SVE NEWS & CNN.COM Sharing Series — Biden has shaky debate showing as Trump repeats falsehoods

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says debate was “a depressing exhibition” by Biden and Trump

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he believes President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump’s performances in CNN’s presidential debate on Thursday will “leave a lot of Americans depressed” about the major party nominees heading into November’s election.

Kennedy, who hosted a simultaneous rebuttal event in California during the debate, said his main takeaway was his disapproval of both Biden and Trump and suggested voters who watched the debate may consider his candidacy more seriously.

Kennedy reiterated his argument that the majority of Americans do not want to see a rematch of the 2020 presidential election in November and suggested he may be more appealing to voters who don’t want to decide between Trump and Biden.

“They are tired of choosing the lesser of two evils. They want, you know, another choice and, you know, hopefully, some of them are gonna start looking at me,” Kennedy said.

CNN Flash Poll: About 8 in 10 debate watchers say night had no effect on their choice for president

Roughly 8 in 10 registered voters who watched the debate (81%) say it had no effect on their choice for president, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS. Another 14% said that it made them reconsider but didn’t change their mind, while 5% said it changed their minds about whom to vote for.

Roughly equal shares of Joe Biden and Donald Trump supporters said the debate had changed their mind.

Debate watchers’ views of Biden did dip slightly following the debate: Just 31% viewed him favorably, compared with 37% in a survey of the same voters taken prior to the debate. By contrast, 43% of debate watchers viewed Trump favorably, similar to the 40% with positive views of him prior to Thursday’s event.

And 48% of debate watchers say Trump better addressed concerns about his ability to handle the presidency, with 23% saying Biden did a better job and 22% that neither candidate did. Another 7% thought both candidates did an equally good job allaying concerns.

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public – in their demographics, their political preferences or the level of attention they pay to politics. Debate watchers in the poll were 5 points likelier to be Republican-aligned than Democratic-aligned, making for an audience that was slightly more GOP-leaning than all registered voters nationally.

Among those debate watchers, 48% say they’d only consider voting for Trump, 40% that they’d only consider voting for Biden, 2% that they’re considering both candidates, and 11% that they aren’t considering voting for either.

See other findings from the CNN Flash Poll here.

Methodology: The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 565 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Thursday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate-watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points.

Biden brushes off concerns about his debate performance: “I think we did well”

President Joe Biden during the CNN Presidential Debate in Atlanta on Thursday.

President Joe Biden brushed off concerns about his debate performance, telling reporters that he thought he performed well while visiting a Waffle House.

When asked about calls for him to drop out and if he had any concerns about his debate performance, Biden attacked former President Donald Trump.

“No, it’s hard to debate a liar. New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times, big lies,” Biden said.

When asked about whether he is sick, Biden said that he has a sore throat, according to the print pool.

Undecided voters in Michigan have mixed reactions to both candidates’ debate performances

A group of undecided voters in Warran, Michigan, had mixed reactions to the presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

One woman said that she was concerned that President Joe Biden “was hesitant, very not cognitive.”

“That’s somebody I don’t think that needs to lead our country,” she told CNN’s Laura Coates.

But another voter said she was looking for a leader who would be able to “uphold policies that will protect me.” She said she got that feeling more from Biden because he spoke about more about specific policy points.

“Whereas on the other side from (Donald) Trump, all I really heard was I’ve done this and it was the best ever, but I never heard what it was,” the voter said.

So while former President Donald Trump “may have appeared like a stronger candidate” there was a lot of substance missing, she said.

Another voter said that, specifically on the issue of Trump’s legal troubles, he believes that the criminal charges against the former president are intended to take him off the campaign trail. But, at the end of the debate, he wasn’t impressed with their candidate.

Biden advisers starting to respond to Democrats’ panic by saying he is used to it

A Biden adviser is responding to the widespread Democratic panic following tonight’s debate by saying that Donald Trump did not give voters any reason to vote for him tonight and that “on the issues,” voters will ultimately be with President Joe Biden.

“President Biden is the only person who has ever beaten Donald Trump. He will do it again,” the adviser said.

They also insisted that the election was never going to be won or lost over one single moment, including a debate.

A source close to the campaign told CNN that Biden is someone who is very accustomed to Democratic panic and has practiced ignoring noise. The source said Biden is in the campaign for the long game. They pointed back to the 2020 Democratic primary when Biden was written off by many Democrats before making a comeback in South Carolina.

