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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Chris Stein (now), with Léonie Chao-Fong, Martin Belam, Helen Sullivan and Maanvi Singh (earlier)

Biden acknowledges shaky debate performance and vows to stay in race: ‘when you get knocked down, you get back up’ – as it happened

Donald Trump Joe Biden CNN Atlanta United States Commission on Presidential Debates CSPAN
Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Closing summary

Last night, Joe Biden and Donald Trump took to the debate stage at CNN studios in Atlanta, looking to break through in a presidential race where polls have for months shown a close contest. While we can’t quite say that Trump achieved that, Biden certainly did not. The president struggled to land his lines, seemed to stare into space while Trump spoke, and had a cough that marred his answers. It served to further heighten already prominent concerns among voters about the 81-year-old’s ability to do the job, and sparked a panic among Democrats. In the hours after the debate finished, even Biden’s allies openly wondered if the party wouldn’t be better off replacing him, despite the fact that it would be historically short notice. At a rally in North Carolina today, a comparatively energetic Biden seemed to acknowledge his poor debate performance, but told the crowd, “when you get knocked down, you get back up”. In the weeks to come, we’ll see if voters think he can do that.

Here’s more about what happened today:

  • Biden reportedly still plans to participate in a second debate with Trump in September.

  • The supreme court will almost certainly rule on Trump’s petition for immunity from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election on Monday.

  • A Biden campaign official tried to prevent a New York Times reporter at a Kamala Harris event from hearing critical comments from voters about the president’s debate performance.

  • Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker and Trump ally, called last night “the greatest mismatch in the history of presidential debates”.

  • ‘Bad debate nights happen’ – so says Barack Obama, who had at least one rough go at it during his presidency.

Abortion was among the issues debated by Donald Trump and Joe Biden last night, with the Democratic president attempting to channel voters’ frustration at the fall of Roe v Wade against his Republican adversary.

This morning, Iowa’s supreme court allowed a six-week ban on the procedure to go into effect, making it the latest Republican-led state to cut off access at a point when many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

Here’s what Biden had to say about that, in a statement distributed by the White House:

This should never happen in America. Yet, this is exactly what is happening in states across the country since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade. And it’s not stopping at the state level – Republican elected officials in Congress have proposed four national abortion bans while refusing to protect nationwide access to IVF and contraception.

Vice-President Harris and I believe that women in every state must have the right to make deeply personal decisions about their health. We will continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade in federal law and stand firm against efforts made by Republican elected officials to undermine Americans’ fundamental freedoms.

And here’s more on the court’s ruling:

Updated

Nevada campaign official blocks reporter from hearing voters' criticism of Biden debate

Kamala Harris is rallying voters this afternoon in Las Vegas, Nevada a critical swing state where polls have lately shown Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump.

As is often the case when the vice-president travels, she is joined by a pool of reporters, including Simon J. Levien of the New York Times, who distribute details of their travels to other outlets, through mailing lists maintained by the White House.

In his latest report, Levien said he was trying to interview attendees at the event prior to Harris’s speech, but in two instances when someone would express a critical view of the president’s performance at his debate last night, Clio Calvo-Platero, the deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign in the state, would try to stop the interview.

Here’s how Levien said it went:

Calvo-Platero followed your pooler as he interviewed voters and recorded the interviews.

Twice she tried to end the interviews when the voters began to criticize Biden.

Democratic voter Amy Nelson said that the debate was “terrible.”

“You can’t tell me that there’s not anyone better —” Nelson said, hoping there was another candidate who could take his place.

“We’re at a Joe Biden event, so I’m going to cut you off there, sorry,” Calvo-Platero said before Nelson finished her statement.

Stephen Stubbs, an undecided voter, criticized Mr. Biden’s “mental acuity.”

“Who’s running the country?” Stubbs recalled saying after watching the presidential debate. “Let Kamala in!” he added, hoping Biden would step down and nominate Harris as president.

Calvo-Platero said “I’m going to stop it here, sorry. If I can, it’s a Biden event. Is that okay?”

Updated

Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats are downplaying the president’s stumbles in the debate last night, but government officials at top American allies are less sanguine, the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports:

European politicians, already drowning in multiple crises of their own, were left shell-shocked and aghast at Joe Biden’s meandering performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, aware that a second Trump term had drawn that much nearer – with all that this implies for the rise of populism in the continent, the future of Nato, and for Ukraine and the Middle East.

The voices of despair came from across the mainstream political spectrum, interspersed with the odd call for Europe to prepare even more intensively for a Trump second coming.

“American democracy killed before our eyes by gerontocracy,” Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the European parliament and a former prime minister of Belgium, posted on X.

The German CDU foreign policy specialist Norbert Röttgen said: “This night will not be forgotten. The Democrats have to rethink their choices now. And Germany must prepare at full speed for an uncertain future. If we don’t take responsibility for European security now, no one will.”

The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, issued the most delphic advice about the importance of planning succession. “Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commodus (he from the Gladiator). Whose disastrous rule started Rome’s decline. It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset.” Whether Barack Obama or Biden was cast in the role of Aurelius was unclear.

Updated

Obama after Biden's performance in Atlanta: 'Bad debate nights happen'

In a post on X, Joe Biden’s former boss Barack Obama downplayed the importance of his struggles on the debate stage last night:

Indeed, Obama knows what he’s talking about when it comes to underperforming in debates as an incumbent president:

Updated

After last night’s debate, Joe Biden’s official account on X shared video clips mocking Donald Trump, and of the president speaking to supporters in Atlanta.

Tellingly, they published nothing showing Biden on the CNN stage, but they’ve now shared a couple clips of his speech this afternoon to supporters in Raleigh. If you caught the debate last night, they’re worth watching, as they show a very different president than the one at the debate.

Here’s the part where he attacks Trump for lying:

And where Biden dismisses him as having “the morals of an alley cat”:

The White House pool reporter following Biden says that he was interrupted four times by pro-Palestinian protesters.

The president managed to shake off their interruptions and continue his speech, while the crowd drowned them out with chants of “four more years!”

His staff has generally managed to keep such protesters out of Biden’s speeches in recent months, after he was interrupted repeatedly at the start of the year. Nonetheless, opposition to his support for Israel in its war on Gaza is another issue that could sap his support in crucial states. Here’s more on that:

Updated

Biden is now walking offstage with the first lady as Tom Petty’s I won’t back down plays.

Despite dealing with a cough and several interruptions by who appeared to be protesters, Biden pulled off a notably forceful speech that was a far cry from his performance on the debate stage in Atlanta just hours before.

Updated

'When you get knocked down, you get back up': Biden tells supporters after shaky debate performance

In comments that came as close as any to addressing his stumbles against Trump in last night’s debate, Biden acknowledged that he is indeed old, but believes he can still beat the former president in the November election.

“I know I’m not a young man, to the state the obvious. Well, I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” the president said.

He went on:

I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans, I know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.

Biden then made plain that he believed he can still do the job:

Folks, I give you my word as a Biden, I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job. Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.

Updated

Crowd chants 'lock him up' as Biden calls Trump a 'one-man crime wave'

Biden laid into Trump over his many legal troubles, calling him a “one-man crime wave” – and prompting the Democratic crowd to chant “lock him up!”

It harkens back to 2016, when crowds at Trump rallies chanted “lock her up” as he attacked his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for various alleged violations of the law.

“The only convicted criminal on stage last night was Donald Trump,” Biden said.

“When I thought about his 34 felony convictions, his sexual assault on a woman in a public place and his being fined $400m for business fraud, I thought to myself, Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted felon. Donald Trump is a one-man crime wave.”

“Lock him up! Lock him up!” the crowd chanted.

Updated

Biden says Trump set 'a new record for the most lies told in a single debate'

Biden has now shifted to last night’s debate, and is attacking Trump for telling what was, in the president’s view, a record number of lies.

“Did you see Trump last night? … It’s sincerely a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.

He continued the attack:

He lied about the great economy he created. He lied about the pandemic he botched, killing millions of people. He closed businesses, he closed schools, losing their homes, people all over this country. America was flat on its back, so I told Trump that it was just one of two presidents in American history who left office at fewer jobs than he started. Herbert Hoover was the other one. That’s why I called him Donald Herbert Hoover Trump.

Updated

The president is going through his staple campaign promises.

And though he’s occasionally coughing, and seems to have been interrupted by protesters at least twice, Biden is generally nailing his lines – something he repeatedly struggled to do when Trump was standing to his right at CNN studios last night.

“We’re going to provide clean drinking water, affordable high-speed internet, quality education for every child in America. We’re going to secure our border and protect legal immigration,” Biden said.

And then a sentence delivered with particular force: “Unlike the other guy, we’re going to stand up to dictators like Putin because America bows to no one, no one, no one ever.”

Biden is at the podium, and greeted the crowd heartily.

“Thank you, North Carolina!” the president bellowed.

Where was this energy last night? On the debate stage he appeared subdued, and often gave crowded answers to Trump or the moderators’ questions. But at this speech so far, he seems more spirited.

Updated

Up next to introduce Biden is Eric Fitts, an educator in the Raleigh area.

“Last night, I watched with pride as President Biden won the debate and put forward … a clear vision for making life better for our families, and Donald Trump made it very clear he’s focused on retribution and revenge,” Fitts said.

“But what amazed me most was that President Biden that we saw last night on the debate stage was the same Joe I had the pleasure of sharing a meal with a few months ago, right in my home, my sons Christian and Carter, when we sat at my dinner table, I was able to share with him how grateful I was for his leadership and for his compassion.”

Updated

Jill Biden is introducing her husband, and implicitly downplaying concerns over his performance against Donald Trump in last night’s debate.

“There is no one that I would rather have sitting in the Oval Office right now than my husband,” the first lady said.

“What you saw last night on the debate stage was Joe Biden, a president with integrity and character, who told the truth. And Donald Trump told lie after lie after lie.”

Biden takes stage in North Carolina for first speech since debate against Trump

Joe Biden is onstage now in Raleigh, North Carolina for his first campaign speech since his shaky performance last night in his debate against Donald Trump.

Jill Biden is revving up the crowd before the president speaks. Don’t go away – we’re covering it live.

Joe Biden is once again late for his speech. As you wait, check out what the Guardian’s Robert Tait and Edward Helmore have learned about how the president’s campaign is dealing with the fallout from his debate last night:

A defiant Joe Biden resisted calls to abandon his re-election effort and step aside for a younger candidate after his calamitous showing in Thursday’s presidential debate with Donald Trump.

As Democrats panicked and openly talked about replacing the president with another nominee, the Biden campaign unequivocally ruled out that possibility.

“Of course he’s not dropping out,” Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson, said on Friday.

Her statement followed Biden’s own resolute comments to downcast supporters shortly after leaving the debate stage in Atlanta. “Let’s keep going,” he told them.

Biden was also said to be planning to return to the debate stage as planned in September, CNN reported on Friday morning, citing an adviser.

Updated

As we wait for Biden to speak, the Washington Post reports that Jim Clyburn, a longtime Democratic congressman from South Carolina who is influential with the president, believes there is no reason for him to exit the race:

Clyburn played a crucial role in re-energizing Biden’s campaign in 2020, when the candidate’s support in the Democratic primaries was flagging:

Updated

Biden to rally in North Carolina amid Democratic panic over debate performance

Hours after his debate with Donald Trump went far worse than expected and made Democrats nationwide even more concerned about his ability to campaign for the presidency at the age of 81, Joe Biden is set to rally supporters in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 12.30pm ET.

Biden is hoping to win the southern state in the November election, but it’s been tough territory for Democrats lately – their Senate candidates have repeatedly lost, Biden is down against Trump in polls of state voters, and Republicans have taken over the state legislature and curbed Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s power.

When he takes the stage, all eyes will, once again, be on how Biden talks and acts, after he repeatedly struggled to articulate his arguments against Trump at the debate at CNN’s studios in Atlanta last night.

An energetic performance could bolster the argument that the president was just having a bad day, albeit at an incredibly important moment. But if he falters onstage in Raleigh, it could heighten his supporters’ anxiety, and give more ammunition to those who argue he must pass the baton to another candidate, if Trump is to be stopped.

Don’t close your browser tab – we’ll be covering the speech live on this blog.

