Highlights: Biden and Trump face off in heated first presidential debate of 2024

Shortly before midnight, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on MSNBC, where Rachel Maddow asked for her response to viewers who felt like this was not Biden’s finest performance.

“Well, it was a slow start — there’s no question about that,” Harris said. “But I thought it was a strong finish.”

The vice president said Biden showed that he was someone who wanted to have a debate “based on facts, based on truth,” while Trump continued to be someone who’s going to “push lies and distract from the reality of the damage he has created and continues to create in our country.”

Harris added: “And look, of the two people on that debate stage, only one of them has the endorsement of his vice president. And let’s not forget that.”

Biden’s debate performance makes it inarguably clear that he comes across as compromised in his ability to communicate and focus due to his advanced age.

Is it true that a great deal of mainstream media focuses on his age in a different way than Trump’s, even when that’s unfair? Yes. Is it true that during this debate Trump was often incoherent? Yes. That doesn’t change the simple fact that the 81-year-old Biden appears — in the way he comports himself, in the way he speaks, and in the way he tries to convey ideas — feeble and unclear.

While the overwhelming majority of voters won’t make a decision based on those qualities, it is the kind of thing that can affect his appeal to low-information swing voters.

Lawrence O’Donnell made a great point of drawing a distinction between assessing the optics and audio of tonight’s event — which favored Trump — and the veracity of what was being said, which I’d argue are far more important and favored Biden.

The president was more factual than Trump. And in a sensible world, that would drive the discussion over the next few days. But I do feel he did a poor job vigorously communicating the absurdity and illiberal dangers Trump represents.

Biden made passing references to these dangers: He brought up Trump’s criminal conviction, his claims about “bloodshed” resulting from his potential loss in November, and his war on abortion rights. But at times these things felt like interludes in an album — brief departures from the topic at hand — when Trump’s illiberalism really should have been a more constant theme that Biden harped on.

Biden did not come out of this debate looking like a strong or capable leader. He meandered through his thoughts and stumbled over his words. He appeared unfocused and, at times, disoriented. His voice was hoarse, as Hayes previously pointed out, something that his campaign seemed to blame on having a cold.

Biden’s performance tonight has set off a panic among Democrats, NBC News reported. Before the debate even ended, there were calls for him to withdraw from the race, and at least one Democratic member of Congress suggested to NBC News that there should be “an open convention and a new Democratic nominee.” If Biden went into this debate hoping to reassure voters that he can ably serve four more years as president, he certainly failed.

Chris Hayes, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

The job of the president is making decisions. The job of a presidential candidate is to communicate. It just is. That’s the job. It’s a communications job. It is talking to people and communicating them, persuading them and trying to get people who don’t agree with you.

I think Joe Biden has a very good record on making decisions, and I think he’s a very poor communicator right now. That inability to communicate, I see this all the time. Joe Biden is not good at communicating his own record. And in the context of the campaign right now, his job — No. 1 — is communicating.

I think the reason there is all this anxiety in all this stuff is because ultimately, and particularly in the television age, a lot of the presidency is communicating. But particularly when you’re running for re-election, it is the thing that is the most important thing.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Joy Reid, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Obviously, Joe Biden comes in with certain deficits; he has a stutter. It is more difficult for him to communicate for that reason. So there’s a lot to mitigate the way that he speaks, and you can understand it, and we’ve observed him for a long time.

That said, I too was on the phone throughout much of the debate, with Obama World people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, with the campaign. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic.

The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak. And you know, I’ll just reiterate what I said earlier: President Biden had one job tonight. He had to settle his own party. He had to settle Democrats.

Democrats are always panicking; they’re always scared. Joe Biden’s job was to reassure them tonight. His job was to calm his party. ... He did not do that. He did the opposite of that.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Nicolle Wallace, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

There is a conversation happening inside Biden’s circle and certainly much more frank conversations happening inside the Democratic coalition. I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight. I think the conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

This is a debate that feels fundamentally different when reading the transcript than it did as a live television experience.

With a more subdued Trump, who somewhat pulled back on his usual insults while bringing energy to the debate, his rapid-fire lies and ignoring direct questions were buried in a relatively reasonable delivery. Clearly, Trump came prepared to not offend undecided voters, since at his campaign rallies Trump doesn’t hesitate to levy the invective with statements such as immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country.

Combine Trump’s demeanor with Biden’s softer tone and longer answers, the overall effect was to disengage, to be lulled into complacency about the fact that one of these two men will be leading the commander-in-chief and the standard-bearer of American democracy.

Trump remains a candidate who refuses to accept election results, promises to undo the standards of constitutional law, and allies with the worst people (both globally and domestically). That is evident from the words that were used by both candidates, but vibes may end up mattering than facts.

The closing statements really clarified something that’s been nagging at me throughout the debate. Namely, when Biden correctly brought up things that happened during the Trump administration, it felt like his points weren’t landing. Trump would meanwhile feel free to hammer Biden, often completely without evidence to back him up, about all the things that have happened since he left the White House.

It showcases that Trump is oddly benefiting from the fact that he is not the incumbent here. “Former presidents’ popularity tends to rise in comparison to their time in office,” I wrote earlier today. “Trump is the latest to benefit from this phenomenon, with many voters now having a misplaced nostalgia for his presidency.” Because he’s not the one in office, Trump is able to focus on the person who is currently at the wheel, while ignoring entirely the deficits in his record.

Rachel Maddow, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

We’ll see the response from both sides, but if you’re the Biden campaign, I think you’ll wish that this night would be remembered in reverse — as the president became stronger, including literally the strength of his voice, over the course of the night. For the Trump campaign, I think it’s fair to say it was inverse, just in terms of his coherence and finishing a sentence and seeming to be in control of his own emotions. The strongest point for him was at the very beginning of the debate. And over the course of the night, he became less coherent and more visibly flustered.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

CNN’s decision not to fact-check the candidates in real time means that the only person who could dispel Trump’s incessant lies on live television was Biden, who seemed unable to keep up with the pace of the debate. David Chalian, CNN’s vice president and political director, told The Associated Press before the debate that Bash and Tapper can clear up or fact-check “if there is some egregious fact” that’s stated, but that didn’t happen at all.

