about the United States of amnesia, if you're talking about,
we didn't have daily anxiety.
Right, right, right.
That was the whole mark of Trump President's
was chaos.
This is economic pain.
This economic pain that you're talking about is the challenge.
It is a challenge.
And I do think when people are going into grocery stores
and they're scared to look at the numbers going up
and they haven't taken stuff out the basket
and taken back and burned their children,
those things are points of pain.
The problem is Donald Trump's proposals
would make all that dramatically worse.
And I mean, when you're talking about a bunch of economists
came out and said, you would have inflation
with a rocket on the back of it if Donald Trump got back in there.
And so that's a tougher argument to make.
But the idea that you're going to be able to go back in time
and have this kind of imaginary, wonderful moment
where a country was united and everything was great.
That never happened.
That's mythology.
That's the United States of amnesia.
And wait, I think so.
Oh, David said something very similar.
David, you know what?
I think that we can't pay too proud of a brush here.
One of the reasons why I think Donald Trump has always
struggled with suburban women in particular
is because of that anxiety.
It's because they do not believe that he is a uniter.
They woke up every morning and wanted
to turn the TV off in front of their children.
What is he going to do about that tonight?
I think is one of the huge questions that face him.
And yes, broadly, maybe people are not
dissatisfied with where the economy is.
But for Trump, that trouble group,
it's a problem for them.
His temperament and it's a problem for them
that he himself is the source of the anxiety, putting aside
the idea.
I want to follow up at that point,
because it's a really critical point.
Yet, yet, some of those same suburban women
are unhappy with Biden's leadership.
A lot of them are Republicans who voted for Biden in 2020
because of COVID, because of Trump's chaos, because of all
that.
It's much harder for a Republican to vote
to reelect the Democratic president.
So their DNA as Republican and Abby is dead right.
They don't want the chaos back, but some of them
have become transactional, like Trump.
He'll close the border, he'll cut my taxes,
I'll block all that stuff out.
I think that's a challenge for the president.
And I for both of them, really.
The country's drifting.
People are still dealing with COVID.
You might think you're not dealing with COVID.
Everybody at this table is dealing with COVID.
Those of us with kids understand what it's like
to deal with the COVID hangover.
Then the cost of living thing came in.
The American people don't feel there's a North Star.
Where are we going?
There's nobody saying it's hard, it's tough.
We're going to make some mistakes along the way.
But that's where we're going.
That's just gone in America right now.
If one of them can at least give a spark of that,
maybe you changed it.
And this is actually, I think, the other problem
for both men.
Neither of them are great visionaries about painting
a picture of what is the country supposed to be.
And it's hard for them, because they both
are not the most articulate men in the world.
I don't know how that's going to play out tonight.
Well, see tonight, I want to thank everybody here
on the panel.
The preliminaries are over.
The main event is here.
We'll be back with complete coverage and analysis.
Later tonight, and with that, let's turn things over
to CNN's Jake Tapper.
And also, CNN's Dana Bash for this first presidential debate
of 2024 campaign.
MUSIC
We're live from Georgia, a key battleground
stayed in the race for the White House in just moments
of the current US president.
We'll debate the former US president
as their party's presumptive nominees
are first in American history.
We want to welcome our viewers in the United States
and around the world to our studios in Atlanta.
This is the CNN presidential debate.
This debate is being produced by CNN
and is coming to you live on CNN, CNN International,
CNN.com, CNN Max, and CNN Español.
This is a pivotal moment between President Joe Biden
and former President Donald Trump
and their rematch for the nation's highest office.
Each will make his case to the American people
with just over four months until election day.
Good evening, I'm Dana Bash, anchor of CNN's inside politics
and co-anchor of State of the Union.
I'm Jake Tapper, anchor of CNN's
the lead and co-anchor of State of the Union.
Dana and I will co-moderate this evening.
Our job is to facilitate a debate
between the two candidates tonight.
Before we introduce them, we want to share the rules
of the debate with the audience at home.
Former President Trump will be on the left side of the screen.
President Biden will be appearing on the right,
a coin toss determined to their positions.