Updated

Plenty of Americans did not watch last night’s presidential debate, and did not personally witness Joe Biden’s struggles, or Donald Trump’s incessant lying and distorting. But many in that group are no doubt digesting headlines from news outlets, indicating the debate did not go well for the president. Here’s more about that, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore:

US voters woke up to post-debate reviews of the first Biden-Trump debate with headlines that echoed Democrats’ anxiety that the incumbent president is too cognitively weak and physically frail to sustain another five months of political campaigning or another term in office.

Those anxieties, multiple outlets reported, were being reflected in pressure from Democratic donors and former Democratic officials who are now openly talking about replacing Biden with an alternative presidential candidate at the party’s convention in Chicago in August.

“A Fumbling Performance, and a Panicking Party”, said the New York Times on its front page. Columnist Nicholas Kristof, a centrist Democrat, said that Biden is a “good man” who had capped his political career with a successful presidential term … “but I hope he reviews his debate performance Thursday evening and withdraws from the race”.

Kristof floated Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Gina Raimondo, the US secretary of commerce, as potential candidates “in a good position to defeat Trump in November”.

Updated

The clever folks at Politico dispatched a reporter to a nursing home to find out what its residents thought of last night’s debate against two historically old candidates.

They had plenty of thoughts about Joe Biden’s troubling performance, as well as how Donald Trump behaved. Here’s a snippet:

When Biden, 81, appeared to lose his train of thought and said, inexplicably, “We finally beat Medicare,” Goldberg put her head in her hands again.

“We finally beat Medicare?” she asked.

For Biden, it was a disaster. His allies had seen the debate as his best chance yet to ease concerns about his age, a persistent liability for his campaign. And the perception of older voters – who turn up to vote at higher levels any other age group – is critical to the Democratic president. He lost voters 65 and older to Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in 2020, but is courting them aggressively in the run-up to November.

Nothing his contemporaries saw here Thursday helped his case.

“I think that he is rushing it, and he’s not looking at the camera for the most part,” said Meg Maguire, 81, who was visiting the facility to watch the debate with her husband.

She said, “In terms of just physical relationship to the camera, Trump is doing better,” even if, as she put it, “Trump says garbage.”

“I do think Biden’s age is showing at this debate, and it pains me,” she added.

Goldberg agreed. “I don’t like to see [Biden’s] gaffes, but I don’t like to see Trump going haywire and cockamamie either,” she said.

Updated

Much like the rest of last night’s often excruciating debate, the section devoted to the climate crisis struggled to stay on topic and was riddled with falsehoods.

It was an hour into the debate before Joe Biden and Donald Trump were asked about global heating, arguably the greatest challenge ever faced by humans, and Trump initially refused to answer, instead going on a lengthy monologue about Black people and immigration.

Eventually pressed for his climate policies, Trump said he wants “absolutely immaculate, clean water. I want absolutely clean air.” He added “we had it, we had H20” and that his administration oversaw the “best environmental numbers ever”.

It’s unclear what “environmental numbers” he’s referring to but, while he was president, Trump eviscerated dozens of clean air and water regulations and strived to bolster polluting industries. During this campaign, he has asked the oil and gas industry for donations in return for deleting Biden’s climate policies, should he return to the White House.

Trump has also vowed to remove the US, again, from the Paris climate accords, which he called a “ripoff” and a “disaster” during the debate. He also claimed the deal cost the US “a trillion dollars”, a baseless assertion.

Biden, in response, said that he’d passed the “most extensive … climate change legislation in history” and directly attacked Trump. “The only existential threat to humanity is climate change, he didn’t do a damn thing about it and he wants to undo all that I’ve done,” Biden said.

Environmental groups were left underwhelmed by the paucity of discussion on climate change, although the differences between Trump and Biden were still starkly apparent.

“Tonight put on full display how broken our political system is,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, communications director of the youth-led Sunrise climate group. “Our generation deserves better.”

“The debate also made it undeniable that a Trump presidency would be a climate catastrophe.”

Updated

Supreme court set to rule on Trump immunity claim on Monday, finds in favor of January 6 rioter in case with wide implications

The supreme court has finished issuing its opinions for the day, but did not rule on Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.

However, the court announced it will issue more decisions on Monday – making it certain that the decision on Trump’s fate will be handed down that day.

Before it wrapped up, the justices ruled on a case involving a January 6 rioter that could have broad implications for prosecutions related to the attack. Our live blog will tell you more about that:

Updated

Rightwing Republican congressman Chip Roy is leaning into the anxiety consuming Democrats over Joe Biden’s debate performance last night.

He announced this morning that he will propose a resolution asking Kamala Harris to attempt to replace Biden as president:

It is unclear if this will pass the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, and even if it does, Harris can probably ignore it.

Supreme court's conservatives hand down rulings punishing unhoused, upending federal regulations

As we speak, the supreme court is issuing more opinions, and the two that have come out so far have seen its conservative supermajority green-light penalties for people who sleep outside, and overturn a decades-old doctrine dealing with federal regulations that may have reverberations across the country.

They’re not yet done for the day, and among the cases they could still rule on is Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Follow our supreme court live blog for the latest:

Updated

Republican House speaker Johnson cheers 'greatest mismatch in the history of presidential debates'

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House and a top ally of Donald Trump, went in for the kill after Joe Biden stumbled through his parlay with the former president, calling it “the greatest mismatch in the history of presidential debates”.

In an interview with Fox News, he also implied that America’s enemies would interpret Biden’s debate performance as a sign of weakness when it comes to national security:

It was sad to watch it. This is dangerous to put this on display for the country. We’re all concerned about this because our adversaries see this as well. We’re in a dangerous moment. We’ve got China, Russia, Iran, North Korea forming a new axis of evil making threats to us and our allies. We can’t afford to have this on the world stage. The only solace we have is that help is on the way. November can’t get here soon enough.

Updated

Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, who ran against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary, had just a few words in response to last night’s debate performance:

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who is being touted as a possible Biden replacement on the Democratic ticket, has defended the president in a statement this morning that failed to mention last night’s debate.

“Joe Biden is running to serve the American people,” Whitmer said in her statement.

Donald Trump is running to serve Donald Trump. The difference between Joe Biden’s vision for making sure everyone in America has a fair shot and Donald Trump’s dangerous, self-serving plans will only get sharper as we head toward November.

From Politico’s Jonathan Martin:

Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has spent the morning defending Joe Biden’s debate performance.

Biden “had a bad debate night,” Shapiro acknowledged on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “but it doesn’t change the fact that Donald Trump was a bad president.”

“That is what I took away from this debate,” he continued.

That’s what I saw, and I think we still have a clear contrast in this race. Nothing about the debate changed that last night.

He added that he has worked closely with both Trump and Biden, “and you know what I can tell you, Joe Biden is up to the job.”

Biden still plans to take part in second debate - report

Joe Biden still plans to participate in a second presidential debate in September, CNN is reporting, citing an adviser.

The adviser acknowledged that the president’s performance on Thursday was “lackluster” but said the campaign is committed to highlighting the moments it believes worked for their candidate — and then moving on, the outlet states.

Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman has told fellow Democrats to “chill the fuck out” following reports that the party reacted with panic and dismay after Joe Biden’s dismal performance on the debate stage.

Fetterman, who survived his own disastrous debate ahead of the 2022, posted to X this morning:

I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden’s shoulder after the debate. No one knows more than me that a rough debate is not the sum total of the person and their record.

Fetterman struggled during his Senate debate with Mehmet Oz, which took place just months after he suffered a stroke.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, has said Joe Biden should not step aside after last night’s debate.

From Fox News’ Tyler Olson:

Joe Biden’s debate performance was a “nightmare” for his Democratic party, the Hill’s Amie Parnes wrote, citing one Biden ally who said: “I am watching us lose this election in slow motion.”

Thursday night’s performance sent shudders of anxiety through Democrats who fear a Biden loss could take down other candidates, the Hill’s morning newsletter writes. One House Democrat from a swing state told the outlet:

Biden’s team needs to convince him to withdraw and have an open convention.

Should Biden decide not to go for reelection in November after all, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place 19-22 August, would have to nominate somebody else.

Here’s how Biden could be replaced, and who could replace him.

Joe Biden “started off poorly and he ended poorly,” Punchbowl News writes in its newsletter this morning, noting that Democrats must be “very alarmed” by the president’s debate performance.

It was bad. Biden’s answers were rambling, his voice was raspy and he committed repeated verbal flubs that will be clipped thousands of times between now and Election Day. Democrats wanted Biden to show voters that he’s capable of serving another term. Many Democrats now fear they got the exact opposite.

Donald Trump wasn’t great either, with “rambling, wildly unfocused” answers that were filled with falsehoods. But “the problem was that Biden was often unable to exploit Trump’s false statements or distortions.”

Tthe reality is this: No matter what Democrats say on the record today, they’re privately alarmed and many will want Biden out. They’re worried he will drag them down with him on Nov. 5.

Winning a presidential debate is one thing, but coming out victorious in the meme wars is something else.

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump understand how important it is to go viral. According to NBC News, Biden’s campaign headquarters enlisted 18 influencers with a combined following of 8 million to post about the event, amounting to a “post-debate social media clip sharing battle”.

Though Biden’s voice grew stronger as the debate went on – a low bar, considering how weak he sounded at the start – it was impossible for viewers to ignore, especially as concerns about his age are a constant source of stress for Democrats this election.

“I’ve watched a lot of Biden talks. I’ve never heard him sound this frail,” Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp wrote on X. “Someone has to pull a fire alarm and help Biden out here,” writer Bhaskar Sunkara added, referencing Jamaal Bowman’s infamous congressional incident.

X users wondered: did the president need a cough drop? An energy drink – maybe Panera’s infamous charged lemonade? What about the “secret sauce” he posted a photo holding shortly before the debate, a canned water containing, according to the label, “zero malarky”? (Actual cans later hit the Biden campaign’s official store, costing $4.60 each.)

On social media, people were obsessed with performance-enhancing drugs – and how it appeared that Biden needed to take some. “The Adderall shortage is tearing this country apart and it has finally hit Biden,” read one tweet. “They accidentally injected Biden with ketamine instead of adrenaline,” another wrote. Some fantasized about feeding Biden Adderall through the TV screen.

Calls for Biden to stand aside as surrogates double down in support

Possible contenders to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee have doubled down on supporting him after a night in which there have been calls for the president to step aside from the 2024 election after a disappointing performance in the first TV debate of the campaign.

Democratic senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC that she was not sure “if things can be done to fix this” after Biden appeared to have been bested by Donald Trump, who despite making numerous false claims nevertheless appeared to be the more coherent of the elderly perspective candidates.

Biden’s voice at times sounded raspy, and at times he did not make sense, blurting out “We finally beat Medicare” at one point. Trump regularly answered straightforward questions – about the economy, or abortion, or the opioid crisis – with non sequiturs, but after the debate it was Democratic commentators who seemed most concerned about the potential impact on voters.

Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, said she loves Biden, but that the evening was “heartbreaking in many ways” and that there was “panic in the Democratic party”. David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “kind of a Defcon 1 moment”.

There is no easy process in place to replace Joe Biden at this late stage of the process, with him having triumphed mostly unopposed during the primaries and all set to be confirmed as the nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

The only significant change would be if he were to voluntarily step aside, or even step down from the presidency.

Possible alternative names being touted include vice-president Kamala Harris, and California governor Gavin Newsom. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor J B Pritzker and veteran Ohio senator Sherrod Brown have also been mooted.

But at least on the night of the debate Harris and Newsom seemed foursquare behind the beleaguered president. Harris conceded Biden made “a slow start”, saying “That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point.”

However she went on to tell CNN that “people can debate on style points but ultimately this election and who is the president of the US has to be about substance and the contrast is clear. Donald Trump lied over and over and over again as he is want to do. He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results.”

Newsom said talk of changing nominee was “nonsensical speculation”, adding “I will never turn my back on President Biden. Never turn my back on President Biden, I don’t know a Democrat in my party that would do so.”

Updated

Incidentally Joe Biden is due to be campaigning later today in North Carolina. Vice-president Kamala Harris is expected to be in Nevada.

