And the Biden campaign's response to that problem has been, frankly, to diminish it, but also, say, to watch him. And the idea was that if they had an earlier debate before the conventions and before the race really kicked off, they can put some of those concerns to bed, as we saw him slightly do at the State of the Union earlier this year. But as we just talked about, Biden provided his party no reassurance tonight. Okay, well, take us into

the meat of this debate, and let's explore why this night ended up being so problematic for Biden. And let's try to understand whether Trump did achieve his goal of being the kind of candidate who can assemble this theoretical broad coalition. Well, let me set the scene. We're live from Georgia, a key battleground state in the race for the White House. Good evening. I'm Dana Bash, anchor of CNN's... We're live from Georgia, a key battleground state in the race for the White House. Good evening. I'm Dana Bash, anchor of CNN. Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, the moderators, introduced both candidates.

Now, please welcome the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden. And when Biden walked onto the stage, I mean, it's generous to call it a walk. He frankly shuffled in a way that was only a visual reminder of the advanced age of this president. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here. Let's begin the debate and let's start with the issue that voters consistently say is their top concern, the economy. And within the first couple answers. What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump? We got to take a look at what I was left when I became president and what Mr. Trump left me. The immediate thing that was

noticeable was not about what he was saying, but about how he sounded. The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. Unemployment rate rose to 15 percent. Biden's voice was really raspy. We created 15,000 new jobs. We brought out a position where... It sounded as if he needed to clear his throat. He was talking really softly. There's more to be done. Working class people are still in trouble. And it made his first couple answers almost incoherent. What I'm going to do is fix the tax system.

For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires in America, and what's happening? And then we got to one answer that was literally incoherent. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare. Thank you, President Biden. President Trump. And eventually ended up trailing off such that it became clear that this was not someone who was fully in command of their presence at the moment. And that really set the tone for Biden's performance throughout the whole debate.

Right. This was the moment, if we're being honest, where everyone in politics and political journalism's phones just started exploding with text messages. All of them saying some version of, oh, gosh, this debate is going really quite badly for President Biden. And I said to your point about what he was seeking to do and the assurances he was trying to give people in his party and beyond his party, he was not giving those assurances at all. Yeah. Let me read you some live text messages I got from Democrats in those first 10 minutes. One says, I think you have to question seriously whether he can even make it to the end of this night. Another says, man, this just doesn't feel good to watch. I mean, it was an immediate sense of panic that was spreading among the party. And I think it's because, you know, typically these

debates have an air of optics and showmanship. But for Biden and his kind of political challenge, it was really about that sense of energy and about that sense of command of stage because the question of age has been so circling around his candidacy. And so for him to immediately come out with a both presentation and an answer that was frankly not substantive and hard to follow, it sent the concerns to the roof. I mean, things went from zero to 100 very fast, partially because I think that's what people were coming in seeing as a baseline for him. And he very immediately stumbled. I would make an analogy to like an Olympic hurdler, right, where at the first hurdle, he fell. big hurdler, right? Where at the first hurdle, he fell. Donald Trump, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have lost his edge. That becomes very clear from the beginning of the debate and instead is displaying his usual swagger as well as his usual challenges with the facts. Yeah, absolutely. To the extent that Donald Trump can be focused on policy, he came out in that mode today.

We're the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well. Everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us. We got hit with COVID. We know that the campaign really wants to focus on three things, inflation, immigration, and crime. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back jobs, a bounce back from the COVID. And you could see Trump

really returning to those in the early kind of 10, 15 minutes. He inherited almost no inflation, and it stayed that way for 14 months. And then it blew up under his leadership because they spent money like a bunch of people that didn't know what they were doing. And they repeatedly tied Biden to rising prices and tried to frame the economy that he stewarded as president as significantly better than the one that we are experiencing now. Migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime. They're killing our citizens at a level that we've never seen before. He framed the country as safer four years ago than what we're experiencing now. And it's a shame. What's happened to our country in the last four years is not to be believed. You could see him trying to follow through on the kind of classic premise of a reelection campaign where the challenger really tries to ask the question, are you better off than you were four years ago?