The mute button also played a bigger role in moving the debate along than the moderators, who occasionally prodded the candidates for a lengthier answer. At times, Trump even bulldozed through their questions to attack Biden on a different topic without any cutoff from Tapper or Bash.

Sure, both campaigns had agreed to this very format. But I think it highlighted the worst of both candidates: Trump’s lying and Biden’s verbal stumbling. Let’s hope the September debate, if that’s still happening, will be less difficult to watch.

Biden made a good point that he ought to focus on in his general campaigning as well: Trump’s constant fixation on America as a “failing nation” betrays a kind of ignorance about America’s stature in the global community — as an economic power, as a military power, as a cultural power.

It’s also at odds with the optimism that underlies so much of American culture as well. And while Trump has proved that one can run a successful presidential campaign on the idea of America in ruins, it’s a stronger strategy to tap into Americans’ deeply held love of ambition and potential when trying to build a winning coalition.

Trump once again says he will only accept the 2024 election results if it is “fair” and “honest.” It’s a line that he and his surrogates have said over and over again in this election, essentially setting up his supporters to reject the results if he loses. As I’ve written about before, the only kind of “honest” election, to him, is one in which he’s the winner.

Trump was asked about what he would do to help Americans struggling with addiction to get the treatment that they need. After initially ignoring the premise entirely, when Tapper followed up, the former president instead went on a rant about immigration and fentanyl flowing across the borders. It should have been a perfect chance for Biden to talk about his relationship with his son Hunter and the way he helped support him while he spiraled into addiction. It was a chance to connect with families who are facing similar struggles during the ongoing opioid crisis.

Instead, Biden took the bait and opted to talk about the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump tanked, focusing on machines that would have helped detect smuggled fentanyl. In doing so, he shifted the debate to Trump’s terms and said nothing about his own plans to help addicts. It was a huge missed opportunity and one that has me baffled at his choice.

Trump, who is aligned with a conservative movement that has raged against diversity and has appointed judges who have blocked Black financiers from funding Black businesses, tried to frame himself as a boon for Black businesspeople. It’s absurd.

Trump claimed Biden has “killed” Black employment in the U.S. with his immigration policies — continuing his campaign’s strategy of trying to turn Black people against immigrants. In reality, Black unemployment has hit a record low under Biden’s administration.

Trump attacks Biden for inspiring loyalty in his team and advisers, saying the president has “never fired people,” continuing on to boast about how many people he’s fired himself. Not the best argument to make amid rapid contraction in many industries, such as technology and media. Nor will it land well, as job security is a top issue for voters.

Trump was asked what he would do to bring child care costs down, a major concern for Americans around the country. Instead, he went on a rant about firing people and immigration.

You know who has a plan for bringing child-care costs down? Biden, who wants to limit how much low- and middle-income Americans pay for that care each year, capping it at 7% of income. When the Build Back Better bill stalled out in Congress, his administration instead opted to use the CHIPS Act as a method to require companies that receive federal subsidies to provide child care. It’s truly maddening that the moderators didn’t even try to steer Trump back to actually answering the question they asked him.

When CNN asked whether Biden believes that the tens of millions of Americans who are likely to vote for Trump would be voting against democracy, Biden had a somewhat awkward response. “The more they know about what he’s done, yes,” he replied. “The more they know about what he’s done.”

I think what Biden was implying was broadly true — that a certain segment of Trump’s base is deeply familiar with his authoritarian tendencies and support him because of that. But Biden neglected an opportunity to sound inclusive and persuasive, because many of Trump’s supporters believe his disinformation about rigged elections and think that they too support democracy. A better response might have been to identify Trump as a purveyor of malicious disinformation who dupes and disrespects his own base, and to argue that they had a better opportunity to defend democracy and the rule of law by switching over to Biden.

It’s always essential for a presidential candidate to avoid being caught articulating rhetoric that makes them sound distrustful of a huge swath of the electorate.

Biden’s main goal should have been to appear strong and put concerns about his age to rest. Simply put, he has missed the mark. Appearances should not matter, but they do. Most distracting was the split screen; Biden stood slacked-jawed, with a horrible frozen look on his face.

Trump continues to spew lies and rambles, but to paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, it’s often better — at least in politics — to be strong and wrong instead of weak and right.

Biden was also over-prepped with messaging and data. He seems more concerned about regurgitating numbers than rebutting what Trump is saying. Every question presents a new opportunity. But Biden is swinging and missing at nearly ever turn. One the plus side, it’s June — and Biden will have another shot to make up the lost ground at the convention.

Kudos to the moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper; they have been doing an outstanding job. No question about it — they “won” the night.

It was bound to happen: When Biden brought up Trump’s statement about there being “very fine people on both sides” after the 2017 white nationalist march in Virginia, the former president pretended it never happened. “He made up the Charlottesville story,” Trump claimed, adding that “just the other day it came out where it was fully debunked. It’s a nonsense story.”

Trump was likely referring to a recent post from Snopes.com, the fact-checking website, that parsed Trump's statement to give him the benefit of the doubt: “In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ referring to the protesters and the counterprotesters. He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally.’”

That might be technically true, but it ignores that the protesters were there in the first place because they were white nationalists who boosted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. It also ignores that Trump was doing his best to please everyone, especially the right-wing extremists that carried him to the White House.

“One of Trump’s strategies has always been to stake out every possible position on any given topic,” journalist Parker Molloy recently wrote. “That’s exactly what he did here. He talked himself into a knot. He used doublespeak, and Snopes fell for it.”

That would explain the raspy voice that I mentioned earlier, but woof. If that’s the case, what a bad case of timing. It does, though, speak to the wisdom of doing this debate now when hopefully a strong performance closer to the election erases tonight’s stumbles.