Journalist Jake Sherman has posted to social media claiming to have had a lot of post-debate conversations with congressional Democrats. He writes:

Their sense isn’t that this was a bad debate. It is much worse than that. In their view, Biden didn’t even clear the lowest bar. They may agree with him on policy. But Biden wasn’t even able to articulate what his policies are. For Democrats running down ballot, this is an incredibly serious problem.

Writing for MSNBC, Hayes Brown states that Biden has less than three months to turn this performance around, but does not think it is a completely hopeless case. He writes:

It’s clear that Biden’s energy and capability is still there, as he warmed up throughout the night. He even seemed like an entirely different person in an appearance at an Atlanta watch party that MSNBC aired after the debate ended. The question is how to make sure that version of Biden is on full display throughout the remainder of the campaign, countering the image that may unfortunately be locked into many voters’ minds now.

The answer may rest with reminding Americans that no matter what concerns they might have had about Biden’s performance tonight, there was nothing that Trump did that made it seem like he is the better choice to return to the White House.

One of the odder bits of factchecking last night, via Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, is whether Joe Biden was being misleading to claim that Donald Trump had said people should inject bleach into their arms during the Covid pnademic. How did we get here? Anyway, to clear up the confusion, Kessler provides the full quote from Trump on 23 April 2020:

I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.

His verdict is that this does not appear to be Trump suggesting people should inject bleach, and that Biden was being misleading.

At the time, asked to clarify his comments the next day, the then-president insisted he had been “asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.”

Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit has also delivered her verdict, saying the American people were the true losers last night:

Debates exist so that people can hear from the candidates, which makes sense when they’re relative unknowns. We’ve heard plenty from both of them for 40 years or so, since Biden was a young congressman and Trump was a young attention-seeker in New York City’s nightclubs and tabloids, and both of them have had the most high-profile job on earth for four years.

We didn’t need this debate. Because 2024 is not like previous election years, and the reasons it’s not are both that each candidate has had plenty of time to show us who they are and because one of them is a criminal seeking to destroy democracy and human rights along with the climate, the economy and international alliances. If you are too young to remember 2017-2021, this would not help you figure that out.

Much has been said about the age of the candidates, but maybe it’s the corporate media whose senility is most dangerous to us. Their insistence on proceeding as though things are pretty much what they’ve always been, on normalizing the appalling and outrageous, on using false equivalencies and bothsiderism to make themselves look fair and reasonable, on turning politics into horseraces and personality contests, is aiding the destruction of the United States.

Read more from Rebecca Solnit here: The true losers of this presidential debate were the American people

Jess Bidgood, writing for the New York Times On Politics newsletter, summed it all up as “Well, that was ugly” and said the main takeaway was “mostly, they fought about each other.”

She writes:

Both Biden and Trump are deeply unpopular, and voters have for months been telling pollsters that they did not want this rematch even as they sent the candidates to the top of the ticket. Watching the debate last night, as each cast the other as the reason that he is running again, it seemed clear that the two Americans who most want this rematch were standing onstage.

“I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself,” Trump said, adding, “The only reason I’m here is that he’s so bad as a president”. Biden portrayed Trump as a unique threat to the country, castigating him in deeply personal terms and repeatedly calling him a liar. The deep enmity on display – and the messiness of the night – may have damaged them both.

David Smith was in Atlanta for the Guardian, and this is his sketch of what was a terrible debate night for the Biden campaign:

That sickening thud you heard was jaws hitting the floor. That queasy sound you heard was hearts sinking into boots. That raspy noise you heard was a US president embodying what felt like the last gasp of the ailing republic. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

The first US presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday was the night that Democrats went from “Don’t panic!” to “OK, time to panic!” After months of preparation and expectation, they got to the altar and suddenly realised they were marrying the wrong man.

In 90 miserable minutes, Joe Biden achieved two things that had seemed impossible. He lived down to expectations that were already rock bottom. And he managed to make Donald Trump sound almost coherent. Trump did not win the debate but Biden certainly lost it.

Democrats had been lulled into a false sense of security by Biden’s high energy performance at the State of the Union address. They expected Superman again. Instead they got Clark Kent in his dotage.

Read more of David Smith’s verdict here: ‘You’re the sucker, you’re the loser’: 90 miserable minutes of Biden v Trump

Who could replace Joe Biden as Democratic presidential nominee?

Should Joe Biden decide not to go for reelection in November after all, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place 19-22 August, would have to nominate somebody else. There isn’t a clear frontrunner, but there would be some of the potential options.

Kamala Harris

The most obvious default pick would be Biden’s vice-president. She has been widely criticised for not carving out her own role in the Biden administration and has poor polling approval ratings, suggesting she would struggle against Donald Trump in the glare of an election campaign. The 59-year-old was backing Biden after the debate, but would also be maybe the easiest for the party to install as a replacement. She would automatically become president if Biden resigned from the White House, but that would not automatically make her the nominee.

Gavin Newsom

The 56-year-old California governor was in the spin room last night talking down any alternatives to Biden being the nominee, saying it was “nonsensical speculation”. He had a primetime debate with Florida gov Ron DeSantis last year, which could be a presidential match-up of the future, and has made a point of supporting Democrats in elections away from his home state, which looked, at times, like a shadow White House campaign.

J B Pritzker

The 59-year-old governor of Illinois would be one of the wealthiest of potential picks, but also can flourish the credentials of having codified the right to abortion in Illinois and declaring it a “sanctuary state” for women seeking abortions. He has also been strong on gun control, and legalised recreational marijuana.

Gretchen Whitmer

The Michigan governor was on the shortlist for VP pick for Biden in 2020, and a strong showing in the midterms for the Democratic party was in part put down to her governership. The 52-year-old has been in favor of stricter gun laws, repealing abortion bans and back universal pre-kindergarten.

Sherrod Brown

The 71-year-old would be the most elderly of the alternate picks, but still seven years younger than Donald Trump. It was considered a surprise when he didn’t have a tilt for the Democratic nomination for 2020, at the time saying he saw remaining as Ohio’s senator as “the best place for me to make that fight” on behalf of working people. A strong voice on labor rights and protections, he has also spoken out on protections for IVF and abortion.

Dean Philips

The main contender to Joe Biden during the primaries earlier this year has already demonstrated an inability to appeal to the broader party, and so is unlikely to be a factor.

Updated

Democratic strategist Theryn Bond has told Sky News that the party needs to replace Joe Biden as presidential nominee, but that it should not be Kamala Harris as the “country is not ready” for a Black woman to be president.

She said that California governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer could be candidates, explaining:

Unfortunately as much as I want the US to be ready for Black woman to be president, they are not ready. This country is not ready. This country is too divisive, unfortunately, we’re just not there. I don’t think she would be the one to take the Democratic Party to victory.

How could Joe Biden be replaced as Democratic presidential nominee?

Joe Biden does not become the party’s nomination for president until endorsed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place 19-22 August.

There is no formal mechanism to replace him as the presumptive nominee, and it would be the first time a party has attempted to do so in modern times. Effectively the only option is that he would have to agree to step aside.

He won through the primaries almost uncontested, and has about 95% of the delegates who choose the nominee pledged to vote for him. There isn’t a legal requirement that they vote for who won in the primaries, but they are asked to vote in a way that “in all good conscience reflects the sentiments of those who elected them”.

Were Biden to step aside as a candidate, he might try to nominate someone – most likely vice-president Kamala Harris – as his preferred alternative, which would carry some weight with delegates, but which would not be binding.

The most drastic course of action open to Biden – resigning the presidency itself – would make Harris president. But that would not automatically make her the Democratic nominee for 2024.

The party would still have to carry out an open, contested convention, leaving about 700 party insiders the choice of picking someone, and then having only three months to unite behind and campaign for them.

Updated

And here are the top (by which I mean terrible) moments from that debate.

Warning: there’s a lot of golf talk.

On that note, this is Helen Sullivan, doing whatever the opposite of teeing off is on this live coverage. My colleague Martin Belam will be with you for the next while.

It’s worth watching this from MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill (you’ll hear her use the word “surrogate” a lot – that is a person who speaks on behalf of a candidate, usually to promote them):

Politico has this explainer for how the Democrats could replace Biden (again: this is extremely unlikely to happen – not quite as unlikely as it was before this debate):

If Biden agreed to decline his party’s nomination, it would kick off an open and unpredictable process of picking his replacement.

Other names — from Vice President Kamala Harris, to Govs. Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker, to numerous others — could be placed in nomination. The candidates, who could span the Democratic Party’s geographic, ideological and generational wings, would be working to sway the thousands of Democratic delegates to support them on the first ballot.

The pledged delegates aren’t the only ones who have a say. The Democratic Party has stripped “superdelegates” — elected officials and party leaders who can vote for anyone they please — of most of their power since the contentious 2016 primary. These superdelegates would be free to vote if no candidate won a majority of delegates on the first ballot. An open, contested convention would give more than 700 party insiders a major role in picking the new nominee.

Here is Jon Stewart on how that went:

Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist-turned ardent Biden supporter, told the AP in the spin room after the debate, “That was the worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates”.

What Biden had to say after the debate

In case you missed this earlier, here is what Biden had to say.

“I think we did well,” he told reporters.

Asked whether he had any concerns about his performance, and calls from some supporters for him to drop out, he said: “No. It’s hard to debate a liar. The New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times.”

When asked whether he was sick – his aides told reporters during the debate that Biden had a cold – Biden said, “I have a sore throat.”

At a debate watch party earlier, Biden told supporters: “Look we’re going to beat this guy, and I need you in order to beat him,” he said, adding, “You are the reason why America is as good as we are.”

“We’re the finest nation in the world,” Biden told supporters energetically a short while later, and “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you”.

A CBS host responded: “It appears his cold has been cured.”

Could the Democrats replace Biden?

Under current Democratic Party rules, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without the party officials being willing to rewrite its rules at the August national convention.

The president won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. And party rules state that, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”

That said, DNC rules don’t have the same strict “faithless delegate” rules that the RNC does, which ignore votes against in violation of a delegate’s pledged position.

More detail on why it would be hard to replace Biden here – and some of the names that could (in the also extremely unlikely eventuality of him dropping out of the race) be in the running.

Biden and Trump aren’t not scheduled to meet on the debate stage again for another 75 days, so Biden’s performance is likely to linger in people’s minds for a while.

Trump co-campaign chief Chris LaCavita told the Associated Press Trump would be at the next debate “with bells on.”

Biden’s surrogates were slow to enter the post-debate spin room in Atlanta, AP reports.

And when they finally emerged, they largely avoided questions from the press. Instead, they railed against Trump’s long list of falsehoods during the debate. Among other things, Trump didn’t disavow those who attacked the Capitol on 6 January.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential future presidential candidate who was Biden’s most prominent surrogate in the Atlanta spin room, urged Democrats not to panic.

“I think it’s unhelpful. And I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to go in, we’ve got to keep our heads high,” Newsom said in an interview on MSNBC. “We’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”

Still, signs of anxiety were apparent as Democrats began to openly encourage the party to find an alternative to Biden. Some party officials pointed to a social media post from former Obama campaign aide Ravi Gupta.

“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad,” Gupta wrote on X. “Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”

Under current Democratic Party rules, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without the party officials being willing to rewrite its rules at the August national convention.

The president won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. And party rules state that, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”

But DNC rules don’t have the same strict “faithless delegate” rules that the RNC does, which ignore votes against in violation of a delegate’s pledged position.

Biden, whose deceased son, Beau, served in Iraq, had one of his most forceful moments when he went on the attack against Trump’s reported comments in 2018 that he declined to visit a US military cemetery in France because veterans buried there were “suckers” and “losers.”

It was an argument that Biden, then the Democratic challenger, made against Trump in their first 2020 debate and one that the incumbent president has regularly used against Trump, framing him as a commander in chief who nonetheless disparages veterans. “My son was not a loser, was not a sucker,” Biden said. “You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.”

Trump responded that the publication that initially reported this comments, The Atlantic, “was a third-rate magazine” and had made up the quotes. But undercutting Trump’s retort is the fact that his former chief of staff, John Kelly, confirmed those private remarks in a statement last fall.

Nicholas Kristof, the leftwing political columnist, said on Twitter/X that he hopes Biden reflects on the debate and decides to withdraw from the race, letting the convention decide who should be the nominee. He suggested someone like Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio senator Sherrod Brown or commerce secretary Gina Raimondo.