Each candidate will have two minutes to answer a question
and one minute each for responses and rebuttals.
An additional minute for follow-up clarification
or response is at the moderator's discretion.
When it's time for a candidate to speak,
his microphone will be turned on
and his opponent's microphone will be turned off.
Should a candidate interrupt when his microphone is muted,
he will be difficult to understand for viewers at home.
At the end of the debate,
each candidate will get two minutes for closing statements.
There is no studio audience tonight.
Free-written notes, props or contact with campaign staff
are not permitted during the debate.
By accepting our invitation to debate both candidates
and their campaigns, agreed to accept these rules.
Now, please welcome the 46th President of the United States,
Joe Biden.
Both are worried.
Thank you.
And please welcome the 45th President of the United States,
Donald Trump.
Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.
Let's begin the debate and let's start with the issue
that voters consistently say is their top concern,
the economy.
President Biden, inflation has slowed,
but prices remain high.
Since you took office, the price of essentials has increased.
For example, a basket of groceries that cost $100
then now costs more than $120.
And typical home prices have jumped more than 30%.
What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off
under your presidency than they were under President Trump?
We got to take a look at what I was left when I became president
and what Mr. Trump left me.
We had an economy that was in free fall.
The pandemic was so badly handled.
Many people were dying.
All he said was it's not that serious.
Just inject a little bleach in your arm.
You'll be all right.
The economy collapsed.
There were no jobs.
Unemployment rate rose to 15%.
It was terrible.
And so what we had to do is try to put things back together again.
That's exactly what we began to do.
We created 15,000 new jobs.
We brought out the position where we have 800,000
manufacturing jobs, but there's more to be done.
There's more to be done.
Working class people are still in trouble.
I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
I come from a household.
We're at a kitchen table.
The things weren't able to be met during the month.
It was a problem.
Price of eggs, the price of gas, the price of housing,
the price of a whole range of things.
That's why I'm working so hard to make sure I deal with those problems.
And we're going to make sure that we reduce the price of housing.
We're going to make sure we build two million new units.
We're going to make sure we cap rents so corporate greed can't take over.
The combination, what I was left with in corporate greed
is the reason why we're in this problem right now.
In addition to that, we're in a situation where,
if you had to take a look at all that was done at his administration,
he didn't do much at all.
By the time he left, there were things that were in chaos,
literally chaos.
And so we put things back together.
We created, I said, those jobs.
We make sure we had a situation where we now,
we brought down the price of prescription drugs,
which is a major issue for many people.
It's a $15 for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400.
No senior has to pay more than $200 for any drug,
all the drugs they can include beginning next year.
And the situation is, we're going to make that available to everybody,
to all Americans.
So we're working to bring down the price of,
around the kitchen table, and that's what we're going to get done.
Thank you, President Trump.
We're the greatest economy in the history of our country.
We have never done so well.
Everybody was amazed by it.
Other countries were copying us.
We got hit with COVID.
And when we did, we spent the money necessary,
so we wouldn't end up in a great depression,
the likes of which we had in 1929.
By the time we finished, so we did a great job.
We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military,
and no wars, and so many other things.
Everything was rockin' good.
But the thing we never got the credit for, and we should have,
is getting us out of that COVID mess.
He created mandates.
That was a disaster for our country.
But other than that, we had given them back a country
where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID.
And nobody thought that was even possible.
The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants
and bounce-back jobs, a bounce-back from the COVID.
He has not done a good job.
He's done a poor job, and inflation's killing our country.
It is absolutely killing us.
Thank you, President Biden.
Well, look, the greatest economy in the world,
he's the only one who thinks that, I think.
I don't know anybody else who thinks he's a great head.
He's the greatest economy in the world.
And, you know, the fact of the matter
is that we pride ourselves in a situation where his economy,
he rewarded the wealthy.
He had the largest tax cut in American history, $2 trillion.
He raised a deficit larger than any president has
in any one term.
He's the only president other than Herbert Hoover,
who's had lost more jobs than he had when he began,
since Herbert Hoover.
The idea that he did something that was significant
in the military, you know, when he was president,
there were still killing people in Afghanistan.
He didn't do anything about that.