Trump claimed that the House Jan. 6 committee “destroyed and deleted all of the information they found because they found out we were right.” It’s a claim that House Republicans have been making based on evidence that several files were deleted instead of being preserved. But as former committee chair Rep. Benny Thompson, D-Miss., noted, the only things that were deleted were files that had already been transcribed and preserved, as the House rules require. In reality, Trump’s claim is part of the broader attempt to discredit the committee’s work and exonerate him for his clear role in stoking the attack.

Trump went on a rambling rant claiming that Biden is the worst president in history — which is kind of funny given that Biden’s administration has performed significantly better than Trump’s, according to several metrics. Biden responded by noting that members of Trump’s first administration have overwhelmingly refused to endorse Trump’s second presidential bid.

After that back-and-forth on European allies and global democracy, it’s important to remember that world leaders and Trump’s own national security advisers fear Trump’s return to the world stage.

France’s Prime Minister Emannuel Macron recently said that the U.S. “is a democracy that is going through a crisis.” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, said world leaders fear a Trump second term: “They’re worried about it. They wouldn’t look forward to another four years with him. I don’t think they have yet really internalized just how bad it could be.”

And despite Trump’s insistence that the NATO alliance is not worth the investment, the only time NATO has been activated is to join the American call to war in Afghanistan.

The best strategy for the Biden team right now is to try to highlight the best moments so far — probably the back-and-forth over Jan. 6 — and push those nuggets aggressively on social media.

Biden’s best lines have come when he is angry at Trump’s answers. They feel more authentic and less forced.

Biden just fact-checked Trump on his false claims that he has fully backed veterans by noting key controversies that plagued Trump’s administration. Biden mentioned reports that Trump referred to veterans who died in war as “suckers” and “losers.” Trump petulantly denied the claim, despite it being confirmed by his former chief of staff.

Biden also referenced Trump’s claims minimizing U.S. soldiers’ brain injuries suffered after an attack by Iran — Trump suggested these were mere “headaches.” And he made sure to bring up how the Trump administration slow-walked support for veterans harmed by Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.

There’s no spinning this: Biden is failing to clear the very low bar set for him. With meandering answers, awkward pauses and confused body language, the feeling he’s inspiring is pity. They would be stopping the fight if this was a boxing match.

Trump is far from great, and wide open for attack, but he has been able to dominate the debate because Biden is simply unable to play at this level tonight. He may well smooth things out, but the first 30 minutes of a debate are critical and Biden melted under the lights. And it will be very hard for this campaign to shake the narrative that this is a president well past his prime.

“I didn’t have sex with a porn star” is a line that Trump just said on the presidential debate stage. The absurdity of this election is on full display.

Trump claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because he considered Biden weak. That’s pretty absurd.

The reality is that there is no consensus among military experts or Russia watchers on why exactly Putin invaded Ukraine — the entire international community was shocked that he did it. The explanations range from Putin’s intensifying ideological revanchism and isolation during the pandemic to wanting to seal his legacy as a champion of Russia’s return to great power status to anxiety about NATO expansion. But the idea that Putin specifically estimated that Biden — a staunch supporter of NATO and aggressively defending Western interests — would be particularly weak is difficult to defend.

Of course, after Putin invaded Ukraine, Biden led an unprecedented international economic isolation campaign against Russia. And his intervention helped Ukraine pull off the impossible: successfully defend most of the country’s territory from Moscow’s control. Many expert observers believe that Putin is unlikely to agree to end the war with Ukraine until after the U.S. election to see if he can secure a more generous, pro-Russia deal if Trump returns to power.

Tapper, to his credit, directly asked Trump about what he’d say to people who believe he violated his oath to the Constitution on Jan. 6. After initially dodging the question, Trump downplayed his role in helping to get people to the Capitol ahead of his supporters’ attack: “They asked me to go make a speech. I could see what was happening. Everybody was saying they’re going to be there on Jan. 6, they’re going to be there. And I said: You know what? There’s a lot of people coming. You could feel it. You could feel it, too, and you could feel it.”

Trump, in fact, was very much in the loop on the plot to use the crowd to pressure Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results. He tweeted out the date, which was the last chance for his schemes to work. He said it “would be wild” — and it was.

Back in January, Mark Esper, Trump’s secretary of defense near the end of his term, declared that he regards the former president “as a threat to democracy, democracy as we know it, our institutions, our political culture, all those things that make America great and have defined us as, you know, the oldest democracy on this planet.”

Esper was a key decision-maker on Jan. 6, including with the delay in sending in the National Guard that day.

It is hard to watch this debate and not wish that the President Biden from the State of the Union was on the stage tonight. Instead, there has been far too many statistics and listing of numbers.

It may be that the goal was to be calm and wait for an attack, but the muted tone and the split-screen images are tough to watch.

Four years ago today, Trump said he did not “feel too good” about defending allies from Russia. Trump has consistently praised Putin and given unprecedented access to Russian officials including private meetings in the Oval Office, holding secret meetings at ministerial meetings and even sharing classified intel with Russian officials.

This first half-hour of the debate has not been Biden at his best. His voice is raspy and halting, as it sounds like he’s working overtime to deal with his stutter. He’s stumbling slightly over facts, which are harder to recall than the lies that Trump is throwing out there. He seems more halting than Trump does, who seems calm as he repeats his old talking points. And as Clarissa just noted, the format isn’t really doing him a lot of favors. I’m hoping one of this advisers hands him a lozenge when we get to the first commercial break.

This format has so far allowed Trump to bulldoze through several topics with nonstop lies and bluster and without interruption for the duration of his speaking time, which you could argue is not really productive. Each candidate has at most two minutes to speak, a short time limit that doesn’t particularly serve Biden, who sometimes trips over his speech.

On two occasions, Trump revived a debunked Republican talking point implying that Democrats favor infanticide, specifically alluding to comments by Ralph Northam, then the Democratic governor of Virginia, back in 2019. Northam’s remarks, about the extremely rare conditions under which third-trimester abortions should be conducted, were poorly communicated. But they were not an endorsement of killing infants or terminating pregnancies without any regulations. No Democrats in the U.S. advocate for infanticide, which is illegal.