Updated

Trump, for his part, stumbled over the question of how he would reassure voters that he would respect his oath of office after the 6 January, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Trump tried to avoid addressing the issue at all. He defended the people who stormed the Capitol, blaming Biden for prosecuting them. “What they’ve done to some people who are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Trump told Biden.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal offenses stemming from the riot. Of those, more than 850 people have pleaded guilty to crimes, including seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers. About 200 others have been convicted at trial.

Trump warned that the members of the congressional committee that investigated 6 January could face criminal charges, as could Biden himself.

Biden shot back: “The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at.”

Terump also sought to blame former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She responded on X/Twitter, saying:

Now for some more reaction to the debate. Tevi Troy, a bipartisan policy center fellow and presidential historian, told Reuters that overall, the debate “is going to be a problem for Biden”.

Biden had a lot of answers where he looked weak. “There were other answers where he was more solid, but it doesn’t matter because the problematic answers are going to live on through Twitter and social media.”

Trump on the other hand was “more restrained” than in previous debates, Troy said. The rules of the debate where they shut off the mics “actually helped him (Trump) so he wasn’t interrupting and didn’t seem quite as rude.”

“There’s the phenomenon of the double haters, where people like neither candidate ... One guy’s crazy, the other guy’s too old. They were definitely validated in thinking the one guy is too old, and in terms of the crazy I think Trump did dial it down.”

Analysis: Trump-Biden debate likely amplified Americans’ dismay about the election

Here is the analysis of tonight’s debate from the Guardian US’s senior political reporter, Joan E Greve:

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:

Here are some photos of Americans watching the debate:

Margaret Sullivan: 'Even factchecking Trump’s constant lies probably wouldn’t have rescued Biden'

From the moment the candidates walked out on to the stage in Atlanta, it was obvious that this debate was a big mistake for Joe Biden. By the end, it was a train wreck for his campaign.

The incumbent president, who desperately needed to show vitality, looked from the start like an old man. His gait was stiff and his voice tentative. His energy was markedly different from his triumphant State of the Union address just a few months ago.

Donald Trump had a thuggish look, but he seemed vigorous and energetic. He seemed … the same.

Then the barrage of lies started, as they always do with Trump.

Among them: Democrats favor post-birth executions. The former president never slept with a porn star. The 2020 election was riddled with fraud. Trump never called prisoners of war losers and suckers. Biden would quadruple people’s taxes.

On and on and on, in nearly every Trump sentence. Biden had occasional moments, too, of exaggeration or misstatement. But there is no comparison.

No comparison – and no fact-checking by the moderators.

That was the policy going in. CNN’s political director, David Chalian, made that clear a few days ago when he said that debate moderators shouldn’t make themselves into participants but remain mere facilitators. There would be no live factchecks during the debate.

And so, Trump rolled over Biden, landing punch after punch. Not with logic. And certainly not with truth. But with force of personality, and sheer chutzpah.

Summary

Here is what you may be thankful you missed in tonight’s debate between US President Joe Biden and Donald Trump:

  • Donald Trump and Joe Biden debated abortion and tax policy in the first presidential head-to-head, in which the president struggled to land his lines and Trump countered Biden’s criticism by leaning into falsehoods about the economy, illegal immigration and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

  • Biden’s uneven performance, particularly early in the debate, crystallized the concerns of many Americans that, at 81, he is too old to serve as president. It sparked a fresh round of calls for the Democrat to consider stepping aside as the party’s nominee as members of his party fear a return of Trump to the White House.

  • Biden repeatedly tore into Trump in an apparent effort to provoke him, bringing up everything from the former president’s recent felony conviction to his alleged insult of World War I veterans to his weight.

  • The 78-year-old Trump declined to clearly state he would accept the results of the November election, four years after he promoted conspiracy theories about his loss that culminated in the 6 January insurrection, and repeatedly misstated the record from his time in office.

  • But Biden’s delivery from the beginning of the debate drew the most attention afterward. Trump’s allies immediately declared victory while prominent Democrats publicly questioned whether Biden could move forward.

  • “I think the panic had set in,” said David Axelrod, a longtime advisor to former President Barack Obama on CNN, immediately after the debate about Biden’s performance. “And I think you’re going to hear discussions that, I don’t know will lead to anything, but there are going to be discussions about whether he should continue.” Said Van Jones, another Democratic strategist, on CNN: “He did not do well at all.”

  • Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking on CNN afterward, sought to defend the president’s performance while acknowledging the criticism. “There was a slow start, but there was a strong finish,” she said. Asked about his performance in the debate, Biden told reporters early Friday that “I think we did well,” but said he has a “sore throat.” Pressed about Democratic concerns with his showing that he should consider stepping aside, Biden said, “No, it’s hard to debate a liar.”

  • Biden began the night with a hoarse voice as he tried to defend his economic record and criticize Trump. He repeatedly lost his train of thought. A person familiar with the matter said Biden was suffering from a cold during the debate, adding that he tested negative for Covid-19.

  • Biden appeared to lose his train of thought while giving one answer, drifting from an answer on tax policy to health policy, at one point using the word “Covid” and then saying, “excuse me, with, dealing with,” and he trailed off again. “Look, we finally beat Medicare,” Biden said, as his time ran out on his answer.

  • He also fumbled on abortion rights, one of the most important issues for Democrats in this year’s election. He was unable to explain Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. A conservative Supreme Court with three justices nominated by Trump overturned Roe two years ago. When asked if he supports some restrictions on abortion, Biden said he “supports Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters. The first time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the women and the state.”

  • The current president and his predecessor hadn’t spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his loss that culminated in the Capitol riot by his supporters.

  • Trump equivocated on whether he would accept the results of the November election, saying he would accept them if the vote was “fair” and “legal,” repeating his baseless claims of widespread fraud and misconduct in his 2020 loss to Biden that he still denies.

Updated

The Associated Press has spoken to US voters who tuned into the debate. There’s one thing that Trump and Biden supporters can agree on, the AP’s Calvin Woodward writes: Biden had a bad night:

“Oh, Joe.”

That gasp, from patrons at a Chicago bar when President Joe Biden first stumbled verbally in his debate with Donald Trump, spoke for a lot of Americans on Thursday night.

In watch parties, bars, a bowling alley and other venues where people across the country gathered to tune in, Trump supporters, happily, and Biden supporters, in their angst if not dread, seemed to largely agree they had witnessed a lopsided showdown.

Biden “just didn’t have the spark that we needed tonight,” Rosemarie DeAngelus, a Democrat from South Portland, Maine, said from her watch party at Broadway Bowl. Trump, she said, showed “more spunk or more vigor” even if, in her view, he was telling a pack of lies.

Fellow Biden supporter and bowling alley attendee Lynn Miller, from nearby Old Orchard Beach, said: “It’s like somebody gave Trump an Adderall and I don’t think they gave Joe one.”

“I’ve never seen Trump seem so coherent,” Miller said. “And I hate to say this, but Joe seemed a little bit off. But I still support him over Trump because Trump lied about every single thing that happened.”

In McAllen, Texas, near the Mexico border, London’s Bar & Grill is normally loud on a day close to the weekend, but many patrons were quiet as they absorbed the debate from TV screens. Here, Biden supporters, Trump supporters and undecided voters mingled.

Virginia Lopez came away still not knowing whom she will support in November. She heard snappy but unsatisfying answers from the Republican. “Trump is just deflecting in all the answers and he’s just lying,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like a real debate.”

Biden? “I just feel like he’s too old,” she said.

Sitting up at the bar, Hector Mercado, 72, a veteran wearing a US military beret, was a distinctive patron as he listened intently to the debate. Although he was a Democrat for several years, he switched parties under Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

Mercado heard Biden accuse Trump of making derogatory comments about veterans, but it didn’t sway his support for Trump. “Yeah, he said a few things bad about veterans at one point back in the early days,” he said of Trump. “But now he’s saying, ‘No, I back up the veterans and I never had any problems with him. I got a raise in my VA disability when Trump was president.”

Biden’s performance left him cold. “I think Trump is stronger,” he said, “and Biden is a little weak.”

Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University, told Reuters after the debate:

“Obviously the biggest factor is that Biden still seemed old and raspy and less coherent than when he ran last time, and that’s going to be the big story, I think, out of the debate. I don’t think Trump really did anything to help himself beyond his existing supporters, but I think it is eclipsed by people’s impressions of Biden on his biggest vulnerability.”

Grossmann said that from the beginning of the debate Biden had trouble getting his points across “and just seemed a lot softer.” He said Biden didn’t really start delivering effective answers until 20 minutes into the debate. “It’s hard to recover from that.”
Grossmann said that debates typically have a small impact on presidential races and that impact dissipates over time.

“Debates do not normally have huge influence on election results. But because we’re at this 50-50 election where the country is divided, any small change can make a difference.”

Grossmann said one problem for Biden is that some of his supporters are expressing their concerns about his performance rather than defending it.

“So there’s not a message in his favor. And to the extent that it has an influence, the influence will be to make people’s concerns about Biden’s age even more salient.”

If you’re just joining us, here is how the debate between Donald Trump and US President Joe Biden went: badly. For Biden.

In a debate that was not fact-checked live, Trump lied repeatedly. But he was energetic, forceful, and fairly clear in the delivery of his responses/lies. Biden was shaky and appeared to struggle to gather his thoughts and, at times, to express them with much clarity. During the debate, aides informed the media that the president had a cold. But this was cold comfort to voters and democrats, who largely seemed to find the debate disastrous for Biden.

Vice President Kamala Harris, appearing on CNN after the debate, acknowledged what she called Biden’s “slow start” but argued that voters should judge him and Trump based on their years in office.

“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,”

Democrats, the Guardian reports, are “in panic mode”:

Updated

Why it would be tough to replace Biden – and who could be in the running (in the tiny chance that opportunity arose)

There is no evidence Biden is willing to end his campaign. And it would be nearly impossible for Democrats to replace him unless he chooses to step aside, AP reports.

Every state has already held its presidential primary. Democratic rules mandate that the delegates Biden won remain bound to support him at the party’s upcoming national convention unless he tells them he’s leaving the race.

If Biden opts to abandon his reelection campaign, Kamala Harris would likely join other top Democratic candidates looking to replace him. But that would probably create a scenario where she and others end up lobbying individual state delegations at the convention for their support.

That hasn’t happened for Democrats since 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson jockeyed for votes during that year’s Democratic convention in Los Angeles.

Other Democrats with their own presidential aspirations include:

  • California Gov. Gavin Newsom

  • Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

  • Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro

  • Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker and

  • California Rep. Ro Khanna.

Still others who Biden bested during the party’s 2020 presidential primary could also try again, including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

What happens if (IF) Biden drops out?

The UK’s Financial Times has this useful explainer about what would happen if (and it is a huge, huge, IF, but a slightly less huge one after tonight), Biden dropped out of the race:

Both [Trump and Biden] easily won their party’s primary vote earlier this year. If they dropped out now, it would be up to delegates at the forthcoming Republican and Democratic conventions to find replacements.

That would make July’s Republican convention in Milwaukee or the Democratic convention in Chicago in August akin to conventions decades ago, when candidates canvassed each state’s delegation for floor votes.

State delegates would be “uncommitted” — no longer beholden to their state’s primary result — and able to vote for any candidate they liked, said Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution think-tank. It might take several rounds of voting to find a nominee.

“Presumably, for Democrats, they would pick [vice-president] Kamala Harris,” said Derek Muller, professor at the University of Notre Dame’s law school.

But Harris’s approval rating is just 39.4%, according to FiveThirtyEight — even lower than Biden’s 39.9%. Other Democrats would almost certainly jump into the race.

Updated

Former Obama campaign aide Ravi Gupta on X/Twitter:

“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad. Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”

Guardian columnist Osita Nwanevu writes: Half an hour into the worst presidential debate of all time, Jake Tapper finally put a question to the candidates about “the issue of democracy”. As president, Tapper said, Trump had sworn an oath to the constitution that many voters believe he violated by instigating the riot on January 6. What would he say to those voters?

“Well, I don’t think too many believe that,” Trump sniffed. “And let me tell you about January 6th. On January 6th, we had a great border. Nobody coming through. Very few. On January 6th, we were energy independent. On January 6th, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever … We were respected all over the world.” He was asked again and babbled about Nancy Pelosi’s daughter instead.