When he was president, we were still finding ourselves
in a position where you had a notion
that we were this safe country.
The truth is, I'm the only president this century
that doesn't have any this decade
that doesn't have any troops dying anywhere in the world,
like he did.
President Trump, I want to follow up if I can.
You won't have to respond to him.
Well, I'm going to ask you a follow up.
You can do whatever you want with the minute that we give you.
I want to follow up.
You want to impose a 10% tariff on all goods
coming into the U.S.?
How will you ensure that that doesn't drive prices
even higher?
I'm not going to drive them higher.
It's just going to cause countries
that have been ripping us off for years like China
and many others in all fairness to China.
It's going to just force them to pay us a lot of money,
reduce our deficit tremendously,
and give us a lot of power for other things.
But he made a statement.
The only thing he was right about is I gave you
the largest tax cut in history.
I also gave you the largest regulation cut in history.
That's why we had all the jobs.
And the jobs went down, and then they bounced back,
and he's taking credit for bounced-back jobs.
You can't do that.
He also said he inherited 9% inflation.
Now, he inherited almost no inflation,
and it stayed that way for 14 months,
and then it blew up under his leadership,
because they spent money like a bunch of people
that didn't know what they were doing,
and they don't know what they were doing.
It was probably the worst administration in history.
There's never been.
And as far as Afghanistan is concerned,
I was getting out of Afghanistan,
but we're getting out with dignity, with strength, with power.
He got out.
It was the most embarrassing day
in the history of our country's life.
President Trump, over the last eight years,
under both of your administrations,
the national debt soared to record highs.
And according to a new nonpartisan analysis,
President Trump, your administration approved $8.4 trillion
in new debt, while so far, President Biden,
you've approved $4.3 trillion in new debt.
So former President Trump, many of the tax cuts
that you signed into law are set to expire next year.
You want to extend them and go even further, you say.
With the U.S. facing trillion dollar deficits
and record debt, why should top earners and corporations
pay even less in taxes than they do now?
Because the tax cuts spurred the greatest economy
that we've ever seen just prior to COVID,
and even after COVID, it was so strong
that we're able to get through COVID much better
than just about any other country.
But we spurred that tax spurred.
Now, when we cut the taxes, as an example,
the corporate tax was cut down to 21 percent
from 39 percent, plus beyond that,
we took in more revenue with much less tax,
and companies were bringing back trillions of dollars
back into our country.
The country was going like never before,
and we were ready to start paying down debt.
We're ready to start using the liquid gold
right under our feet, the oil and gas right under our feet.
We were going to have something that nobody else has had.
We got hit with COVID.
We did a lot to fix it.
I gave him an unbelievable situation
with all of the therapeutics and all of the things
that we came up with.
We gave him something great.
Remember, more people died under his administration,
even though we had largely fixed it.
More people died under his administration
than our administration, and we were right
in the middle of it, something which a lot of people
don't like to talk about.
But he had far more people dying in his administration.
He did the mandate, which is a disaster, mandating it.
The vaccine went out.
He did a mandate on the vaccine,
which is the thing that people most objected to
about the vaccine, and he did a very poor job,
just a very poor job.
And I will tell you, not only poor there,
but throughout the entire world,
we're no longer respected as a country.
They don't respect our leadership.
They don't respect the United States anymore.
We're like a third world nation
between weaponization of his election,
trying to go after his political opponent.
All of the things he's done,
we've become like a third world nation, and it's a shame.
The damage he's done to our country,
and I'd love to ask him, and will,
why he allowed millions of people to come in here
from prisons, jails, and mental institutions
to come into our country and destroy our country.
President Trump, we will get to immigration
later in this block.
President Biden, I want to give you an opportunity
to respond to this question about the national debt.
He had the largest national debt
of any president in a four-year period, number one.
Number two, he got two trillion-dollar tax code
benefited the very wealthy.
What I'm going to do is fix the taxes.
And for example, we have 1,000 trillionaires in America,
I mean, billionaires in America.
And what's happening?
They're in a situation where they, in fact,
pay 8.2% in taxes.