Biden lashed out at Trump claiming that veterans are “dying on our streets” because of Biden’s immigration policy. In response, Biden brought up the claim from Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly that his boss refused to visit a military graveyard in France because it was filled with “suckers and losers.”

“You’re the sucker, you’re the loser,” Biden told the former president. Trump denied the story again, putting it on the same level as the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax — which, in fact, was not a hoax.

The moment the debate pivoted to immigration, the candidates played to voters’ fears about how American immigration policy is broken. Biden used “babies in cages” language to remind viewers about Trump’s infamous family separation policy, while Trump ranted about undocumented migrants “killing citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before.”

Trump claimed that the final few months of his administration had the “safest border in our history.” It’s true that immigration plummeted during those final months — but that’s because his administration used a public health measure called Title 42 to shut down the border entirely. The end of the pandemic’s emergency measures meant there was no justifiable reason to keep the border shut down.

Trump kicked off the debate spinning several lies, but one that sticks out is his comments on the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power,” going on to blame the chaotic withdrawal on Biden. In reality, a review by the National Security Council in 2023 found that the chaotic withdrawal was largely the result of Trump’s haphazard decisions and determined that Biden’s administration was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions. Multiple members of Trump’s administration praised Biden’s actions.

We just got the first instance of the moderators cutting off a candidate’s mic. As the section on abortion was wrapping up, it was clear that Trump wanted to jump in and keep going, but as his mouth moved there was almost no sound coming through to the viewers. It’s a great way to keep things moving, so I again endorse it.

Trump tossed out several points about solving the Covid crisis and overseeing an economic recovery, followed by claiming that he had given Biden a “great situation.” But Biden, not Trump, was president in 2021, when the federal government implemented the key Covid relief and economic recovery measures.

The former president falsely claimed that every legal scholar was against Roe v. Wade when it was decided. He claimed that the Supreme Court “approved” the abortion pill in the mifepristone case, when really the justices decided that the plaintiffs lacked standing. Trump then went on to repeat the canard that Democrats want to approve abortions “after birth” while simultaneously praising the fact that states are making their own decisions on abortion.

This is a truly wild amount of misinformation that is coming from the left side of the screen with almost no push back from the moderators.

Trump keeps claiming that it was only because of Covid that the national debt spiraled during his term. Instead, despite promising to lower the national debt, he blew a hole in the budget way before the first coronavirus case hit the U.S., slashing taxes for the wealthy while keeping federal spending at high levels.

Trump denied that his tariff plan would cause prices to spike. Almost all economists would disagree. For example, the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that his plan to impose 10% border taxes on all imports, would amount to a $1,700 tax on all Americans. Of course, if Trump were to admit this, it would unravel one of his central arguments against Biden’s presidency — that Biden has made the cost of living too high.

Tapper’s first question for the candidates was on inflation, and Biden immediately pounced, criticizing Trump’s handling of the Covid pandemic and the “chaos” under his leadership. Trump also went on the offense, calling Biden’s White House “the worst administration in American history.”

The tone for the debate has been set.

“A foreign policy for the middle class” is a Biden administration adage, a reminder to policymakers they need to bridge the divide between globetrotting career diplomats and Joe the Plumber.

Between Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Netanyahu’s continued war in Gaza, the White House has its hands full getting buy-in for what used to be routine foreign policy choices 20 years ago.

The candidates’ critics no longer fall along traditional party lines: Republicans today openly use Kremlin talking points in congressional hearings to hold up national security funding, and Democrats are being primaried by their own party over debates on Israel policy. Support for partnering with allies in Europe through NATO is steadily declining. For the first time in 50 years, a majority of Republicans — the party that brought us the war on terror, the Iraq War and forever war in Afghanistan — said the United States should stay out of world affairs.

Tonight, two men from an older generation, both of whom have served in the commander-in-chief role for four years, have the opportunity to clearly answer a question asked around the world: What version of American democracy will be thrust on the world in January 2024?

Biden and Trump entered the stage to silence, aside from CNN’s background music, as there was no audience to cheer them on. CNN anchor and moderator Jake Tapper immediately launched into the first question, asking Biden about what he’d tell people who feel they are worse off economically than they were under Trump.

Tonight, a small army of pro-Biden content creators will be working with the campaign to spread big debate moments to their collective millions of followers. NBC News reported:

It’s part of the Biden campaign’s outreach to younger voters, who are far more likely to get their news on platforms like TikTok and Instagram than from national news organizations. A campaign spokesperson previously said that it aims to “show up and meet voters where they are — and that includes online.”

Chris Hayes, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Trump’s tragic and catastrophic handling of that once-in-a-century pandemic — the plague — was the defining characteristic of four years ago, although I think we’ve all kind of blocked it out a little bit. But also, four years ago today, the stock market was at 25,000; today it’s at nearly 40,000. Four years ago today, the unemployment rate was 11%; it’s 4% today.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

I’m not a presidential historian, but it feels significant to me that Trump is the first presidential candidate to show up for a general election debate in a state where he faces criminal charges. The case against him and over a dozen other co-defendants has been significantly delayed. Yet the fact remains that he is accused of orchestrating a massive scheme to overturn the will of Georgia’s voters in the last presidential election.

That seems like the kind of thing that he should be asked about directly — whether he has any regrets, or if he’d do the exact same thing all over again this time around.

Kennedy, deeply frustrated at failing to qualify for the debate, will try to get a taste of the action from the sidelines tonight. His campaign announced earlier this week that he will have his own debate tonight — the “real debate,” his campaign calls it. It will be moderated by libertarian TV presenter John Stossel and will stream on X at 9 p.m. ET.

“They can keep me off the stage, but they’re not going to be able to keep what I am about to say to you out of your ears,” Kennedy said in a video posted an hour before the debate.

Elon Musk, the CEO of X, also boosted Kennedy’s solo debate on the platform. “Worth watching,” he wrote.