This was Biden’s golden opportunity. Because as stubbornly pessimistic as Americans might be about the economy or Biden’s age, Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election illustrate that democracy itself is at stake. It’s a simple, clear and potent message. Biden failed to deliver it effectively. “He talked about these people being great patriots of America,” Biden rasped. “In fact, he says he’ll now forgive them for what they’ve done. He’ll … and they’ve been convicted. He says he wants to commute their sentences … and say that … that no, he went to every single court in the nation, I don’t know how many cases, scores of cases, including the supreme court. And they said, they said: ‘No, no, this guy, this guy is responsible for doing what is being that was done.’”

Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that Biden’s capacities will improve by November. Although he does sometimes have a command of facts and figures, Biden has lost his ability to communicate effectively ⁠– not something one wants in a political candidate or, for that matter, a president.

Biden’s debate performance sends Democrats into panic

Could there be a contested Democratic convention? How would that even work? Replacing the president may not be an option, they said, but many acknowledged Democrats are talking about it, spurred by Biden’s troubling debate performance.

MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace laid out how a candidate could release their delegates. Joy Reid said someone sent her the rules.

“The rules are circulating,” Wallace laughed.

“No one is saying it’s going to happen, it’s very unlikely,” Reid reiterated.

The fact that a liberal network would broach the idea of whether an incumbent president running for re-election could be replaced after they’ve won the nomination shows how Democrats are scrambling after the debate to affirm Biden’s ability to lead the nation. Many are questioning whether the party should have serious conservations about what else could be done instead.

David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “kind of a Defcon 1 moment”.

“The biggest thing in this election is voters’ concerns – and it’s both swing voters and base voters – with his age, and those were compounded tonight,” Plouffe said.

Read the full story:

Updated

Shropshire said one strong moment for Biden was when he pointed out that Trump was a convicted felon and criticized his morality.

She also said that Trump’s reference to migrants taking Black jobs had become “a hilarious meme all across Black Twitter right now”:

She said it showed how Trump was failing to connect with Black voters.

“That there are specific Black jobs for Black people that immigrants are coming to take. Utter nonsense.”

Adrianne Shropshire, Executive director of Blackpac, an organization that works to mobilize black voters, told Reuters she wrote down two things in her notepad while watching the debate.

“One is that Trump lies,” she said. The other was that Biden “was not as forceful as I thought he needed to be.”

Shropshire criticised the moderators for allowing Trump to make various false claims without any pushback.

Trump was essentially allowed to do what he does at his rallies, which is say whatever he wants, regardless of the relationship it has to the truth. And that was really unfortunate.”

Shropshire said Biden could have pushed back on Trump’s false claims more forcefully.

“I think he tried to take the high road by talking policy. And I think that has its place. But when we think about where our politics are right now, there really is a need to just assert facts and assert them very clearly. And I think that got muddled a bit in his policy responses.”

Shropshire said she was not as worried as others who have said Biden had an unsteady performance that could increase about his age. “He has great performances that people have talked about just in the past few months,” she said.

“I also think that it just doesn’t change the dynamics of the race, because they also saw Trump standing next to Joe Biden, and I don’t think that they saw someone who was stronger necessarily. I think they saw the same unhinged Trump that they see at every rally and in clips when they’re on social media.”

Arwa Mahdawi: 'This was not a debate so much as a farce'

My expectations for this debate weren’t just low, they were dungeon-in-hell levels of low. I still wasn’t prepared for how shocking it would actually be. Trump lied unashamedly, Biden waffled incoherently, and the moderators just said “thank you” a lot and moved on. This was not a “debate” so much as a farce.

If Biden’s team thought this debate would assuage worries about the president’s age and competence, their plans spectacularly backfired. For the first half of the debate, Biden looked dazed and could barely get his words out. He noticeably improved towards the end; still, this was not a man who instills confidence. Trump blustered and lied and dog-whistled his way through the night, but if you were going on optics alone the convicted felon had the upper hand.

For those of us distraught by Gaza, tonight was a gut-wrenching reminder that neither candidate gives a damn about Palestinian lives. Trump used “Palestinian” as a slur and Biden, meanwhile, reiterated his support for Israel no matter how many Palestinian kids are killed. Neither candidate answered the question of whether they support a Palestinian state and the moderators didn’t press them on it.

Responses to questions about abortion were also bleak. Trump advanced inflammatory misinformation about late-term abortion and Biden didn’t seem interested in talking about abortion in detail – he didn’t even mention it in his closing statements. He seemed a lot more interested in talking about golf. Indeed, the only part of the night when both men seemed to really come alive was when they got into a fight about their golf handicaps.

Updated

Pelosi: 'How dare [Trump] place blame for January 6 on anyone but himself"

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, has taken aim at Trump’s claiming – falsely –during the debate that she was responsible for the January 6 insurrection.

“How dare he place the blame for January 6th on anyone but himself, the inciter of an insurrection?” she wrote on X:

Updated

Joe Biden’s age and acuity took center stage. He looked lost, and the Democrats are almost certainly panicking. At times, the president could barely stitch two coherent sentences together. Donald Trump won the evening, and it wasn’t even close.

Trump took command from the outset. He appeared energized and engaged. What Trump said mattered less than how he said it; he forcefully responded to whatever question was posed. He repeatedly mocked, taunted and bludgeoned Biden. If this were a boxing match, the referee would have stopped the match in the third round.

Despite Biden’s efforts to nail Trump on his own record as president, Trump was mostly unbowed. He seemingly stood by his picks to the supreme court and the end of Roe v Wade. At one point Trump seemingly mouthed the words “let’s not act like children”, which may be the evening’s most memorable line. He also got away with calling Biden “the Manchurian candidate”.

Trump lied aplenty. He acted as if he never had said there were “good people” on both sides in Charlottesville, and pretended that he hadn’t dissed America’s war dead. But little of that may matter come November. Americans want a president who exudes vigor. And Biden isn’t that.

The debate will supply Trump with a wealth of material for campaign ads. It may be time for an open convention. August could be interesting.

Updated

Well, that was a disaster.

The debate was an unmitigated calamity, especially for Biden. The president was often hard to follow and at times incoherent; he struggled to answer questions that should have been easy gimmes on issues favorable to Democrats. It would be nice if substance mattered more than style, because the substance of Biden’s remarks were important, and promised a more prosperous, secure and free future for Americans than Trump’s. But his delivery made it extremely difficult for even the most plugged-in politics addicts to follow, let alone your average viewer at home.

For Trump’s part, what he didn’t say was more telling than what he did. He was unwilling or unable to answer questions on how he would help families with childcare, the costs of which are a drag not only on family budgets, but on the US economy. He was unwilling or unable to answer questions about opioids and the US’s addiction crisis. And, perhaps most importantly, he refused to clearly answer a thrice-asked question about whether he would accept the results of the election – saying only that he would do so if such an election were fair, and then claimed the 2020 one wasn’t. In other words, Trump will accept the results of the election only if he wins – and contest it if he doesn’t.

That’s remarkably dangerous. And his wholesale lack of interest in the issues that matter most to American families is remarkably negligent. But unfortunately, his would-be foil – Biden – proved simply unable to take on even a truly terrible opponent. Neither man came off looking good. But if Americans are counting on Biden to save us, we might want to start making a Plan B.

Here is what Guardian columnist and author of How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror, Moustafa Bayoumi thought of tonight’s debate:

What a catastrophe. From the moment the debate started, Joe Biden was meandering, confused and charmless. It never improved. Donald Trump, however, was relatively restrained, at least for Trump. Of course, he resorted to lies, insults and exaggerations throughout the 90 minutes. By citing things called “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” and by calling Biden a “bad Palestinian”, Trump managed to hit all his usual racist notes.

Yet the whole thing was simply painful to watch, mostly because it was useless on any practical level. This much ballyhooed confrontation between two political foes for the most important office in the world turned out to be featherlight on substance, policy, interest, intellect, imagination, vision, energy, ideas, humor and hope. It was heavy on one thing (besides cringe), though: ego.

The presidency should not simply be a vanity project, but that’s exactly what it has become. Biden’s performance was so far below acceptable that the Democratic party should be ashamed of itself for allowing him to stand for re-election. With tonight’s performance as evidence, the Democrats will almost certainly lose. Trump’s narcissism is notorious, and it too has destroyed the Republican party from within. The stakes are much too high to allow the inflated egos of these two men to determine the fates of millions of people here and around the world. If the Democrats truly believe that democracy is on the line during this election, they must select someone other than Biden as their candidate. There’s still time.

The Guardian’s panellists have also delivered their verdicts. I’ll bring you those imminently. But to make what has been a fun evening even more fun – first, some clues: “catastrophe”, “disaster”, and lower than “dungeon-in-hell levels of low” are some of the words that appear in their analysis.

Updated

Prominent political analyst Amy Walter told Reuters the debate “only served to remind voters of Biden’s weaknesses, especially his health and stamina”.

She continued, “To be sure, Trump did not ‘win’ this debate as much as Biden lost it. Trump lobbed multiple falsehoods and lies. He failed to make a positive case for his second term, spending more time litigating Biden’s failures. But, Trump is leading in the polls and doesn’t need a ‘rest’ in the way Biden does.”

“I don’t think that this debate will sway undecided voters, especially those who say they dislike both candidates. If you came into this debate thinking both men were unsatisfactory choices, their debate performances did not disabuse you of this opinion.”

The reactions from democrats and democratic voters continue to be excoriating.

Julian Castro, Housing and Urban Development secretary under Obama, said on X/Twitter:

“Tonight was completely predictable. Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar…He seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump, who lies constantly.”

An unnamed “top” Biden donor has told Reuters that the president’s performance was “disqualifying” and that he believes fundraising is going to “dry up” as a result of that performance:

“There is no way to spin this. His performance was disqualifying. There is going to be a call for a brokered convention. Whitmer, Pritzker, Newsom, Beshear. Those could all be the options. It’s inevitable.”

The donor added that it would likely come down to Jill Biden to convince him. “He is a stubborn guy ... It cannot be described how bad this performance was.”

The donor said they thought Andy Beshear, the popular Democratic governor of Kentucky, a deeply Republican state at the federal level, would be the likely winner.

“He won red Kentucky. He’ll be a great candidate who can still bring this home. I don’t think Newsom [Democratic governor of California] will win.”

Fundraising will “dry up,” the donor predicted.

“Money follows enthusiasm. How can anyone with a straight face say donate to elect Joe? ... I will continue to fundraise for him. What else can we all do? There is no option.”

Updated

Four key takeaways from the debate

Here are four key takaways from tonight:

One: Biden did badly

The president joked about the rightwing conspiracies that he would take some kind of performance-enhancing drugs before the debate, posting a link to a can of water for sale on his campaign website called “Dark Brandon’s Secret Sauce”.

But his low-energy, muted and garbled performance didn’t live up to expectations. And keep in mind: Biden challenged the former president to the debate, which looks like a strategic error in retrospect.

Voters regularly say they are concerned about Biden’s age and fitness for office. This debate will not assuage their fears.

Two: Trump lied, again and again:

Trump repeatedly tried to sell falsehoods and half-truths to voters.

When questions were posed that would require tough answers, like one about the January 6 insurrection, he deflected and talked about something he could attack Biden on.

CNN’s moderators did not factcheck statements live. At times, when he avoided the question, they would reiterate it – sometimes successfully getting Trump to answer.

He falsely claimed Democrats want abortions up until and after birth. He said without evidence that Nancy Pelosi refused his offer for national guard troops on 6 January 2021 to respond to an insurrection he encouraged. He said his administration had the “best environmental numbers”, whatever that means.

Three: the candidates see America very differently

The two men showed the distinctions of the two Americas in which they live.

Trump repeatedly talked about how the US had failed, how Biden was the worst president in the country’s history and how the world views the country dismally now.

Biden disagreed, offering an optimistic view of the US on the world stage.

Four: ‘I didn’t have sex with a porn star.’

Trump’s convictions and varied court cases didn’t come up in the debate until it was well underway, a missed opportunity from Biden to hammer on one of Trump’s key liabilities.

When the issue finally surfaced, Biden hit at Trump for having sex with an adult film actor while his wife was pregnant, referring to Stormy Daniels and the hush-money trial that concluded in 34 felonies for Trump.