were four years ago. And so we got the Donald Trump version of that tonight, but we should be clear it's infused with a lot of his usual set of falsehoods as we have come to expect from him. And what struck me was for all the exaggerations and some of the falsehoods in what Trump was saying, the contrast between his swagger and his presentation and Biden's became the most pronounced part of this back and forth. Yeah, I think you're right that Trump sounded and felt a little more, dare we say, presidential than Biden in those first 10 minutes. But the bar was on the floor because the president came out with such, I think, a shocking level of incoherence that it made Donald Trump, the Donald Trump we have seen spew falsehoods,

conspiracies, unhingedness at every turn, it made him seem like the person who kind of had their ducks in a row. There are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally. That's better than when he left office. And in a kind of crystallizing moment of this interaction. And I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do

with more border patrol and more asylum officers. After one of Biden's more meandering answers, Trump responds with a quip that really said what everyone was thinking. President Trump? I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows

what he said either. Look. Saying that, I don't know what Biden said at the end of the sentence and I don't know if he does either. Mm-hmm.

This is the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It feels like a strong topic for Biden in this part of the debate was going to be abortion. Which returned the issue of abortion to the states. And the moderators bring it up.

And it felt like low-hanging fruit, an opportunity for Biden to blame Trump for the fall of Roe v. Wade and score some real points on the board. But it didn't feel like that's what happened. No, it didn't. And I think that speaks to the point that came through during this debate. That was consistently not the message. It was the messenger. Abortion has been a politically potent issue for Democrats and something that folks have been looking for Biden to speak to directly. Do you support any legal limits on how late a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy? I support Roe v. Wade. And he kind of botched that framing.

Which had three trimesters. The first time is between the woman and the doctor. Second time is between the doctor and an extreme situation. The third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the woman and the state. He was trying to seemingly make an analogy about trimesters that didn't really come through very clearly. And so that, I think, was a moment where when the moderator brought it up, you would feel Democrats think, OK, this is something that might play better for us than the economy or immigration. But like a lot of things in this debate, Biden just didn't seem to put it together that well.

Eventually, in this first half of the debate, things start to get a bit more personal. They start to get a bit nastier between these two candidates who clearly do not like each other at all. And interestingly, given your framing of, you know, would Trump moderate some of his excesses, it was Biden who went there first. Yeah, it was. And, you know, we should put the background here. There was previous reporting that Donald Trump had called fallen soldiers suckers and losers while touring a military gravesite. I went to the World War II cemetery, World War I cemetery he refused to go to. He was standing with his four-star general and he told me, he said,

I don't want to go in there because they're a bunch of losers and suckers. And that's what Biden was referring to, framing Trump as someone who has consistently disrespected veterans. We're also in a situation where we have great respect for veterans. My son spent a year in Iraq.

But Biden lands on saying, My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. And then looks to Trump and says, You're the sucker. You're the loser. You're the sucker. You're the loser. Mm-hmm. And I thought, for me, this reflected the Biden campaign strategy

of wanting to draw Trump out to kind of bring out, let's say, more chaotic version of him that was less stuck to the policy script. And so I was looking at this moment to see, OK, how is Trump going to respond to this? First of all, that was a made up quote, suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third rate magazine that's failing like many of these. He denied kind of making the suckers and losers remark about dead soldiers, but he didn't kind of respond on the personal level in which Biden was trying to draw him out to. It was made up by him, just like

Russia, Russia, Russia was made up. He reframed the conversation about commander in chief to be about the kind of global instability that has happened under Biden's watch. I'll tell you what happened. He was so bad with Afghanistan. It was such a horrible embarrassment, most embarrassing moment in the history. This is when he mentions the kind of Afghanistan withdrawal. We lost 13 beautiful soldiers and 38 soldiers were obliterated. And by the way, we left people. And kind of starts framing the world as more generally unsafe under Biden than it was under Trump. That's why you had no terror at all during my administration. This place, the whole world is blowing up under him. Now, certainly that's done in a kind of Trumpian way, but it was an example of him, at least at that moment,

not really meeting Biden in the mud and trying to stay focused on what I think was his campaign's goal in this night, which was to present him as someone making a policy-first challenge to Biden rather than a personal one. Right. And what seems to happen for the next 10 or 15 minutes in the debate is that Biden keeps trying to get under Trump's skin and really make the case that there's nothing about him that makes him fit to be president. Yeah. You could feel President Biden trying to draw out the more crazy, chaotic side of Donald Trump.