Some of Biden’s closest aides have for years now been defensive about Biden being under-estimated, and that sentiment is one that we are starting to see crop up.

Fact check: Trump on Biden’s tax plans

Former President Donald Trump claimed that President Joe Biden is proposing to multiply Americans’ taxes by four times.

“He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false, just as it was when Trump made the same claim during the 2020 election campaign and in early 2024.

Biden has not proposed to quadruple Americans’ taxes, and there has never been any indication that he is seeking to do so.

The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center think tank, which analyzed Biden’s never-implemented budget proposals for fiscal 2024, found this: “His plan would raise average after-tax incomes for low-income households in 2024, leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households, and lower after-tax incomes significantly for the highest-income taxpayers.”

The Tax Policy Center found that Biden’s proposal would, on average, have raised taxes by about $2,300 – but that’s about a 2.3% decline in after-tax income, not the massive reduction Trump is suggesting Biden wants. And critically, Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman noted to CNN in May that 95% of the tax hike would have been covered by the highest-income 5% of households.

The very biggest burden under the Biden plan would have been carried by the very richest households; the Tax Policy Center found that households in the top 0.1% would have seen their after-tax incomes decline by more than 20%.

That’s “a lot,” Gleckman noted, but it’s still nowhere near the quadrupling Trump claims Biden is looking for. And again, even this increase would have been only for a tiny subset of the population. Biden has promised not to raise taxes by even a cent for anyone making under $400,000 per year.

Fact check: Biden on 15% unemployment when he took office

In defending his record on the economy, President Joe Biden said that when he took office, “the economy was flat on its back. Fifteen percent unemployment. (Trump) decimated the economy… That’s why there was not inflation at the time. There were no jobs.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim that the US unemployment rate was 15% when he took office is incorrect.  

In January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The unemployment rate did reach nearly 15% during Trump’s presidency, but that occurred during April 2020, when the global and national economies were crushed by the emerging Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2020, the US lost more than 20 million jobs, resulting in unemployment skyrocketing from 4.4% in March 2020 to 14.8% in April 2020.

After peaking in April 2020, the unemployment rate declined substantially as the nation recovered those lost jobs (reaching pre-pandemic levels in June 2022) and gained millions more. The nation’s jobless rate is in the midst of a 30-month streak of being at or below 4%.

Fact check: Biden on taxing billionaires

President Joe Biden claimed that there are a thousand billionaires in the US who are paying an 8.2% tax rate and that if they were taxed closer to 25%, it would raise billions of dollars in tax revenue that would help ease the nation’s debt burden and fund welfare programs.

Facts First: Biden used this figure in a misleading way. As in previous speeches, including the State of the Union address in March, Biden didn’t explain that the figure is the product of an alternative calculation from economists in his own administration that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the alternative calculation itself; the administration economists who came up with it explained it in detail on the White House website in 2021. But Biden has tended to cite the figure without any context about what it is and isn’t, leaving open the impression that he was talking about what these billionaires pay under current law.

So, what do billionaires actually pay under current law? The answer is not publicly known, but experts say it’s clearly more than 8%.

“Biden’s numbers are way too low,” Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, told CNN in 2023. Gleckman said that in 2019, University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman “estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23% in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24% for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3,” numbers Biden has used in some previous speeches, “or even 8%.”

In February 2024, Gleckman provided additional calculations from the Tax Policy Center. The center found that the top 0.1% of households paid an average effective federal tax rate of about 30.3% in 2020, including an average income tax rate of 24.3%.

Fact check: Trump on the cost of food

Former President Donald Trump claimed that President Joe Biden caused inflation and that it’s “killing” Americans, who “can’t buy groceries anymore” because the cost of food has “doubled and tripled and quadrupled.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims of food prices doubling, tripling and quadrupling are not entirely factual and could use some context.

Inflation’s rapid ascent, which began in early 2021, was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic such as snarled supply chains and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, hitting a 41-year high, and has slowed since (the Consumer Price Index was at 3.3% as of May 2024). But it remains elevated from historical levels. Three-plus years of pervasive and prolonged inflation has weighed considerably on Americans, especially lower-income households trying to afford the necessities (food, shelter and transportation).