“You have the morals of an alley cat,” Biden quipped at Trump.

Trump responded with a line that surely has not been uttered at presidential debates in decades past: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”

2020 Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has come out swinging, using the hashtag #swapjoeout in multiple tweets, and writing, “Look, I debated Joe 7 times in 2020. He’s a different guy in 2024”:

Moira Donegan: 'This debate was a disastrous opening performance for Biden'

The Biden campaign is probably hoping that you did not watch the first presidential debate. Over the course of 90 minutes in Atlanta, the president was only sometimes coherent, delivering meandering statements that were often inaudible, frequently veering off topic, and often running out of his allotted time mid-sentence, so that his message remained unclear or outright incomprehensible to viewers.

It was a disastrous opening performance for a president whose greatest electoral vulnerability is his age and perceptions about his fitness for the demands of his office. Biden’s showing at the first presidential debate has placed his campaign’s least favorite issue – the president’s stamina and acuity – back at the center of the electoral contest.

In one of his more energetic and clear moments, Biden responded to a question about his age by pointing out that Donald Trump is only three years younger than he is, “and a lot less competent”. That may be true, but Trump – the convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault, was impeached twice, and attempted to overturn the last election when he lost – was forceful, alert, and on message, even as he repeatedly lied.

In contrast, when the cameras cut to Biden, he was often slack-jawed, his eyes unfocused, seeming to stare into the middle distance with a look of vacant horror. The contrast was stark. Many of the liberal-leaning voters watching no doubt despaired at Biden’s performance, which they feared would permanently cement the popular opinion that he is simply too old for the job.

He may well be. Even in response to what should have been easy questions, Biden fumbled:

A CNN flash poll has Trump winning the debate 67% to 33%.

Trump gave a better performance, voters said. Polled before the debate, the same voters said they thought Trump would give a better performance than Biden, but it was closer: 5% to 45%.

Here is a summary – and snap verdict –after that debate:

Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s first debate does not appear to have turned out well for the president, who struggled with a raspy voice, occasional cough and general difficulty landing his lines in the 90-minute face-off. Democrats are now in panic mode over his chances in the November election, with one notable strategist calling it “a Defcon 1 moment” that will serve to heighten voters’ concerns over his advanced age. Biden showed no sign of changing course, telling supporters “see you” at the next debate scheduled for September, while Kamala Harris acknowledged the president had a “slow start” to what she said was an otherwise successful night. As for Trump, he used the debate as an opportunity to tell a panoply of lies about many, many things. Expect Democrats to go on the attack over that in the next couple days, Biden freakout notwithstanding.

Here’s a look back at what happened tonight:

  • Biden is not the first incumbent to suffer in his first debate.

  • The president, who took a whole week to prep for the debate, reportedly came down with a cold beforehand.

  • Trump appeared to say he would accept the results of the election no matter who wins, but added caveats.

  • CNN may be in for it over a debate format that allowed Trump to spew falsehoods unchecked by the moderators.

  • The debate highlighted the candidates’ very different visions of America. To Trump, it’s a nation that has been “destroyed”, while to Biden, it is “the most admired country in the world”.

Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida is on CBS right now.

“President Biden looked ways that are concerning not just for democrats but for America,” he says. He says there is “no choice” and that the US was “stronger and better” under Trump he says.

Updated

Biden supporters chant in response: “We need you.”

“We’re the finest nation in the world,” Biden says energetically, and “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you”.

CBS responds: “It appears his cold has been cured.”

Updated

Biden is speaking to supporters after the debate. He is using a John Wayne reference and has, quoting Wayne, called Trump a “lying dog-faced pony soldier”.

Here is what the stock market thinks of the debate:

US stock futures and the dollar rose in early Asian trading on Friday as 2024, which means Trump was viewed by investors as putting in a stronger showing than his opponent.

While the election is four months away, investors anticipate a Trump presidency would mean lower corporate taxes, tougher trade relations and therefore higher stock prices and bond yields.

Hi, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the latest reaction and analysis after that debate for the next while.

If you have questions about the debate or the election, get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan or email: helen.sullivan[at]theguardian.com and I’ll do my best.

CNN’s deliberate decision to forgo live factchecking evokes a bit of dread and deja vu from the 2016 election.

David Chalian, CNN’s political director, told the Associated Press: “Obviously, if there is some egregious fact that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear, Jake and Dana can do that. But that’s not their role. They are not here to participate in this debate. They are here to facilitate a debate between Trump and Biden.”

Indeed, neither host pushed back on the barrage of false and misleading claims from Donald Trump, nor did they the fumbles by Joe Biden. This debate over how to moderate the debate – and whether networks should offer fact checks – was also raging back in 2016.

After a televised debacle in which then-NBC host Matt Lauer failed to push back on Trump’s falsehoods in a commander-in-chief forum, networks declined the Hillary Clinton campaign’s requests for debate fact checks. On NBC, Lester Holt was under immense pressure at that point to do some live fact checks and pushback, which he did to some extent – but ultimately stayed focused on keeping the conversation going. When Trump won that election, media organizations were left to grapple with how they failed to take seriously his political rise – and weight of his lies.

Joe Biden has staked much of his candidacy on abortion rights – but he didn’t mention the issue in his closing statement.

Across the US, but especially in swing states like Arizona, organizers are hoping that the abortion rights issue will galvanize voters who have started to cool on Biden. But the president didn’t do much to return to the issue after answering the one debate question tonight that focused on abortion rights.

Though Donald Trump claimed that overturning Roe v Wave was “something everybody wanted” – numerous polls have found that Roe was popular when it was in place and the majority of Americans disagree with the decision to overturn in. Republicans who have advanced harsh abortion restrictions have been increasingly out of touch with what most voters want.

Pressed by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Kamala Harris again acknowledged that Joe Biden had a “slow start”.

“It was a slow start, that’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Harris said.

“I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime. And do we want to look at what November will bring and go on a course for America that is about a destruction of democracy, electing a man who has said he’ll be a dictator on day one? Or do we want to continue on a course that’s about strengthening America’s economy, building and creating 15m American jobs, over 800,000 manufacturing jobs?”

Harris acknowledges Biden's 'slow start' as she defends debate performance

In an interview with CNN, Kamala Harris defended Joe Biden’s debate performance, and pointed out that Donald Trump spent plenty of time distorting facts and dodging questions.

“What we saw tonight is the President making a very clear contrast with Donald Trump on all of the issues that matter to the American people. Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish,” said Harris. “Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong on substance and policy and performance.”

Pressed to comment on Biden’s performance and Democrats’ concerns that it only heightened voters’ apprehension over his age, Harris said:

Ultimately, this election and who is the president of the United States has to be about substance. And the contrast is clear. Look at what happened during the course of the debate. Donald Trump lied over and over and over again, as he is wont to do.

He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results this November, he went back and forth about where he stands on one of the most critical issues of freedom in America, which is the right of women to make decisions about their own body. He has been completely ambiguous and all over the place about where he stands on that issue, despite the fact that he hand-selected three members of the United States supreme court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v Wade.

The decision of CNN hosts Dana Bash and Jake Tapper to altogether forgo fact-checking is being widely panned by journalists and political commentators:

Former Obama campaign manager says Biden's debate performance 'a Defcon 1 moment'

In an interview on MSNBC, David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and worked in his White House, warned that Joe Biden’s debate performance drew attention to his advanced age, which is one of his biggest weaknesses.

“It’s kind of a Defcon 1 moment,” Plouffe said. “The biggest thing in this election is voters’ concerns, and it’s both swing voters and base voters, with his age, and those were compounded tonight.”

Though Biden is only three years older than Trump, Plouffe said, “They seemed about 30 years apart tonight. And I think that’s going to be the thing that voters really wrestle with coming out of this.”

Updated

Biden says 'see you at the next one' despite Democratic worries over debate performance

While many of his allies were expressing concerns over his debate performance, Joe Biden headed over to speak to supporters at a watch party, and showed no indication of pulling out of the second debate scheduled for early September.

“He’s just a liar,” Biden said of Trump. “ I can’t think of one thing he said that was true, not being facetious. But look, we’re going to beat this guy. We need to beat this guy, and I need you in order to beat him.”

He concluded with: “Let’s keep going. See you at the next one.”

Trump hammered the issue of immigration.

Nearly every question detoured back to the topic.

It’s his signature issue, and his strongest issue with voters. Americans consistently tell pollsters that they believe Trump is better equipped to handle the border than Biden.

Voters rank immigration as a top issue, sometimes the top issue. Unprecedented migration at the US-Mexico border, and the sense that the Biden administration has failed to address it, has alarmed many Americans, including Democrats.

But for much of the debate, Trump simply played on those fears. He continued to wrongly conflate crime and border crossings. He has vowed to carry out the “largest” deportation campaign in American history.

Incumbents usually start off rusty.

There is no downplaying the full-blown panic within the Democratic party right now. But, if any are searching for a silver lining, they may remember that incumbent presidents often perform poorly in the first debate of their re-election campaign.

The reason? Presidents are the boss, the commander in chief. For nearly the past four years, they have given the orders and often aren’t challenged. A debate puts them in a new, uncomfortable setting.

President Barack Obama famously had a terrible first debate against Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, but came back to deliver a much stronger performance in the second debate and of course was re-elected.

Will Biden get a second chance to debate Trump this cycle? If worried Democrats have their way, probably not.

Democrats lament 'really disappointing' Biden debate – reports

The reviews from Democrats of Joe Biden’s debate performance against Donald Trump are in, and they are not good.

The president’s raspy voice, tendency to meander and difficulty finishing his answers have his allies deeply worried about his ability to beat Trump in the November elections, multiple media outlets have reported.

Here’s how his former communications director Kate Bedingfield put it:

The Hill received an ominous text from a swing state Democrat:

Former top Barack Obama strategist David Axlerod said Democrats are so worried they may wonder if Biden should continue his campaign:

Updated

As expected, Donald Trump is far, far outpacing Joe Biden in making false and misleading statements.

(Trump even lied, at one point, about how much Biden lies …)

This was also the case during the last two election cycles, when candidate Trump flooded debate stages with so many lies and so much misinformation that it became almost impossible for journalists and factcheckers to keep up. Tonight, he repeated several false statements, including that the US has the biggest deficit ever under Biden (Trump had larger deficits).

He pulled out of thin air the idea that Biden “wants to raise your taxes by four times” (actually Biden proposed a tax increase of about 7% over the next 10 years), that Biden has been paid by China (there’s absolutely no evidence of this). He claimed that 18m migrants entered the country during the Biden administration, not including the “gotaways” – citing a number he seems to have pulled out of thin air. (It’s impossible to know exactly how many people entered the country without authorization but the total number of migrants entering both at ports of entry and apprehensions oustide of ports was under 10m. Some may have tried to enter more than once and about 4m were turned back.)

The former president also said that Biden has “destroyed our country”. That’s a bit subjective – but given that I am fact checking this debate from an intact North American land mass in California, suggests the United States has not, in fact, been destroyed.

Trump attacks Biden as 'complainer' as debate concludes

The former president used his closing argument to attack Biden as having failed to change anything as president.

“Like so many politicians, this man is just a complainer. He said, we want to do this, we want to do that, we want to get rid of this tax, that tax. But he doesn’t do anything,” Trump said.

And then he shifted to his tried-and-true tactic of tying that to all his favored campaign subjects:

All he does is make our country unsafe by allowing millions and millions of people to pour in. Our military doesn’t respect him. We look like fools in Afghanistan. We didn’t stop Israel. It was such a horrible thing that would have never happened. It should have never happened.

Trump concluded by saying: “We’re in a failing nation, but it’s not going to be failing any more. We’re going to make it great again.”

Updated

Biden-Trump debate concludes

The debate is now over after 90 minutes of back and forth between Trump and Biden.

Trump walked off the stage, while Biden was joined by Jill Biden, and appeared to go down to speak to moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.

Updated

Biden touts 'significant progress' after Trump's 'debacle' in closing statement

The candidates are now on to closing statements, with Biden up first and arguing that he had cleaned up a mess left behind by his predecessor.

“We’ve made significant progress from the debacle that was left by President Trump in his last term,” Biden said.