Some of the attacks were lighter. And now he says if he loses again, such a whiner that he is, that there could be a bloodbath. Things like calling him a whiner, for example. For doing a whole range of things, of having sex with a porn star. At one point, he pointed out the allegations

that Donald Trump had sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. You have the morals of an alley cat. And at another point, the only person in this stage is a convicted felon is the man I'm looking at right now. He mentioned the most serious, I think, of the political allegations, which is the idea that Donald Trump as convicted felon is unfit to be president. And you could see Trump physically wince when the words felon were said out loud, which I think is reflective to just how much that label really stings him. I'm going to give you a minute, President Trump, for a follow-up question I have. After a jury convicted you of 34 felonies last month, you said if reelected, you would, quote,

have every right to go after, unquote, your political opponents. You just talked about members of the select committee on January 6th going to jail. Your main political opponent is standing on stage with you tonight. Can you clarify exactly what it means about you feeling you have every right to go after your political opponents? And then he talks about January 6th. Well, I said my retribution is going to be success. We're going to make this country successful again because right now it's a failing nation. It becomes very clear that he's trying to obfuscate his own role in what was that day. On January 6th, we had a great border. Nobody coming through, very few. And Trump goes into a soliloquy about. On January 6th, we were energy

independent. On January 6th, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever. On January 6th, we had a good economy. On January 6th, we were respected all over the world. January 6th, our role was respected in the world, completely actually diverting the question that was at hand, which is, did Donald Trump encourage a mob that struck at the heart of democracy. You have 80 seconds left. My question was, what do you say to those voters who believe that you violated your constitutional oath through your actions in an action on January 6th, 2021, and worry that you'll do it again? Well, I didn't say that to anybody.

I said peacefully and patriotically. And Nancy Pelosi, if you just watch. And so that's the kind of push and pull that we were seeing play out on the stage, which is that certainly Trump was engaging in his normal level of kind of dodges and falsehoods. But it was coming off, I think, more successfully than some expected, partially because Biden was just ineffective in landing some of those attacks. because Biden was just ineffective in landing some of those attacks. We'll be right back. So, Ested, the second half of the debate starts with a question that feels quite central to what you described as Trump's strategy of trying to build this bigger coalition that exists in theory that he's trying to make real in November. And it's a question the moderators ask of Biden and why he seems to have disappointed Black America. and why he seems to have disappointed Black America.

Yeah, and you're right. Biden knows that Black voters are an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. And theoretically, if those folks came home to support him, it would be much harder to see the path for Donald Trump's victory. What do you say to Black voters who are disappointed with the progress so far? And so he tries to give a little two-part answer here. I say I don't blame them for being disappointed. Inflation is still hurting them badly. For example, I provided for the idea that any Black family,

first-time homebuyer, should get a $10,000 tax credit. Both acknowledging that Black voters are right to feel some disappointment in Democrats, while also pointing to some things his administration has done to provide support for those communities. He's blaming inflation. And he's right. It's been very bad. He caused the inflation and it's killing Black families. And you hear Trump saying that none of those things are mattering because inflation is hurting Black communities more. His big kill on the Black people is the millions of

people that he's allowed to come in through the border. They're taking Black jobs now. And also that immigration is taking what Trump dubs, quote unquote, Black jobs. Now, I'm not exactly sure what Black jobs are, but we could guess that Trump here is trying to mean that an influx of immigration has hurt specifically Black communities more than other ones. And you haven't seen it yet, but you're going to see something that's going to be the worst in our history. Thank you.