Food prices, specifically grocery prices, did outpace overall inflation. But they didn’t rise to the extent that Trump claims. Annual food and grocery inflation peaked at 11.4% and 13.5% in August 2022, respectively. Through the 12 months ending in May, overall food and grocery prices were up just 2.1% and 1%, respectively.

Certain food categories saw much greater inflation: Notably, egg prices were up 70% annually in January 2023. However, the underlying cause of that sharp increase was a highly contagious, deadly avian flu.

Food prices are highly volatile and can be influenced by a variety of factors, including disease, extreme weather events, global supply and demand, geopolitical events, and once-in-a-lifetime pandemics.

Fact check: Trump on the US share of NATO funding

During a dispute over who would do a better job countering Russia’s war in Ukraine, former President Donald Trump criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and how it is funded by its members, claiming he had learned after taking office that “almost 100% of the money was paid by us.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false.

Official NATO figures show that in 2016, the last year before Trump took office, US defense spending made up about 71% of total defense spending by NATO members – a large majority but not “almost 100%.”

And Trump’s claim is even more inaccurate if he was talking about the direct contributions to NATO that cover the alliance’s organizational expenses and are set based on each country’s national income; the US was responsible for about 22% of those contributions in 2016.

The US share of total NATO military spending fell to about 65% in 2023. And the US is now responsible for about 16% of direct contributions to NATO, the same as Germany.

Erwan Lagadec, an expert on NATO as a research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and director of its Transatlantic Program, said the US share was reduced from 22% “to placate Trump” and is a “sweetheart deal” given that the US makes up more than half of the alliance’s total GDP.

Fact check: Trump on migrants and crime

Former President Donald Trump claimed that migrants were entering the United States and killing women, saying that “these killers are coming into our country, and they are raping and killing women.”

Facts FirstThis needs context. Preliminary statistics show that crime in the US dropped significantly in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, with a steep drop in murders and other violent offenses, even as the number of people crossing the southern border spiked. While some undocumented immigrants have been charged with high-profile crimes during the Biden presidency, some undocumented immigrants committed serious crimes under Trump and previous presidents as well. And research has generally found no connection between immigration levels and crime — and has sometimes found that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than people born in the US

Charis Kubrin, co-author of the 2023 book “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock” and professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN’s Catherine Shoichet early this year:

Kubrin’s co-author, Graham Ousey, professor of sociology and criminology at the College of William & Mary, added: “A lot of people when you say that will then say, ‘Oh, well, but what about undocumented immigration?’ And there’s less research on that topic. But that body of research is growing, and it pretty much reaches the same conclusion.”

CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Trump won debate over Biden

Registered voters who watched Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance, according to a CNN flash poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS.

Prior to the debate, the same voters said, 55% to 45%, that they expected Trump to turn in a better performance than Biden.

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public – in their demographics, their political preferences or the level of attention they pay to politics. Debate watchers in the poll were 5 points likelier to be Republican-aligned than Democratic-aligned, making for an audience that was slightly more GOP-leaning than all registered voters nationally.

But the results are a shift from 2020, when Biden was seen by debate watchers as outperforming Trump in their presidential debates.

A 57% majority of debate-watchers Thursday night say they have no real confidence in Biden’s ability to lead the country, and 44% that they have no real confidence in Trump’s ability to do so. Those numbers are effectively unchanged from the poll taken prior to the debate, in which 55% of those voters said they had no confidence in Biden, and 47% that they lacked confidence in Trump.

Neither candidate scores highly on this metric, but while just 36% of debate watchers now say they have a lot of confidence in Trump’s ability to lead the country, only 14% say the same of Biden.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 565 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Thursday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points.

Fact check: Trump on Pelosi and January 6

Former President Donald Trump once again tried to blame former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, saying that the California Democrat had turned down his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol that day and that she had been taped by her own daughter acknowledging what happened was her responsibility.

Facts FirstTrump’s claims about Pelosi’s role in Capitol security and in the deployment of the National Guard are false. The speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security; that is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. And the House speaker does not have power over the District of Columbia National Guard, which is under the command of the president. While there is no evidence Pelosi ever received a Trump offer of 10,000 soldiers on January 6, she would not even have had the power to turn down such an offer even if she had received one.

Trump also overstated what Pelosi said in a video recorded by her filmmaker daughter Alexandra Pelosi on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, who posted a 42-second snippet on social media earlier this month. Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But the short video doesn’t show her absolving Trump of responsibility or admitting she was the person in charge of Capitol security.