He went on to say Trump “increased your taxes because of the deficit. Number one, he’s increased inflation because of the debacle he left after where he handled the pandemic, and he finds himself in a position where he now wants to tax you more by putting a 10% tariff on everything that comes into the United States of America.”

Biden ended by pledging to “continue to fight to bring down inflation and give people a break.”

Trump seems to indicate he will accept election results, with conditions

After trying twice more, moderator Dana Bash finally got Trump to say he will accept the election results. But in typical form for the former president, he included caveats.

“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” Trump said.

Trump declines to say if he will accept election results

Moderator Dana Bash asked Trump if he would accept the election results, and rather than answer, Trump more or less dodged the question by rambling about a variety of things.

“Will you pledge tonight that once all legal challenges have been exhausted, that you will accept the results of this election, regardless of who wins? And you will say right now that political violence in any form is unacceptable?” Bash asked.

“Well, I shouldn’t have to say that, but of course, I believe that it’s totally unacceptable,” Trump said, seemingly in response to the question about political violence.

But he had more difficulty answering if he would accept the election, and never quite completed his response:

But the answer is, if the election is fair, free, and I want that more than anybody, and I’ll tell you something, I wish he was a great president, because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places, enjoying myself.

He then went on to attack Biden and accuse him of putting the country on course for a third world war.

Fact check: Trump on the environment

Trump claimed he “had the best environmental numbers ever” – a vague statement that is impossible to fact check (what environmental numbers?).

However, here the many ways that Trump’s policies made the environment dirtier and the climate warmer, compiled by the Guardian in 2020:

Biden has a cold – report

CBS News reports that Biden’s doctor recently diagnosed him with a cold – which may explain his raspy voice and occasional coughing during this debate:

Updated

Fact check: Trump accuses Biden of using the phrase “super predator”

Trump said that Biden called Black Americans “super predators”.

The super predator theory in the 1990s suggested that a growing number of unusually violent young people, especially Black boys, posed a threat to the country. The theory capitalized on racialized fear and was used to encourage policies that led to the disproportionate incarceration of Black youth. There is no evidence Biden used the phrase or ascribed to the theory behind it.

However, his endorsement of the 1994 crime bill has justifiably come under scrutiny. Biden has defended the bill, and said that aspects of it were wrongly implemented. Here’s context from 2020, when Trump made the same false claim about Biden:

Updated

'Destroyed our country' v 'most admired country in the world': debate highlights starkly different views of US power

A question about childcare led to a back and forth between Trump and Biden in which the Republican insisted that the country had been “destroyed”, while the president argued that things had never been better.

It was a clear encapsulation of the very different messages each campaign is pushing to voters as they seek to win their allegiance in November.

Here’s what Trump had to say:

Joe, our country is being destroyed. As you and I sit up here and waste a lot of time on this debate. This shouldn’t be a debate. He is the worst president, he just said about me because I said it. But look, he’s the worst president in the history of our country. He’s destroyed our country.

Contrast that with Biden:

We’re the most admired country in the world. We’re the United States of America. There’s nothing beyond our capacity. We have the finest military in the history of the world, the finest in the history of the world. No one thinks we’re weak. No one wants to screw around with us, nobody.

Both candidates have been saying variations of these themes for months, and will undoubtedly do so right up to election day.

Updated

Looming over the debate is a rightwing manifesto that will inform a potential second term for Trump.

Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” an effort by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, outlines agency-by-agency policies that should be undertaken, if a Republican president wins. The project includes a lengthy playbook and a personnel database that hopes to set the government on a more conservative path immediately, should Trump win.

Democrats have highlighted the massive changes Project 2025 would entail, like staffing the government with political appointees, dismantling entire agencies, hindering reproductive rights and overturning policies that protect LGBTQ rights or advance diversity. Searches for the project have surged in recent weeks, and it’s been the subject of a John Oliver segment.

Joe Biden’s campaign signaled earlier today that the president could bring up the project this evening. The campaign sent out a press release announcing a new website set up to explain Project 2025 and how it would affect the daily lives of Americans. The campaign also is running digital and outdoor ads in Atlanta to direct voters to its webpage about the project.

“Project 2025 is the plan by Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican allies to give Trump more power over your daily life, gut democratic checks and balances, and consolidate power in the Oval Office if he wins,” the new webpage says. “Trump’s campaign advisors and close allies wrote it – and are doing everything they can to elect him so he can execute their playbook immediately.”

Trump has previously sought to distance himself from Project 2025, saying he isn’t working with or tied to any one organization or its goals. But much of what’s included in the playbook aligns with Trump’s own plans, dubbed Agenda 47, that he’s announced on the campaign trail or on his campaign website.

The Heritage Foundation has a history of getting its preferred policies enacted - its influence was cemented after Ronald Reagan used a previous version of its Mandate for Leadership as a policy Bible, of sorts. And Heritage has previously claimed credit for a bevy of Trump policy proposals in his first term, based on the group’s 2017 version of the Mandate for Leadership.

Fact check: Trump’s claim about the national guard on January 6

When asked about the January 6 riot, Trump deflected, blaming Nancy Pelosi for turning down a chance to deploy the national guard.

This is false. There is no evidence Pelosi got an offer to deploy national guard troops, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have the power to turn it down. The president, defense secretary and army secretary have command of the Washington DC national guard.

The commercial break lasted about four minutes, and for that time only, the pool reporters who travel with Biden were allowed into the studio.

They report that the two candidates were staring silently straight ahead at their lecterns as photographers took pictures.

Trump took a sip of water, while Biden cracked a smile as the cameras flashed.

The debate resumed shortly after.

Updated

Biden has at times struggled to land his lines this debate, but managed to strongly defend his handling of the economy from Trump’s attack.

“There was no inflation when I became president. You know why? The economy was flat on its back, 15% unemployment, he decimated the economy, absolutely decimated the economy. That’s why there was no inflation at the time. There were no jobs. We provided 1000s and millions of jobs for individuals who are involved in communities, including minority communities. We made sure that they have health insurance,” Biden said.

Again and again, Trump has found a way to bring up immigration in response to just about any question.

Moderator Dana Bash asked both Trump and Biden about their plan to address racial inequities in the economy, particularly when it came to Black and Hispanic Americans.

Biden talked about his policies, while Trump brought up inflation … before, once again, bringing up the border:

He caused inflation, as sure as you’re sitting there. The fact is that 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 it could be 18, it could be 19, and even 20 million people, they’re taking Black jobs, and they’re taking Hispanic jobs. And you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.

CNN could face moderation scrutiny as Trump's false claims go unchecked

CNN could face scrutiny for deciding that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would not be fact-checking Donald Trump.

David Chalian, CNN’s political director, had explained to the Associated Press: “Obviously, if there is some egregious fact that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear, Jake and Dana can do that. But that’s not their role. They are not here to participate in this debate. They are here to facilitate a debate between Trump and Biden.”

But so far Trump has made false claims about January 6 and the national debt, about Democrats’ plans to abort babies in the eighth or ninth month or even after birth, and that he presided over the “greatest economy in the history of our country”.

Tapper and Bash have failed to push back, and it’s difficult for Biden alone to counter every lie. The unfortunate upshot is false equivalence: Trump’s lies seem to have just as much weight as Biden’s truths, especially to viewers who might just be tuning into the election. It’s a potential repeat of the disastrous CNN town hall with Trump last year.

Political commentator David Rothkopf tweeted: “The lack of challenges from moderators has the effect of making it appear that the lies flowing from Trump’s mouth are the same as the facts in which Biden is dealing.”

Updated

And we are back.

The debate has resumed, after its first commercial break.

If this debate was an opportunity for Joe Biden to dispel concerns about his age, it will probably be a missed one.

While Donald Trump speaks, Biden, on the other side of the split screen, sways and closes his eyes. He speaks quietly and at times uncomfortably – and Trump is taking every opportunity to pounce.

Meanwhile, Trump has unleashed an ongoing stream of misleading and false statements, from his claims of broad approval for overturning Roe v Wade (“this is something that everybody wanted”) to claiming his administration oversaw the strongest economy in US history.

Updated

Fact check: Trump on the border

Trump said that when he left the presidency, the US had the most secure border in history, and later said “hardly” anyone was coming through. That’s not true.

While migrant apprehensions have spiked under Trump, the increases began in 2020, during Trump’s presidency. The reasons people were seeking to migrate include economic stress caused by the pandemic and natural disasters, long-running issues, including violence and political instability.

And now we have started our first commercial break, about 52 minutes into the debate.

The showdown wraps up at 10.30pm ET.

Updated

Trump says Biden 'could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office'

Trump was asked if he would prosecute his political opponents, like Biden, if he returns to the presidency.

“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,” Trump said at the start of his answer.

But then he seemed to indicate that he would target Biden:

But when he talks about a convicted felon. His son is a convicted felon at a very high level. His son is convicted, going to be convicted probably numerous other times. Should have been convicted before, but his justice department let the statute of limitations lapse on the most important things. But he could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office. Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he’s done. He’s done horrible things.

That’s partially a reference to Biden, and also to his son, Hunter, who was recently convicted on federal gun charges.

Now they’re getting into it over Trump’s recent felony conviction in New York City on charges related to making hush-money payments.

“The only person on this stage is a convicted felon, is the man I’m looking at right now,” Biden said as he glanced at Trump.

Updated

Trump deflects when asked about role in January 6 attack

Trump was asked directly about his role in the January 6 insurrection, during which hordes of his supporters sacked the US Capitol in an effort to block Biden from becoming president.

The former president did not have much substantive to say in response, but instead tried to steer attention to his campaign planks:

Let me tell you about January 6. On January 6, we had a great border. Nobody coming through, very few. On January 6, we were energy independent. On January 6, we had the lowest taxes ever. We had the lowest regulations ever. On January 6, we were respected over the world, all over the world. We were respected.

Updated

Fact check: both candidates on abortion

Trump and Biden both repeatedly misconstrued or failed to accurately convey the reality of abortion law and medicine.

When moderator Dana Bash asked the candidates about abortion, Trump rushed to frame the Democrats as “radicals,” falsely claiming that they support abortion up to birth. This is a common line of attack among Republicans – but it’s based on a myth.

Trump also repeatedly insisted that, by overturning Roe, the supreme court returned the issue of abortion to the states, which “everybody wanted”. Roe remained popular throughout the half-century it was in effect. Some anti-abortion activists have also argued that the federal government can use an existing law to implement a federal ban on abortion. The US supreme court has also dealt with two abortion cases so far this year — evidence that the issue is far from settled at the national level.

Biden also seemed to fumble his explanation of how Roe v Wade, which was overturned thanks to supreme court justices appointed by Trump, regulated abortion. By the time it was overturned, Roe and its line of jurisprudence blocked states from totally banning abortion prior to fetal viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb and a benchmark that generally occurs around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Updated

Biden accuses Trump of wanting to pull out of Nato after Trump reveals Ukraine proposal

Biden hit back at Trump’s proposal for Ukraine, accusing him of wanting to pull the US out of Nato and spark a broader war in Europe.

“I’ve never heard so much foolishness. This is a guy who wants to get out of Nato,” Biden said.

“What happens if, in fact, you have Putin continue to go into Nato? We have an Article Five agreement, attack on one is attack on all. You want to start the nuclear war, he keeps talking about, go ahead, let Putin go in and control Ukraine, and then move on to Poland and other places. What happens then?”

Updated

Trump says he will get Ukraine war 'settled fast before I take office'

Trump claimed he could somehow resolve Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prior to taking office, assuming he wins the November election.

“I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelenskiy as president-elect before I take office on January 20. I’ll have that war settled, people being killed so needlessly, so stupidly, and I will get it settled, and I’ll get it settled fast before I take office,” Trump said.

Updated

Fact check: Biden on jobs

Biden said the economy had “collapsed” and that there were no jobs when Trump left office. That’s a bit misleading – employment rates began to tick up pretty quickly after an initial dip at the beginning of the pandemic, before Biden took office.

Biden calls Trump 'loser' 'sucker' over reported comments on soldiers

Biden attacked Trump over his reported comments that he called American war dead “suckers” and “losers”.

“You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” Biden said.

Trump then denied that he ever made such a remark:

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 magazines, he made that up. He put it in commercials. We’ve notified them.