Joy Reid, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

This debate is going to be held at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. That is 5,280 feet, 10 minutes away from the Fulton County courthouse, according to Google Maps. This is in so many ways a return to the scene of the crime for Donald Trump. He’s coming back as the guy who refused to peacefully transfer power to the guy standing just to his right. That is so bizarre to me. It’s so odd that I can’t get past it to get to strategy. He should be on trial right now.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Don’t expect a white suit on stage tonight. 

For women in the political theater, the white suit is a sartorial connection to the suffragette movement, an unspoken statement made by former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to leverage fashion for big career moments.

For men, the white suit screams “small-time preacher who will ask you for money.” While that description would fit Trump, the former president is instead known for ill-fitting dress pants and jackets with red ties that fall far below the tailor-recommended belt length. According to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s book, Trump believes the extra long tie creates an optical illusion of lengthening his torso, and the red color is bold and projects power.

In reality, Trump’s floppy suits and too long tie promote a disheveled look, which only adds more visual evidence to the debate about which candidate looks older. It’s hard to imagine after making ill-fitting designer wear his signature look, Trump will show up in something sharp and on-point; the disconnect between his look and verbal delivery would simply be too much.

One thing I’m watching tonight is how the candidates handle the topic of inflation.

Yes, the economic news has been good — and Biden has several policy successes just this week alone. The White House announced that the Inflation Reduction Act reduced prices on 64 more drugs this quarter. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the number of uninsured people in 2023 reached a record-low 7.2%. And officials said there has been a 40% drop in illegal crossings at the southern border since Biden’s executive action drastically limiting asylum requests.

But inflation still looms large. Steve Rattner recently made the point that most of the country has never experienced inflation above 4%.

So what Biden needs to do is acknowledge that things are expensive, but make clear that what Trump is proposing in terms of massive tariffs and mass deportations will make things much worse and much more expensive. And you don’t have to take my word for it; 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists warned that Trump’s economic policies would amount to an inflation bomb if he wins a second term.

Yes, there’s a lot on the line, and a lot of policy questions that need to be answered. And whoever wins will be the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. And yet, this one question weighs heavy on my mind: Will the president challenge his predecessor to a pushup contest (again) or are we just wasting our time?

Will we hear talk about voting rights this evening? If we don’t, we’ll know that racist voter suppression, and the rigged elections created by it, have become completely normalized.

Georgia is arguably ground zero of Trump and the conservative movement’s assault on voting rights — to the dismay of activists who have noted the laws’ disproportionate impacts on Black and brown voters. Since Trump’s false claims about being cheated out of the 2020 election by Georgians, the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, has signed a raft of Republican-backed voter suppression laws that have restricted voter mobilization efforts, prohibited people from giving water to voters in polling lines and allowed mass purges from voter rolls.

Chris Hayes, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

As Trump has receded a bit in the memories, his edges have been sanded off. He’s been turned into sort of a ridiculous and comical figure. You see this in meme culture all the time. He is the subject of a million memes on social media and TikTok, that are actually pretty funny. They’re not flattering, but it’s him as kind of a doofus, or weirdo, saying funny things. But he’s a nasty dude. He’s mean. He’s a bully. He says really vile, ugly and gross stuff. I think that part of his personality, which is as present as it’s ever been, has receded in public memory. And I think part of the job of Joe Biden tonight is to call that forward and call that out.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

There will be two commercial breaks punctuating the 90-minute debate, and neither candidate will be allowed to consult their campaign aides during that time. That means that Trump will be flying entirely solo tonight — without a teleprompter to read, an audience to feed off of, or advisers to guide him.

In most debates, a handful of standout moments — a brutal takedown, a moment of awkwardness, a lapse in poise — will play a key role in defining media narratives about the contest in the following weeks. But those moments are becoming even more important due to changes in our media ecosystem.

In recent years, social media networks have grown larger and more video-centric. Moreover, less politically disengaged voters — the kinds of voters who tend to be swing voters — are disproportionately likely to get their information on social media. Standout debate moments can take on a special life of their own on social media, and each candidate should pray that this debate doesn’t result in a moment that distills their weaknesses.

I would argue that for Biden, that’s looking confused, while for Trump, it would be looking belligerent.

Tonight’s debate will be very different from the first time Biden and Trump met on a debate stage, in September 2020. At the time, Trump was still president. The Covid pandemic was still raging. And Biden was a former vice president vowing steady and compassionate leadership if voters elected him that November.

I watched that night with the rest of the campaign’s senior team. It was chaotic.��Trump refused to say he would accept the results of the election, shouted down the moderator and regularly interrupted his rival. For his part, Biden called Trump a clown more than a few times, challenged him to denounce white supremacists (Trump refused) and in an exasperated exchange told Trump to “shut up.”

The potential for chaos has been drastically reduced tonight. That is intentional. The rules the Biden campaign negotiated with the Trump campaign are designed to create the best possible environment for the candidates to be heard.

In my opinion, this environment favors Joe Biden. While I would argue Biden “won” that first 2020 debate, he was not at his best when he was yelling at Trump. Tonight he won’t have to yell, because when he is speaking, Trump’s mic will be muted (and the same goes for Biden’s mic). There were many times in the first debate when Biden did not finish his point because of Trump’s incessant interruptions. Again, the muted mics address that issue, too.

Does this mean we are going to have an old-fashioned gentleman’s exchange of ideas tonight? Hardly, but it will be much easier for the American people to hear each candidate’s case, rather than trying to navigate a shouting match.

One of the major benefits of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which ran presidential debates from 1988 to 2020, was that its ownership of the broadcast gave all the networks equal reason to air the proceedings. That has changed this year, with CNN taking the reins tonight and ABC News handling a debate on Sept. 10.

The good news is that you can still tune in on MSNBC (either on-air or streaming) to watch the full thing from beginning to end. But as one of the stipulations for the debate being multicast, CNN will “prohibit other news organizations from filling commercial breaks with commentary segments from their own analysts, correspondents or personalities,” Variety reported last month.

So while you can (and should) tune in before the debate and stick around after for analysis from Maddow, Chris Hayes, Joy Reid and other anchors, you won’t be able to hear from them during the actual event. Luckily, you have your humble live blog contributors to turn to instead.