After Trump began referring to this clip earlier in June, Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th. Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”

In fact, another part of the video appears to undermine Trump’s frequent claims that Pelosi was the person who turned down a National Guard presence in advance of January 6. She said: “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

The House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found “no evidence” Trump gave any actual order for 10,000 Guard troops to anyone.

Christopher Miller, Trump’s acting defense secretary at the time of the attack on the Capitol, testified to the committee that Trump had, in a phone call on January 5, 2021, briefly and informally floated the idea of having 10,000 troops present on January 6 but did not issue any directive to that effect.

Fact Check: Trump falsely claims the Supreme Court “approved” the abortion pill

Donald Trump falsely claimed the US Supreme Court “approved” the abortion pill, mifepristone.

Facts FirstTrump’s claim about the abortion drug is false. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case and approve mifepristone, one of the pills used in a medication abortion. It sent the case back to the lower courts for additional proceedings.

The court earlier this month rejected a lawsuit that challenged the US Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating mifepristone.

The court did not “approve” the drug, as Trump claimed. Instead, it ruled that the doctors and the anti-abortion groups that had challenged access to the drug did not have the standing to sue. The reasoning of the court in this decision, scholars say, could encourage other mifepristone challenges in the future.

Medication abortion is now the most common method of abortion in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the formal US health care system — about 63% — were medication abortions in 2023.

Fact check: Trump on his own comments on January 6

In response to a question about his actions – and inaction – on January 6, 2021, while his supporters stormed the US Capitol, Donald Trump defended the incendiary speech he delivered before the attack.

“I said, ‘Peacefully and patriotically,’” Trump said.

Facts First: This is highly misleading. He did say those words during his speech on the Ellipse on January 6, but he also told his supporters that they “wouldn’t have a country anymore” if they didn’t march to the US Capitol and “fight like hell” against a “rigged” election.

CNN has previously fact-checked this self-serving quotation from Trump about his January 6 speech.

During his speech, Trump said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

But on the debate stage Thursday night, Trump omitted the fact that later in his January 6 speech, he told his supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to give GOP lawmakers the “boldness that they need to take back our country.”

Last year, a civil court in Colorado, and the Colorado Supreme Court, closely examined Trump’s speech as part of a lawsuit that tried to disqualify him from office under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

Fact Check: Trump again claims his tax cuts were the largest in history

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday in Atlanta.

Former President Donald Trump once again claimed that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the biggest tax cut ever.

“I gave you the largest tax cut in history,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump is wrong. Analyses have found that the act was not the largest in history either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars.

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates.

In a report released earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office looked at the size of past tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It found that two other tax cut bills have been bigger — former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

The CBO measured the sizes of tax cuts by looking at the revenue effects of the bills as a percentage of gross domestic product — in other words, how much federal revenue the bill cuts as a portion of the economy — over five years. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and Obama’s 2012 tax cut extension were 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found in 2017 that the framework for the tax cuts would be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Fact Check: Trump falsely claims there was “no terror” during his administration

Former President Donald Trump speaks at CNN's Atlanta studios on June 27.

In discussing the Middle East and Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, former President Donald Trump claimed that there was “no terror at all during my administration.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false, and it remains false even if he was referring specifically to attacks by Islamic extremists. There were various terrorist attacks during the Trump presidency. In fact, in his State of the Union address in 2018, Trump blamed immigration policies for “two terrorist attacks in New York” in “recent weeks.”

Trump’s own Justice Department alleged that a mass murder in New York City in 2017, which killed eight people and injured others, was a terrorist attack carried out in support of ISIS; Trump repeatedly lamented this attack during his presidency. Trump’s Justice Department also alleged that a 2019 attack by an extremist member of Saudi Arabia’s military, which killed three US servicemembers and injured others at a military base in Florida, “was motivated by jihadist ideology” and was carried out by a longtime “associate” of al Qaeda.

In addition, there were a variety of other terrorist attacks during Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump’s Justice Department said it was a “domestic terrorist attack” when one of Trump’s supporters mailed improvised explosive devices to CNN, prominent Democratic officials and other people in 2018. In 2019, a White supremacist pleaded guilty to multiple charges in New York, including first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, for killing a Black man in March 2017 to try to start a race war. And Trump’s Justice Department described a 2019 shooting massacre at a Walmart in Texas as an act of domestic terrorism; the gunman who killed 23 people was targeting Latinos.