If they just paid 24%, or 25%, either one of those numbers,
they've raised $500 million, billion, I should say,
in a 10-year period.
We'd be able to right-wipe out his debt.
We'd be able to help make sure that all those things
we need to do, childcare, elder care,
making sure that we continue to strengthen
our healthcare system, making sure that we're able
to make every single solitary person eligible
for what I've been able to do with the COVID,
excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do
with more.
If we finally beat Medicare.
Thank you, President Biden.
President Trump?
Well, he's right, he did beat Medicare.
He beat it to death, and he's destroying Medicare,
because all of these people are coming in.
They're putting them on Medicare.
They're putting them on Social Security.
They're going to destroy Social Security.
This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security.
These millions and millions of people coming in,
they're trying to put them on Social Security.
He will wipe out Social Security.
He will wipe out Medicare.
So he was right in the way he finished that sentence,
and it's a shame.
What's happened to our country in the last four years
is not to be believed.
Foreign countries, I'm friends, with a lot of people.
They cannot believe what happened to the United States
of America.
We're no longer respected.
They don't like us.
We give them everything they want,
and they think we're stupid.
They think we're very stupid people.
What we're doing for other countries,
and they do nothing for us,
what this man has done is absolutely criminal.
Thank you, President Trump.
Dana?
This is the first presidential election
since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
This morning, the court ruled on yet another abortion case,
temporarily allowing emergency abortions
to continue in Idaho, despite that state's restrictive ban.
Former President Trump, you take credit
for the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade,
which returned the issue of abortion to the states.
Correct.
However, the federal government still plays a role
in whether or not women have access to abortion pills.
They're used in about two thirds of all abortions.
As president, would you block abortion medication?
First of all, the Supreme Court just approved the abortion
pill, and I agree with their decision to have done that,
and I will not block it.
And if you look at this whole question
that you're asking, a complex, but not really complex,
51 years ago, you had Roe v. Wade,
and everybody wanted to get it back to the states.
Everybody, without exception.
Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.
Everybody wanted it back.
Religious leaders.
And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices
on the court, and they happened to vote in favor
of killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states.
This is something that everybody wanted.
Now, 10 years ago or so, they started
talking about how many weeks and how many
this is getting into other things.
But every legal scholar throughout the world,
the most respected, wanted it brought back to the states.
I did that.
Now the states are working it out.
If you look at Ohio, it was a decision that was an end result.
It was a little bit more liberal than you would have thought.
Kansas, I would say the same thing.
Texas is different.
Florida is different.
But they're all making their own decisions right now.
And right now, the states control it.
That's the vote of the people.
Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in the exceptions.
I am a person that believes.
And frankly, I think it's important to believe
in the exceptions.
Some people, you have to follow your heart.
Some people don't believe in that.
But I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest,
and the life of the mother.
I think it's very important.
Some people don't follow your heart,
but you have to get elected also.
And because that has to do with other things.
You've got to get elected.
The problem they have is they're radical,
because they will take the life of a child
in the eighth month, the ninth month,
and even after birth.
After birth, if you look at the former governor of Virginia,
he was willing to do this.
He said, well, put the baby aside,
and we'll determine what we do with the baby,
meaning we'll kill the baby.
What happens, we brought it back to the states,
and the country is now coming together on this issue.
It's been a great thing.
Thank you.
President Biden?
It's been a terrible thing, what you've done.
The fact is that the vast majority
of constitutional scholars support it row
when it was decided, support it row.
And that's this idea that they're all against it.
It's just ridiculous.
And this is the guy who says the state should be able to have it.
We're in a state where in six weeks,
you don't even know whether you're pregnant or not,
but you cannot see a doctor have you
and have him decide on what your circumstances are
whether you need help.
The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying,
we're going to turn civil rights back to the states.
Let each state have a different rule.
Look, there's so many young women who have been,
including a young woman who just was murdered,
and he went to the funeral.
And the idea that she was murdered by an immigrant
coming in, they talk about that.
But here's the deal.
There's a lot of young women to be raped
by their in-laws, by their spouses,
brothers and sisters, by, oh, it's just ridiculous.
And they can do nothing about it.