Rachel Maddow, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

There really has never been a debate quite like this in American history. For the first time, a sitting president and an ex-president will debate each other on live television. That has never happened before. For the first time, this first presidential debate is happening months earlier than it ever has before. It’s happening now in June instead of September or October, which has been the timing for every other presidential televised debate. And, of course, for the first time, one of the two presidential candidates at this debate is a convicted felon found guilty on 34 felony counts. He will be facing the possibility of being sentenced to prison time just two weeks from today. Exactly two weeks after the first presidential debate of the election cycle. Absolutely bananas.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

A year ago, candidates were raising money to make it to the debate. The Republican National Committee decreed that GOP primary debate hopefuls needed 40,000 individual donors just to make the cut.

Now Trump and Biden are hoping to make money from the debate.

Pro-Biden operations launched text message campaigns three hours before the debate, telling recipients like yours truly that Biden is “really counting on seeing $30 from you.”

The debate is a big money moment for Biden, who up until this past month was beating Trump in campaign fundraising. But after his conviction in May, Trump raked in millions.

It’s hard to believe that in an election year where more than $1 trillion is likely to be spent, anyone’s $30 donation will make a difference. But Democrats have traditionally trailed in individual big donor donations (they tend to have fewer billionaire friends), which is why Biden allies are hoping a successful push for low-dollar donations will highlight the campaign’s energy and momentum.

It feels very weird to be covering a general election debate before the Fourth of July, but here we are. This is the first of two debates this cycle — the other isn’t until September — and it is taking place before the candidates have been formally nominated by their parties. So what gives?

Well, for one, both Biden and Trump locked in their nominations extremely swiftly, kicking off the general election far earlier than a normal presidential election. Biden’s offer last month to fast-track the debates was “meant to jolt Americans to attention sooner than later about their consequential choice in 2024,” according to The New York Times. An exceptional performance from either candidate could help set the narrative for the election throughout the summer. On the flip side, as the Times noted, any major flubs stand a better chance of fading from voters’ memories over the next few months than they would closer to the finishing line.

Trump has said that he will announce his vice presidential pick in the lead-up to, or at, the Republican National Convention in July, but the ever-impulsive politician has also appeared to relish teasing the public about his choice — a bit of manufactured tension that he may be clinging to from his “Apprentice” days.

The Trump campaign suggested that the VP announcement could be made ahead of tonight’s debate, NBC News reported this week, though the chances of that happening grow slimmer as the start of the event draws closer.

Trump even told NBC News this his VP pick “most likely” will be in attendance at the debate tonight. His rumored short list — which includes North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sens. Marco Rubio and JD Vance — will be at a debate watch party in Atlanta and in the post-debate spin room afterward. So Trump may well throw a curveball by announcing his vice presidential pick during the debate — though that would almost certainly be a poor strategic choice.

In a break from tradition, tonight’s debate will not feature opening statements from the candidates. (They will, however, give the usual closing statements.) It’s not the biggest deal in the world, given that both Trump and Biden are extremely well known by voters. But I still think it’s a bit of a shame.

Opening statements provide a unique opportunity for candidates to summarize their campaign themes and platforms — and those should be different in 2024 than they were in 2020. I was particularly keen to hear Biden’s big-picture distillation of his campaign, since his case for re-election has mostly relied on the idea of fear of Trump, and Biden has been reluctant to state his vision for America in positive terms. I’ll be paying close attention to the closing statements.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

This is the first time in history we’re having a president debating a former president. It’s also the first time in history we’re having one of them as a convicted felon. And I don’t care what preparation they’ve given Trump, if President Biden is able to interject that — “I am talking to a man whose parole officer had to be informed that he was going to Atlanta” — I think these are the kinds of things that will provoke Trump to get off his game plan. Everyone is saying he may be cool; he may be cool unless he’s jabbed with the right things that he’s sensitive about. Because let’s not forget: In two weeks, he’s going to be sentenced.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Last week, the Biden and Trump campaigns took part in a sacred sporting tradition: the coin flip. Biden’s camp picked tails and won, so they got to choose first between the podium position or the order of closing statements. The president’s team opted to have Biden stand on the right side of the screen (or stage left), while Team Trump opted to get the last word in during closing statements.

You may wondering why Biden’s campaign would prioritize the stage positioning over being the final voice that voters hear tonight. According to my extremely limited research, everyone seems to be citing this 2010 Slate piece on why talk show hosts tend to sit on the right. “In Western culture, we read from left to right, and we watch theater and television that way, too,” Noreen Malone wrote, citing interviews with Yale dramatists among others. “Our eyes end up on the right side of the screen — where the host sits (also known as stage left). In the theory of stagecraft, it’s understood that a rightward placement telegraphs royalty.” Sure, why not!

Personally, I think it would have been funnier to save this coin toss for the debate’s kickoff. Jake Tapper could’ve done the whole referee thing where he points to the right side of the stage once Biden had made his choice. Alas, nobody ever seems to listen to my ideas on how to zhusz up these things.

The Biden campaign telegraphed that the president will go on offense over state abortion laws that have passed since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The campaign released a minute-long ad on social media that features Dr. Lauren Miller, an obstetrician who left her practice in Idaho after the state passed a near-total abortion ban.

Coincidentally, the ad comes on the same day that the Supreme Court released an opinion that allows emergency abortions to resume in Idaho while leaving open the possibility of the state’s ban preventing them in the future.

“These laws are truly barbaric; they are putting us back decades, if not centuries,” Miller says in a voiceover in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He put women’s lives in danger.”

Trump has officially touched down in Atlanta, a city that’s long been a target of his derision. Ironically, even before he was arrested in Atlanta last year over his efforts to pressure Georgia officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Trump sought to portray the city as a crime-infested hellhole.

Now, his mere presence in the city is boosting the city’s criminal population.

First lady Jill Biden will watch the debate from a room at CNN’s studios, the Biden campaign said.

Meanwhile, former first lady Melania Trump’s whereabouts remain a mystery; the Trump campaign has not said whether she will be in Atlanta to support the presumptive GOP nominee for president.