Updated

Fact check: Trump on tax cuts

Donald Trump argued in favor of his tax cut, which he falsely claimed was the largest in history. In inflation-adjusted dollars, it was the fourth-largest since 1940, according to PolitiFact.

He also claimed he was ready to start paying down debt. According to the non-profit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s recent report, Trump created about twice as much debt ($8.4tn) as Biden ($4.3th).

Updated

'It's been a terrible thing what you've done': Biden attacks Trump over abortion

Biden and Trump got into it over abortion, with the president telling off his predecessor for his hand in the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade, and allowing states to ban the procedure.

Trump appointed three of the justices who supported that decision, and Biden told him: “It’s been a terrible thing what you’ve done.”

The president went on to argue politicians should not have a part in women’s health care":

The idea that the politicians, the founders, wanted the politicians to be the ones making decisions about my woman’s health is ridiculous … no politician should be making that decision. A doctor should be making those decisions. That’s how it should be.

Updated

Biden appeared to have trouble completing one of his answers, and then made a gaffe.

He was laying into Trump over his tax policies, which he said gave the wealthy a tax cut and deprived the government of revenue it could use to improve its safety net. The president then stumbled as he was running out of time to speak, before blurting out, “We finally beat Medicare.”

Trump immediately seized on it in his rebuttal to argue undocumented immigrants will bankrupt social security and Medicare, two major federal-run welfare programs for the elderly:

He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death, and he’s destroying Medicare. Because all of these people are coming in, they’re putting them on Medicare. They’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security. This man is going to single handedly destroy Social Security

Updated

Donald Trump – as he’s done several times in the past – re-upped his baseless claim of having the “greatest economy in the history of our country” during his presidency – especially before the pandemic set it back. That’s not true.

Before the pandemic hit, economic growth during his presidency averaged at about 2.7% – that’s good but not as good as the 4% average growth during Bill Clinton’s administration.

Unemployment before the pandemic was as low as 3.5% – again, not as low as during Clinton’s presidency.

Biden cracked a smile as Trump insisted that he had done “a very poor job” of handling the Covid-19 pandemic during his term.

The former president turned to attacking Biden over what he said was an erosion of America’s global standing during his presidency – before pivoting to other issues:

We’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore. We’re like a third-world nation. Between weaponization of his election, trying to go after his political opponent, all of the things he’s done, we’ve become like a third-world nation, and it’s a shame the damage he’s done to our country.

Updated

Jake Tapper then asked Trump about his proposal for a blanket 10% tariff on imports, and how he could prevent that from driving prices higher.

Trump replied:

It’s not going to drive them higher, it’s just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China and many others, in all fairness to China. It’s going to just force them to pay us a lot of money, reduce our deficit tremendously, and give us a lot of power for other things.

Biden spoke more quickly than usual as he answered that first question – perhaps because he has a limited amount of time to answer.

Now Trump is up, with his rebuttal:

We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well. Every, everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us. We got hit with Covid, and when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression, the likes of which we had in 1929 by the time we finished. So we finished, so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military and no wars and so many other things.

Biden answers first question by pointing finger at Trump

The first question from moderator Jake Tapper is about the economy, and specifically the inflation that has gripped the US during Biden’s term.

“What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?” Tapper asked.

Biden immediately blamed Trump:

We got to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr Trump left me. We had an economy that was in freefall. The pandemic was so badly handled, many people were dying. All he said was not that serious, just inject a little bleach into your arm, you’ll be all right. The economy collapsed, there were no jobs, unemployment rate rose to 15%, it was terrible. And so, what we had to do is try to put things back together again. That’s exactly what we began to do.

Updated

Biden, Trump take stage as debate begins

Joe Biden and Donald Trump have now both taken the stage at CNN studios in Atlanta to begin debating.

After winning a coin flip, Biden’s team opted for the president to stand at the podium of his choice, and he will be on the right side of the screen. Trump will stand on the left, and has chosen to give the final remarks of the 90-minute debate.

Follow this blog for live updates, and you can also watch it below:

With about two minutes until the presidential debate starts, here’s the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino with everything you need to know about how tonight’s showdown will be run:

Joe Biden and Donald Trump will hold the first of two scheduled US presidential debates on Thursday, a high-stakes rematch between two well-defined political foes.

The earlier-than-usual confrontation will give both men a chance to make their case for a second-term to what could be one of the largest television – and internet – audiences of the election cycle.

Thursday’s show down also carries the risk that Americans already dissatisfied with their options will come away even more dismayed. Polls show an extremely tight race between the 81-year-old incumbent and the 78-year-old former US president – and both candidates remain broadly unpopular.

Here’s what to know and what to watch during the 90-minute primetime event, scheduled to start at 9pm ET inside a CNN studio in Atlanta.

Political parties usually run someone fresh when they’re trying to take down the sitting president – but that’s not the case this year. The Guardian’s Alice Herman took a trip down memory lane to explore what happened the last time something similar to the Trump-Biden rematch took place:

When Joe Biden and Donald Trump secured enough delegates to lead the Democratic and Republican party presidential tickets in November, they confirmed what many voters expected but fewer actually wanted: a redo of the 2020 election.

Republicans skeptical about giving Trump a second shot tried in vain to elevate a viable primary opponent. Powerful donors, including the Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action, poured money into former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s campaign, but Haley was unable to claw enough support away from Trump to pose a threat to the former president.

So for the first time in more than 50 years, the Republican party will rerun a candidate who already lost a general presidential election – the last time that happened was in 1968, when Richard Nixon, who had lost the 1960 general presidential election, ran again and won.

It has been even longer since a presidential candidate faced a true rematch.

Updated

Several hundred protesters have taken over a street corner across the I-85 connector in midtown Atlanta.

Most were calling for an end to American involvement in the Gaza war and for the president – or his successor – to call for an immediate ceasefire.

The protest at 10th and West Peachtree was organized by the Atlanta chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“We’re joining with 15 other organizations who are united, standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” said Nate Knauf, a DSA organizer in Atlanta. “We’re calling on both major presidential candidates Biden and Trump to support free Palestine to support an immediate ceasefire to end all military aid to Israel, to force Israel to end the genocide in Gaza. We know that the president of the United States has the power to end the genocide.”

A second protest is brewing closer to Turner studios across the highway. The organizer of that event is unclear; Knauf said his group was not involved.

Supporters of Robert Kennedy Jr. were also engaged in protest at the site, along with members of Peta, police accountability organizations and others.

Updated

Republicans have lately been claiming, without evidence, that Biden will take some sort of performance-enhancing drug to make it through the debate.

The president is now dragging them for it:

Perhaps this will be the next Dark Brandon:

Joe Biden is on his way to CNN studios in Atlanta for the debate.

He had been at a nearby hotel for the past few hours ahead of the parlay with Donald Trump.

One question that will be on many viewers minds tonight: who will be Donald Trump’s running mate?

Trump is expected to make the announcement any time between now and the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, starting on 15 July.

As the Guardian’s David Smith put it:

He has said his top consideration for a vice-president is whether they are qualified to take over as commander-in-chief. But history suggests that he will have five priorities: a “fighter” who can take on Democrats; a person who displays absolute loyalty; a candidate from “central casting” who performs well on television and will be effective on the debate stage against Kamala Harris; a number two who knows their place and will not outshine him on the campaign trail; a go-getter able to raise vast sums of money for the campaign.

Here’s who’s likely on his shortlist:

Updated

Trump and Biden seek breakthrough in deadlocked race

A feeling of stalemate has taken over the presidential contest thus far: polls have for months shown a very tight race between Trump and Biden, as well as an unusually low amount of enthusiasm for both candidates among the voting public.

The two campaigns are hoping that tonight’s debate will bring the sort of breakthrough moment – a pithy remark, a catastrophic misstep by their opponent – that has catapulted others to the White House. Here’s more on that dynamic, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:

It could be the moment when a rematch that few seem to want finally comes to life: like two ageing prizefighters, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will enter the arena of political bloodsport on Thursday evening to resume a verbal sparring bout that will revive memories of the ugly exchanges when the two debated face to face four years ago.

A CNN studio in Atlanta will host the first presidential debate of the campaign between the same two candidates who contested the last election, which Biden won.

With more than four months to go until polling day in November, it is the earliest in any US presidential campaign that a debate between the two main candidates has ever been staged.

While some see the timing as premature, it could provide a chance to open up a contest that has become overshadowed by, among other things, Trump’s recent felony conviction, as well as assorted other legal travails that see him facing 54 criminal charges for trying to overturn the last election and for retaining classified documents.

Updated

Debates are a fixture of presidential election cycles in the US, with unpredictable effects on campaigns, and popular culture. The Guardian’s David Smith and Rachel Leingang took a look back at some of the most memorable moments:

Joe Biden and Donald Trump will debate on Thursday for the first time this election cycle, and it holds the potential for some history-making moments.

Debates can inform voters on both the issues and temperaments of the candidates, potentially swaying an undecided voter toward one candidate’s direction. They can also make for good TV, creating soundbites that resonate for decades to come.

From the candidates’ physical appearances to gaffes to planned attacks to off-the-cuff retorts, here are some memorable moments from US presidential debate history.

The debate hasn't started, but the spin room is already spinning

We’re still more than an hour away from the start of CNN’s presidential debate in Atlanta, but various besuited, well-coiffed, seemingly all male politicians are already in the spin room the network has set up, where they are … well, they’re spinning reporters.

We’re talking about people like California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, who is thought to be a presidential contender some day:

And Republican congressman Byron Donalds, a potential vice-presidential pick for Trump:

As well as Corey Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager for part of his first run for the White House:

No audience, muted mics and commercial breaks: the rules and quirks of tonight's debate

There are a few aspects of this debate that are different from Biden and Trump’s previous encounters, which were organized by the non-profit Commission on Presidential Debates.

For this election, the two campaigns opted to sideline the nonprofit and attend an event hosted by CNN, and the network’s rules are a little different than those of previous years.

For one, there will be two commercial breaks during the event, but Biden and Trump’s staff cannot interact with them while the cameras are off (one wonders if there will be any small talk between the two adversaries).

And then there’s the fact that the CNN control room has the option of muting either man’s microphone if they interrupt the other – which could change things for Trump, in particular, since he likes to talk over people.

Finally, there will be no audience in the studio, which means that if Trump or Biden lands a zinger, or flubs a line, you won’t hear applause, gasps or laughs.

Here’s more from CNN on how this evening’s debate will work:

Updated

When, and how, to tune in to the debate

The presidential debate starts at 9pm ET, and is being held at CNN’s studios in Atlanta.

Just about every major broadcaster will be carrying it – or you can watch it on the home of the OG politics nerds, CSPAN:

Updated

Biden and Trump to face off in first presidential debate in Atlanta

Good evening, US politics blog readers. All eyes are on CNN studios in Atlanta this evening, where Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be holding the first of two debates scheduled before the 5 November presidential election. Polls show that the candidates are nearly neck-in-neck in the race for the White House, and that many Americans are not pleased at having to put up with a rematch of the 2020 election, where Biden bested Trump. Since then, the Democratic president has seen his job approval sink, while Trump has been criminally indicted four separate times, with one of those cases resulting in his conviction on 34 felony charges last month. There will be plenty to see in tonight’s 90-minute showdown, but both campaigns are hoping for one specific event: a breakthrough moment that captures the public’s attention, and gives Trump or Biden renewed momentum. We will see if that happens.

Here’s what else we are watching out for:

  • Make no mistake: Biden can sometimes still give a good speech. But at 81, he is also the oldest president to ever serve, and has a tendency to garble his words and mix up facts. Will it undermine him on the debate stage?

  • Trump, who, at 78, is similarly old, can also flop when it comes to speechmaking – just look at how he rambled on after being convicted in his New York hush-money trial last month. How might he stack up against Biden, who always aims to stay on message?

  • The format of this debate is unique in a few ways, since CNN is hosting instead of the non-profit Commission on Presidential Debates, which was spurned by both campaigns. There will be commercial breaks, for one, and, in a break from Biden and Trump’s previous encounters in 2020, when the then-president’s over-the-top attacks didn’t do him any favors, CNN has the power to turn off their microphones if they start arguing. What might that lead to when the two men, who do not like each other at all, are in the same room for the first time in four years?

Updated

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