That's again, Trump hitting that three-pronged message in one, afflation, immigration, and crime. And those things are all wrapped up in that answer. And it's really the pitch that Trump is giving to Black voters. So this is Trump executing on the strategy that you mentioned him wanting to execute on in this debate, which is finding a way of appealing to this group of voters, traditionally Democratic through and through, who are intrigued by him and might come to him in this election, he is threading a complicated needle in seeking their votes. He's seeming to succeed a bit. Yes and no. Because I also think this answer was a real reminder of how Donald Trump is not a natural communicator on these issues. There were some moments in this debate that definitely reminded us of the Donald Trump is not a natural communicator on these issues, there were some moments in this debate that definitely reminded us

of the Donald Trump who lost four years ago, frankly, because most of the country did find him unacceptable. Will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis? Let me just go back to what he said about the police. When asked about climate change, he doesn't answer the question at all. 38 seconds left, President Trump, will you take any action as president to slow the climate crisis? And then after a follow up by the moderators, he goes on a kind of classic Trump soliloquy. So I want absolutely immaculate, clean water.

About how I want absolutely immaculate, clean water. I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever. How we have the best H2O. It's the Trump of the memes that, frankly, I think gets him further away from who he wants to be if he's going to pass his own kind of standard in terms of reaching different folks for November. his own kind of standard in terms of reaching different folks for November.

What kept striking me in this second half, as in this climate change exchange, is just how consistently Trump is not answering the questions that the moderators are asking him. Oh, absolutely. Whether it be questions about child care, Medicare, whether it's questions about opioids, these are core issues people cared about, and Trump almost never responded to the moderator's direct questions about those things. He almost always stayed in those three buckets that were clearly his focus to attack Biden. Economy, immigration, crime. It's around here that the moderators turn to a question that has been on everyone's mind at this point all night, which is the candidates' age. And they start with Biden, whose age has been quite present

in this debate. So tell us how that unfolds. Yeah, the moderators put to the candidates directly the question about whether these are people who even physically or mentally can lead the country for the next four years. And Biden, I have to say, didn't inspire much confidence. Well, first of all, I spent half my career being criticized, being the youngest person in politics. He starts off by saying he spent half his career being criticized for how young he was. And then he goes on to say that you should judge him for the job that he's done in office. Look at what I've done. Look how I've turned around the horrible situation he left me. He's saying to judge him by what he did rather than how old he is.

The problem is that the first part of the debate was so defined by how inarticulate he was that the question of age had been subtly already answered, and he had flunked that test. Now, Trump responds in a maybe even more ridiculous fashion. What do you say to voters who have concerns about your capabilities to serve? Well, I took two tests, cognitive tests. I aced them, both of them, as you know. Talking about the mental acuity test that he has taken. I just won two club championships, not even senior, two regular club championships. And focusing on his own golf game, saying that he can hit a ball 50 yards and that that's an example of how he feels like in physical good shape, you know, akin to 25 and 30 years ago. Right. And this is when we enter the strangest moment, I have to think, in presidential debate

history, two rather old men wrangling over who has the better golf game. Look, I'd be happy to have a driving contest with him. The reason I got my handicap, which when I was vice president, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before, I'm happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it? That's the biggest lag. He's a six handicap of all. I was an eight handicap.

I have to say, like, this moment personally kind of bummed me out. There was a one minute period where the two options to leading the country were arguing over their golf handicaps. I've seen your swing. I know your swing. Let's not act like children. Something about the debate about whose golf handicap was better felt like a distillation of the failure of this debate to really provide the American people with the options and the kind of serious policy discussion that the office warrants. Thank you, former President Trump, President Biden. Stay with us because we have full analysis of this debate.