And they try to arrest them on their cross-state lines.
Thank you.
There have been many young women murdered
by the same people he allows to come across our border.
We have a border that's the most dangerous place
anywhere in the world.
Consider the most dangerous place anywhere in the world.
And he opened it up, and these killers are coming into our country.
And they are raping and killing women.
And it's a terrible thing.
As far as the abortion is concerned,
it is now back with the states, the states are voting.
In many cases, it's frankly a very liberal decision.
In many cases, it's the opposite.
But they're voting, and it's bringing it back
to the vote of the people, which is what everybody wanted,
including the founders, if they knew about this issue,
which, frankly, they didn't.
But everybody wanted brought back.
Ronald Reagan wanted it brought back.
He wasn't able to get it.
Everybody wanted it brought back.
And many presidents had tried to get it back.
I was the one to do it.
And again, this gives it the vote of the people.
And that's where they wanted it.
Every legal scholar wanted it that way.
Staying on the topic of abortion, President Biden,
seven states, I'll let you do that.
This is the same topic.
Seven states have no legal restrictions
on how far into a pregnancy a woman can obtain an abortion.
Do you support any legal limits on how late a woman
should be able to terminate a pregnancy?
I support Roe v. Wade, which had three prime masters.
The first time is between the woman and the doctor.
Second time is between the doctor and an extreme situation.
The third time is between the doctor,
I mean, between the woman and the state.
The idea that the politicians,
that the founders wanted the politicians
to be the ones making decisions about a woman's health
is ridiculous.
That's the last.
No politician to make that decision.
The doctor should be making those decisions.
That's how it should be wrong.
That's what you're going to do.
And if I'm elected, I'm going to restore Roe v. Wade.
So that means he can take the life of the baby
in the ninth month and even after birth,
because some states, Democrat run, take it after birth.
Again, the governor, former governor of Virginia,
put the baby down, then we decide what to do with it.
So he's willing to, as we say, rip the baby out of the womb
in the ninth month and kill the baby.
Nobody wants that to happen.
Democrat or Republican.
Nobody wants it to happen.
You're lying.
That is simply not true.
The Roe v. Wade does not provide for that.
That's not the circumstance.
Only woman's life is in danger.
She's going to die.
That's the only circumstance once that can happen.
But we are not for late-term abortion period, period, period.
Under Roe v. Wade, you have late-term abortion.
You can do whatever you want, depending on the state.
You can do whatever you want.
We don't think that's a good thing.
We think it's a radical thing.
We think the Democrats and the radicals,
not the Republicans.
For 51 years, that was a law.
51 years, Constitution Scholarship
said it was the right way to go.
51 years.
And it was taken away because this guy
put very conservative members on the Supreme Court.
He takes credit for taking it away.
What's he going to do?
What's he going to do?
In fact, if the Maguery Publicans, he gets elected,
and the Maguery Publicans control the Congress,
and they pass on the universal ban on abortion, period,
across the board at six weeks or seven or eight or 10 weeks,
something very, very conservative.
Is he going to sign that bill?
I'll veto it.
He'll sign it.
Thank you.
Let's turn on to the issue of immigration and border security.
President Biden, a record number of migrants
have illegally crossed the southern border on your watch.
Overwhelming border states and overburdening cities
such as New York and Chicago, and in some cases,
causing real safety and security concerns.
Given that, why should voters trust you to solve this crisis?
Because we worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement
that not only changed all of that,
made sure that we are in a situation where you had
no circumstance where they could come across the border
with the number of poor border police there are now.
We significantly increased the number of asylum officers.
Significantly.
By the way, the border patrol endorsed me,
endorsed my position.
In addition to that, we found ourselves in a situation
where when he was president, he was taking,
separating babies from their mothers,
putting them in cages, making sure the families are separated.
That's not the right way to go.
What I've done, since I've changed the law, what's happened?
I've changed it in a way that now you're in a situation
where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border legally.
It's better when he left office.
And I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban
on the total initiative relative to what we're going to do
with more border patrol and more asylum officers.
President Trump?
I really don't know what he said at the end of this sentence.
I don't think he knows what he said either.
Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country.
The border, all he had to do was leave it.
All he had to do was leave it.
He decided to open up our border,
open up our country to people that are from prisons,
people that are from mental institutions in same asylum.
Terrorists, we have the largest number of terrorists
coming into our country right now, all terrorists,
all over the world, not just in South America,
all over the world, they come from the Middle East,
everywhere, all over the world, they're pouring in.
And this guy just lifted open, and he didn't need legislation
because I didn't have legislation.
I said, close the border.
We had the safest border in history
in that final couple of months of my presidency.
We had, according to border patrol, who is great.
And by the way, who endorsed me for president,
but I won't say that, but they endorsed me for president.
Brandon, just speak to him.
But look, we had the safest border in history.
Now we have the worst border in history.
There's never been anything like it.
And people are dying all over the place,
including the people that are coming up in carriage.
President Trump, President Biden?
The only terrorist who's done anything across the border
is one who came along and killed three,
under his administration, killed an al-Qaeda person,
coming in and his administration,
killed three American soldiers, killed three American soldiers.
That's the only terrorist that's there.
I'm not saying that no terrorist ever got through.
With the idea that they're emptying their prisons,
we're welcoming these people.
That's simply not true.
There's no data to support what he said.
Once again, he's exaggerating, he's lying.
President Trump, staying on the topic of immigration,
you've said that you're gonna carry out, quote,
the largest domestic deportation operation
in American history, unquote.
Does that mean that you will deport
every undocumented immigrant in America,
including those who have jobs,
including those who spouses are citizens,
and including those who have lived here for decades?
And if so, how will you do it?
Just one second, he said we killed three people.
The people we killed are Al-Baghdadi and Salimani,
the two greatest terrorists, biggest terrorists,
anywhere in the world.
And it had a huge impact on everything,
not just border on everything.
He's the one to kill people with a bad water,
including hundreds of thousands of people dying
and also killing our citizens when they come in.
We are living right now in a rat's nest.
They're killing our people in New York, in California,
and every state in the union,
because we don't have borders anymore.
Every state is now a border.
And because of his ridiculous, insane,
and very stupid policies, people are coming in
and they're killing our citizens
at a level that we've never seen.
We call it migrant crime.
I call it Biden migrant crime.
They're killing our citizens.
At a level that we've never seen before.
And you're reading it,
like these three incredible young girls
over the last few days.
One of them had just spoke to the mother.
And they just had the funeral for this girl, 12 years old.
This is horrible what's taking place.
What's taking place in our country.
We're literally an uncivilized country now.
He doesn't want it to be.
He just doesn't know.
He opened the borders.
Nobody's ever seen anything like.
And we have to get a lot of these people out,
and we have to get them out fast.
Because they're going to destroy our country.
Just take a look at where they're living.
They're living in luxury hotels
in New York City and other places.
Our veterans are on the street.
They're dying because he doesn't care about our veterans.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't like the military at all.
And he doesn't care about our veterans.
Nobody been worse.
I had the highest approval rating for veterans
taking care of the VA.
He has the worst.
He's gotten rid of all the things that I approved.
Choice that I got through Congress.
All of the different things I approved, they abandoned.
We had by far the highest.
And now it's down in less than half.
Because he's done all these great things that we did.
And I think he did it just because I approved it.
Which is crazy.
But he has killed so many people at our border
by allowing all of these people to come in.
And it's a very sad day in America.
President Biden, you have the mic.
Every single thing he said is a lie.
Every single one.
For example, veterans are a hell of a lot better off
since they passed the PAC Act.
One million of them now have insurance,
and their families have it.
Because what happened, whether it was Asian orange
or burn pits, they're all being covered now.
And his group opposed that.
We're also in a situation where we have great respect
for veterans.
My son spent a year in Iraq.
I believe he went next to one of those burn pits.
He came back with states for glioblastoma.
I was recently in France for a D-Day.
And I spoke to all about those heroes that died.
I went to the World War II Cemetery.
World War I Cemetery refused to go to.
He was standing with his four-star general.
And he told me, said, I don't want to go in there
because there are a bunch of losers and suckers.