In yet another break with tradition, tonight’s debate will have no live audience watching the candidates.

When this change was first announced, my colleagues Zeeshan Aleem and Ryan Teague Beckwith wrote posts arguing for and against the shift, respectively. Ryan thought that a crowd would play to Biden’s strengths, while Zeeshan suggested that the audience’s reactions dull the important roles that debates play in our democracy.

Personally, I think both of them make good points, but they managed to forget a key factor here. Namely that, unlike in primary debates, it has always been the norm that general election debate audiences have been instructed to remain silent except when the candidates take the stage and at the end.

With that in mind, CNN’s decision to not have people sitting silently in a darkened auditorium is a change that does little to affect the status quo.

Considering Trump skipped all of the presidential primary debates, this will be his first debate since backing the Jan. 6 insurrection meant to keep him in office beyond his term.

It’s truly absurd that he’s been allowed to elude true accountability for doing so over the past three years and change. And it’s all the more absurd that he’s largely being treated like a regular ol’ presidential candidate in spite of that.

But I do hope the moderators have plans to discuss Jan. 6 at length. And it’ll be political malpractice if Biden doesn’t emphasize it in his remarks.

NBC News reports that a network of pro-Kremlin accounts on X are pushing out pro-Trump news articles using websites that imitate Fox News — just hours ahead of the debate. Some of them are peddling the idea that Biden intends to steal the election and that he benefits from an unfair expectations game.

It’s unclear how effective these efforts are, but the concept hints at increasing sophistication in generating misinformation and propaganda: Random fake news sites seem less likely to be persuasive than fake versions of known media brands. Something to keep an eye on for the future.

Trump has repeatedly peddled the baseless claim that Biden will be on drugs to boost his performance tonight, after previously claiming that the president was “higher than a kite” during his State of the Union address in March. The line of attack has been embraced by Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits, too.

Accusing his opponent of taking drugs, seemingly as a way to try to lower expectations for his own performance, is not a new tactic for Trump. He did the same with Hillary Clinton in 2016 — and with Biden in 2020.

The Biden campaign’s rapid response director posted a screenshot of a Truth Social post from Trump, in which the former president shared some advice he received on what to say during the debate:

This is weird for two reasons. First, politicians and their staffs tend to treat talking points like a dirty little secret: Better to maintain the fiction that all of a candidate’s words are their own than to admit to the reality, which is that internal and external advisers provide them with quick, easy-to-remember sound bites. I’m sure, though, that Andrew Wheeler, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump, isn’t the only person who offered his ideas.

Second, as Ammar Moussa insinuates here, it is really strange that Trump posted them before the debate, which gives Biden’s team a chance to prepare specific rebuttals.

Taken together, I have no idea what Trump is trying to do by sharing this peek into the inner workings of his prep.

Call them the double haters — the nearly 20% of voters who say they have an unfavorable opinion of both Trump and Biden. And nearly one-third of voters younger than 35 fall into this category.

With polling in key states within the margin of error, getting double haters to turn out is going to be yuge for both candidates. In one poll after another, these voters want to hear about three big issues: inflation/jobs, abortion and immigration.

If those don’t get addressed by the candidates, then they are missing the mark on speaking to voters who can make a difference.

There will be no audience at the debate tonight — and apparently no White House pool reporters, either.

According to The New York Times, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Kelly O’Donnell, said in a statement that the organization was “deeply concerned” that CNN has rejected its requests to allow the White House travel pool in the studio beyond permitting one print reporter inside during a commercial break.

“The White House pool has a duty to document, report and witness the president’s events and his movements on behalf of the American people,” O’Donnell said. “The pool is there for the ‘what ifs?’ in a world where the unexpected does happen.”

O’Donnell added that the Biden and Trump campaigns do not oppose the WHCA’s request.

I have to disagree with MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, who last night ripped into the debate’s setup. He’s right that the format really does nothing to emulate the actual job of the presidency — but the rule that says the candidates’ microphones will be muted unless it’s their turn to speak? That one I endorse wholeheartedly.

Even if it wasn’t a rule deliberately set up to keep Trump in line, it’s hard to think of a moment of crosstalk that has been decisive in previous debates. Instead, it more often devolves into unhelpful sniping that leaves me wishing that the moderator could get things back on track.

CNN has already had to defend moderators Tapper and Bash against attacks from the Trump campaign this week as the former president’s allies push the baseless claim that the debate is rigged against the Republican. Just hours ahead of the event, the network corrected a claim that there will be a one- to two-minute delay in the broadcast to allow for “edits.”

Tens of millions of Americans will watch tonight’s debate, but it remains to be seen exactly how many.

According to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they are “very” or “extremely” likely to watch the debate live, see clips of it, or listen to commentary about it.

That’s a pretty generous definition, however. If recent TV ratings are a guide, it’s more likely that the full debate will be seen by somewhere between 60 million and 70 million viewers.

That would be high enough to make it one of the most-watched TV events of the year, though it’s unlikely to hit the all-time high of 84 million viewers for the first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

It’s possible that tonight’s ratings might be even lower, which could reflect fatigue over the president and former president, who faced off in two presidential debates in 2020.

Biden’s “order to the border” policy, announced last month, is delivering results just in time for his largest and longest live appearance yet. Despite drawing criticism from the left for shutting down asylum access at the border, Biden’s team credits the recent policy change for reducing migrant interactions with Border Patrol by 40%. According to DHS, arrests haven’t been this low since January 2021.

The release of new government data this week sets up Biden to head into this debate with a strong — albeit enforcement-heavy — message on immigration. Biden can claim progress on holding the line at the southern border and blame Trump for Congress’ rejection of bipartisan immigration reform.

But will Biden also claim credit for continuing to build the wall?

On Tuesday, New York state Judge Juan Merchan agreed to partially undo the gag order placed on Trump during his Manhattan criminal trial. The ruling “lifted restrictions on Trump’s ability to comment on the witnesses who testified against him during his trial, as well as a part of the order barring him from discussing the jury that convicted him — essentially finding the witnesses’ and the jury’s work had concluded, so there was no fear of affecting the proceedings,” NBC News reported.

