Who Do You Think Won the Presidential Debate?

The presidential debate between current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. The two men squared off in their first scheduled debate in the 2024 presidential campaign, which was hosted by CNN and took place in Atlanta.

CNN declared that there would not be a live audience but would have two commercial breaks. The debate moderators were given the power to mute the microphone of one candidate while the other candidate was speaking.

The moderators were Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, two people who “have openly and consistently expressed disdain for Trump, accusing Trump of crimes ranging from Russian collusion and corruption to channeling Adolf Hitler and not “trusting the science” during COVID-19. In fact, Tapper has refused “to show widely covered Trump rallies, claiming that Trump was too “mean” for air clips to be shown with audio. 

Nevertheless and for whatever reason, Tapper and Bash “were largely fair and evenhanded in their treatment of Trump.” In their article, Mary Margaret Olohan and Tony Kinnett shared four major highlights from the debate tonight.

1) Medicare for Illegal Aliens?

When discussing his economic record, Biden appeared to lose his way, pausing for several seconds, stuttering, and leading to a claim that he “beat Medicare.” …

Trump responded: “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”

Trump then claimed that a large number of illegal immigrants were allowed onto the Medicare and Social Security rolls. At the southern border, illegal immigrants who are taken into Customs and Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody are given medical treatment, shelter, and meals. The ICE Health Service Corps’ current policy is to reimburse those providing those services “at Medicare rates.”

While illegal immigrants are ordinarily not eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, noncitizen parents with “birthright citizenship” children are eligible for Medicaid.

Trump further suggested that Biden would destroy Social Security by overloading it with the cost of illegal immigrants added to the rolls. Biden announced a plan this week to provide some illegal immigrants with work permits and Social Security numbers, which would increase the spending burden on the struggling federal program.

2) Support for Late-Term Abortions?

As Trump and Biden discussed the topic of abortion, Biden appeared to equate the deaths of American women at the hands of illegal immigrants to purported efforts to stop women who are attempting to cross state lines to get abortions….

Biden emphasized that his party supports the restrictions on abortion imposed by Roe v. Wade.

Trump argued that Biden and Democrats support allowing babies to die after they have been born alive, pointing to former Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s comments on what his critics called infanticide.

Biden, angered by Trump’s remarks, emphatically argued that Roe v. Wade does not allow for late-term abortion.

“We are not for late-term abortion. Period. Period. Period,” the president said.

“Under Roe v. Wade, you have late-term abortion,” Trump said, pushing back. “You can do whatever you want, depending on the state. We don’t think that’s a good thing. We think it’s a radical thing. Democrats are the radicals, not the Republicans.

3) Charlottesville and ‘Very Find People’

Biden falsely claimed that Trump had said white supremacists and neo-Nazis were “very fine people” at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., and that that 2017 event had inspired him to run for president.

Trump responded that the claim of “very fine people” on both sides had been debunked by “reputable” anchors. It was also debunked just this week by the fact-check site Snopes.

Trump actually said, “And you had people – and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists – because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists” to describe those attending a protest over a Confederate statue being taken down.

Snopes and other outlets fact-checked the claim that Trump had referred to “white nationalists” or “white supremacists” as “very fine people,” and rated the claim as “false.”

Biden reiterated that the claim had not been “debunked” and said that Trump was a “liar.”

4) Border Patrol Endorsement

Biden falsely claimed that he had been endorsed by the Border Patrol, saying, “By the way, the Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position.”

The Border Patrol Union fact-checked Biden in real time during the debate, tweeting: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”

The president also made rather garbled remarks discussing the need for more Border Patrol officers and more asylum officers, to which Trump responded: “I really don’t know what he said. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

“We had the safest border in the history of our country,” Trump added. “All he had to do is leave it. He decided to open up our border, open up our country, to people that are from prisons, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorists. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now, all terrorists, all over the world … from the Middle East, everywhere.”

In another article, Virginia Allen, Fred Lucas, and Tyler O’Neil discussed the presidential debate and gave fifteen fact-checks about the debate. You can find their article here.