Scalise says Trump won the debate and Biden is “not fit” for another term

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise released a statement saying former President Donald Trump won the debate, while President Joe Biden “demonstrated he is not fit to be president.”

He said Trump “won the debate by delivering a strong and presidential performance, addressing how he will fix the massive economic and border problems Joe Biden created during three and a half years of failure.”

Biden, on the other hand, “proved how out of touch he is with hardworking families when he denied the border crisis and the problems his inflation crisis is causing to people who are struggling to make ends meet,” the statement read.

Sen. Marco Rubio says he thinks more Americans feel they were better off when Trump was president

Sen. Marco Rubio speaks to reporters in the spin room following the CNN Presidential Debate between President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump at the McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus on June 27 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said he thinks more Americans are coming to the conclusion that they were better off when Donald Trump was president following the first debate of the election cycle.

He said he thinks that’s what the 2024 election will come down to: “Were we better off under Trump, or were we better off under Biden? Did I have more money in my pocket? Was the world safer and more secure? Was the country safer, more secure?”

Rubio is a potential pick for Trump’s running mate. He said he doesn’t know who the vice president will be, but he is focused on addressing issues in the country.

The senator said he is worried about how other world leaders will view the United States after President Joe Biden’s debate performance.

“I don’t take glee in it, in saying this, but clearly the president struggled tonight and I do worry about the impact” in places like China, Iran and Russia where “adversaries see that and perhaps feel emboldened to be more adventurous than their attitudes towards the United States,” Rubio said.

“That’s not a good thing for our country,” he added.

Fact check: Trump on the US trade deficit with China

Former President Donald Trump claimed that the US currently has its largest trade deficit with China.

Facts First: This is false. Even if you only count trade in goods and ignore the services trade — in which the US traditionally runs a surplus with China — the deficit with China fell to about $279 billion in 2023, the lowest since 2010. 

In 2018, under Trump, the goods deficit with China hit a new record of about $418 billion before falling back under $400 billion in subsequent years.

Keeping Kamala Harris under wraps for 3 years was “political malpractice,” CNN’s John King says

While Kamala Harris served as vice president in the Biden administration, keeping her “under wraps” was “one of the greatest acts of political malpractice,” CNN’s John King said following her on-air interview after the debate.

The vice president is a “feisty communicator, good on television and they kept her under wraps for three years,” King said.

“In a close competitive race when you need all hands on deck, that is an asset that should have been working for them from day one,” King said. “Again, she’s churned through staff. She has issues. There’s no question about it. But she also has potential star power.”

Newsom: “I will never turn my back on President Biden”

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Raphael Warnock speak to reporters in the spin room following the CNN Presidential Debate between US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump at the McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus on June 27 in Atlanta.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom doubled down in his support of President Joe Biden and said he is not concerned about the presumptive Democratic nominee’s fitness to lead the country after the first presidential debate on Thursday.

“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,” he said when asked about a rumbling of Democrats possibly open to replacing Biden as the party’s nominee.

“And especially after tonight, we have his back, we run not the 90 yard dash. We’re all in, we’re going to double down in the next few months. We’re gonna win this election,” he continued.

Asked by CNN if he has any concerns about Biden being fit to lead the country, Newsom said “none.”

Pressed if he would urge Biden to reconsider moving forward in the race, Newsom answered, “absolutely not.”

Assessing Trump’s performance, Newsom called it “weakness masquerading as strength,” and said he was “disgusted by the fact that I heard an ex-President of the United States talk down the American economy, talk down the United States of America to the degree he did tonight.”

Voters should focus on Biden’s accomplishments, not his debate performance, vice president says

Vice President Kamala Harris.

Americans should focus on what President Joe Biden has accomplished for the country during his time in office, not his performance on the debate stage, Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday night.

“I’m talking about three-and-a-half years of performance in work that has been historic,” Harris told CNN.

Asked directly by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper if “the president that we saw tonight on that stage, is that how he is every day?”

She went on to mention some of Biden’s other accomplishments like strengthening NATO and creating jobs.

Harris admits Biden had “a slow start,” but says he had “a strong finish” in debate

 

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