That might feel like a win for Trump initially, as he has clearly been chomping at the bit to go after witnesses like Michael Cohen, his former fixer. But giving him more leeway on that front could backfire at tonight’s debate, where Trump will have limited time to get his points across. If he opts to go off on a tangent to rail against his trial, well, that’s more time that viewers are hearing about the fact that he’s a convicted criminal.

Publicly, Trump has avoided talking about his strategy going into tonight and has said that he was getting ready for the debate by doing interviews with right-wing media. In private, Trump was having “policy refresher” sessions with his aides, The Bulwark reported. He also posted what appeared to be a snippet of his talking points on the climate crisis on Truth Social this afternoon.

Trump has acknowledged that he messed up in his first presidential debate in 2020, when he relentlessly interrupted and attacked Biden. With that in mind, he’s likely to take a different tack tonight. In any case, NBC News reported that Biden is preparing for both scenarios: an “unhinged” Trump and a more restrained version.

Presidential debate moderators have long tried to stay on the sidelines, especially when it comes to fact-checking.

While polls show most Americans would like the moderators to call out untrue statements, in practice they don’t react well when the moderators fact-check their favored candidate.

CNN has said that its debate moderators won’t try to police either Biden or Trump, though veteran fact-checker Daniel Dale will be offering a “detailed running fact check” for the network.

As I just wrote for MSNBC, one option is for the network to front-load the facts, laying them out clearly while asking the question, including using graphics and other elements to make them memorable. This approach helps keep the moderators from being too involved while also making clear when the candidate is dodging those facts in their answer.

As my colleagues have mentioned, RFK Jr. didn’t meet CNN’s criteria for being able to participate in tonight’s debate. Kennedy has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, and at least one legal scholar thinks that part of his complaint has some legitimacy.

Specifically, the scholar thinks Kennedy is on solid ground when he contends that since neither Trump nor Biden has officially been nominated by their party yet, technically they have also failed to meet the criteria of being listed on enough state ballots to qualify for the debate. (The reason for this is mainly because the debates this year are much earlier than they usually are, and are ahead of the party nominations.)

Kennedy’s complaint seems grounded in a careful reading of the rules, but the FEC is also governed by party partisans who are likely wary of Kennedy, and they have not responded to it in time to intervene and potentially allow Kennedy to show up at the debate. Thus Kennedy has missed his biggest opportunity to date to engage with a mass audience.

Tonight is the third time that Trump and Biden will face each other on a debate stage — and the first time since then that they’ve been in the same place.

I went back to review the two presidential debates from 2020 to see what I could glean about what to expect. But the main takeaway that I wound up having is that those debates are a time capsule, one that highlights how much has changed between then and now.

You can read my full essay here for more on what that means for tonight’s matchup.

Biden has referred to Trump as a “convicted felon” in campaign ads and at recent events, and he seems likely to bring it up tonight as a point of attack.

The president’s campaign aides have said as much. Earlier this week, Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu said on NBC’s “Meet The Press”:

With only so much time to ask questions and so many campaign issues, presidential debates can sometimes miss a big topic. Consider climate change, one of the defining issues of the 21st century and one on which the two parties have long taken dramatically different approaches.

And yet, from the second debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to the first Biden-Trump debate in 2020, no questions were asked at a general election debate about climate change.

Environmental groups will be watching to see if climate change makes the list of hot topics at tonight’s debate, and whether the question generates any interesting responses.

There’s a lot at stake. Biden signed the most ambitious climate bill basically ever — the inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act — though he has also overseen record domestic oil and gas production to the chagrin of climate activists.

Trump, meanwhile, has said he will roll back those efforts and oppose electric cars. According to The Washington Post, he even asked oil executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign.

Now that the Supreme Court has announced that it will allow Idaho to implement some emergency abortions, Trump is going to have a lot of explaining to do about how he feels about women’s right to make their own health care choices.

In recent weeks, Trump has been wishy-washy about his support — or lack thereof — for efforts by Republican-led state legislatures to eliminate access to abortions, even in emergencies. And with Trump vulnerable with suburban women and 63% of adults saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, today’s ruling sets the stage for Trump to have to be clear on whether he still supports allowing prosecutions of women who attempt to get abortion as medical care.

The question could easily come from the moderators and be narrowly tailored (legal pun intended) to pin down the candidates on what abortion care they support for families and during what period of time. If the question and discussion don’t come up, it will be a missed opportunity for voters to learn something genuinely new and important about the candidates.

Tonight’s presidential debate is the first of two that are scheduled in this election, but neither was organized through traditional channels.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has long arranged the election-year faceoffs, but this time, the Biden and Trump campaigns bypassed the nonpartisan organization’s three scheduled debates and worked directly with television networks to set up their own.

In May, the Biden campaign took its issues with the commission’s debate model public — and, after a dizzying back-and-forth between the candidates on social media, the two sides agreed to two debates. The other is set for Sept. 10.

Kennedy has not qualified to be on the ballot in enough states to meet CNN’s requirements for tonight’s debate. But he’ll be offering his two cents anyway.

The independent presidential candidate plans to respond to the debate in real time during a livestream on X. Owned by billionaire Elon Musk, the platform formerly known as Twitter has sought to boost its livestream features by hosting events related to the presidential election, to mixed success.

A livestream featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launching his failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination last year was marred by a delay and technical glitches.

In a presidential race in which many voters have said they’re feeling dismay and resignation over their choices, the debate offers a rare opportunity to weigh Biden and Trump against each other in real time. Most Americans are planning to tune in, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Both candidates will get a chance to pitch their vision and defend their records to the public — and build enthusiasm for their campaigns among disengaged voters. They will also likely fend off attacks from each other: Biden, 81 will seek to demonstrate that he is mentally fit for the presidency, while the 78-year-old Trump will try to convince voters that he is qualified to return to the White House despite having been convicted of 34 felony counts.