Anderson Cooper and Aaron Burnett starts now on CNN. As said, by the end of this 90-minute debate, it really felt like the consuming question that it produced wasn't so much about whether Donald Trump was going to assemble a coalition that won him the presidency. The burning question seemed to be around President Biden and his weak performance. And so I want to make sure we end there with an understanding of what now happens because of how Joe Biden performed and what it's going to mean for the rest of the race. Yeah, I had come into the debate thinking that the onus was on Donald Trump to prove himself as a disciplined challenger who could take what was a polling possibility of coherence that would make the age question at least neutralized for the night. But by the end of the night, it became clear that that wasn't where the conversation would be. I think that Joe Biden's performance was frankly so disastrous that a Democratic Party freakout that has been bubbling

under a lid for months now has now exploded into the open to the point where you have... Look, it was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden. I don't think there's any way, any other way to slice it. His former communications director on television saying that was a poor performance. Right. Kate Bennington, that struck me too. His former White House communications director went on TV and said that was a disappointing debate performance from President Biden, something Democratic communications directors don't normally say on the record moments after a debate ends. Absolutely. I mean, also, some within your own party are

wondering if President Biden should even step aside. What do you say to that? Listen, first of all, I saw an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Anderson Cooper immediately after debate where the vice president, the cheerleader in chief for the president, said very explicitly, yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish. She would not deny he had a rough start, but believes that he got better at the end. So I'm not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I've been watching the last three and a half years of performance. And saying the last 90 minutes does not erase the last three and a half years, a real acknowledgement of the hole that Biden, frankly, put himself in throughout tonight's debate. But I got to say, as someone who has dedicated the last year and a half

to asking a lot of Democrats questions about how we arrived at an 81-year-old president running for re-election, they have consistently dismissed the overwhelming evidence that most Americans thought Biden was too old to run for a second term. I brought that question to them at the DNC as they were making his path to the nomination easier. And the answer that, frankly, we got at the time was that Donald Trump would be so inherently invalid, none of that would matter. But there was no evidence to support that. That was their own belief that that would just change. And then tonight,

not only did Donald Trump not seem like someone who was completely unfit for the office of president, but that Biden was the memed version of himself, the incoherent, falling-off-a-bike TikTok caricature of himself.

And I think now that Democrats are openly panicking about what Biden should do next, about what the party should do next, they have a lot fewer options at their disposal. Right. There is really no plan B because of how Democratic leaders handled this situation for so long. Yes, there is no plan B because they refused to ask the questions that would even lead to the creation of a plan B in the lead up to this. And so there aren't really clear solutions as to what Democrats should do going forward. And that really, I think, is going to scare a lot of Democrats. Because if you're someone who wants Joe Biden to be president, a lot of those people believe

that Donald Trump is a grave danger to this country. And the belief was that Joe Biden was the person uniquely positioned to stop that from happening. Because he had done it four years before. Because he had done it four years ago. Because he had done it four years ago. I think what's changed from last night to today

is a realization that actually nominating Joe Biden might be the biggest risk for the party and be the very thing that makes a second term of Donald Trump most possible. Well, Stead, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. For more in-depth coverage of the 2024 presidential race, check out a Stead show, The Run-Up,

which comes out every Thursday. You can, The Run-Up, which comes out every Thursday. You can find The Run-Up wherever you listen. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, the Supreme Court blew up a landmark legal settlement between prosecutors and Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. The settlement would have channeled $6 billion into alleviating the opioid epidemic that Purdue Pharma allegedly played a major role in creating. But the settlement relied on a promise to shield members of the Sackler family that created Purdue Pharma from future lawsuits. And in their 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court found that shield to be illegal and invalid. The case was one of several major rulings on Thursday.

In another decision, the court temporarily cleared the way for women in Idaho to receive emergency abortions when their health is at risk, despite a state law there all but banning the procedure. In a third decision, the court blocked a federal plan to reduce air pollution that drifts across state lines, a legal defeat for President Biden. A quick reminder about this week's episode of The Interview. David Marchese talks with Eddie Murphy about his long career in comedy, his return to the Beverly Hills franchise, and about what it's like to make his idol, Richard Pryor, laugh. I could have died right there. You could have crashed the plane right there

to make Richard laugh. I'd make Richard laugh for real. He laughed like this. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennesketter, Nina Feldman, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Mark George, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood and Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderland. Thank you. Special thanks to Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez, and Brendan Klinkenberg. Special thanks to Lisa Tobin, Sam Dolmick, Paula Schumann, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sophia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moore, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddie Maciello, Isabella

Anderson, Nina Lassam, and Nick Pittman. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.