My son was not a loser.
He was not a sucker.
You're the sucker.
You're the loser.
President Trump.
First of all, there was a made-up quote,
suckers and losers.
They made it up.
It was in a third-rate magazine that's failing
like many of these magazines.
He made that up.
He put it in commercials.
We've notified him.
We had 19 people that said I didn't say it.
And think of this.
Who would say, I'm at a cemetery
or I'm talking about our veterans
because nobody's taking better care.
I'm so glad this came up.
And he brought it up.
There's nobody that's taking better care of our soldiers
than I have to think that I would, in front of generals
and others, say, suckers and losers.
We have 19 people that said it was never said by me.
It was made-up by him.
Just like Russia, Russia, Russia was made-up.
Just like the 51 intelligence agents are made-up.
Just like the new thing with the 16 economists are talking,
it's the same thing.
51 intelligence agents said that the laptop
was Russia disinformation.
It wasn't.
That came from his son, Hunter.
It wasn't Russia disinformation.
He made up the suckers and losers.
He should apologize to me right now.
A four-star general standard side was on your staff
who said you said it.
Period.
That's number one.
And number two, the idea.
The idea that I have to apologize to you for anything along the line.
We've done more for veterans than any president has
in American history.
American history.
And they now are in their family.
The only sacred obligation we have as a country is to care
for our veterans when they come home and their families
and equip them when they go to war.
That's what we're doing.
That's what the VA is doing now.
They're doing more for veterans than ever before in our history.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Let's move to the topic of foreign policy.
I want to begin with Russia's war against Ukraine,
which is now in its third year.
Former President Trump.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he'll only end this war.
If Russia keeps the Ukrainian territory, it is already claimed.
And Ukraine abandons its bid to join NATO.
Are Putin's terms acceptable to you?
First of all, our veterans and our soldiers can't stand this guy.
They can't stand him.
They think he's the worst commander-in-chief.
That's what you call him that we've ever had.
They can't stand him.
So let's get that straight.
And they like me more than just about any of them.
And that's based on every single bit of information.
As far as Russia and Ukraine, if we had a real president,
the president that knew, that was respected by Putin,
he would have never, he would have never invaded Ukraine.
A lot of people are dead right now.
Much more than people know.
You know, they talk about numbers.
You can double those numbers, maybe triple those numbers.
He did nothing to stop it.
In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.
I'll tell you what happened.
He was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a horrible embarrassment,
most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,
that when Putin watched that and he saw the incompetence that he should,
he should have fired those generals like I fired the one that you mentioned.
And so he's got no love loss.
But he should have fired those generals.
No general got fired for the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country,
Afghanistan, where we left billions of dollars of equipment behind.
We lost 13 beautiful soldiers and 38 soldiers were obliterated.
And by the way, we left people behind too.
We left American citizens behind.
When Putin saw that, he said, you know what?
I think we're going to go in and maybe take my, this is his dream.
I talked to him about it, his dream.
The difference is he never would have invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine never, just like Israel, would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas.
You know why?
Because Iran was broke with me.
I wouldn't let anybody do business with them.
They ran out of money.
They were broke.
They had no money for Hamas.
They had no money for anything.
No money for terror.
That's why you had no terror at all during my administration.
This place, the whole world is blowing up under him.
President Biden?
I've never heard so much malarkey in my whole life.
Look, the fact of the matter is that we're in a situation where let's take the last point first.
Iran attacked American troops, killed, caused brain damage for a number of these troops,
and he did nothing about it recently, not when he was president.
Here they attacked.
He said they're just having headaches.
That's all it is.
But he didn't do a thing when the attack took place.
Number one, number two, we got over 100,000 Americans and others out
of Afghanistan during that airlift.
Number three, we found ourselves in a situation where if you take a look at what Trump did
in Ukraine, this guy told Ukraine, told Trump, do whatever you want and do whatever you want.
And that's exactly what Trump did to put and encourage him, do whatever you want.
And he went in and listened to what he said when he went in.
He was going to take key even five days.
Remember?
Because it's part of the old Soviet Union.
That's what he wanted to have re-established, key.
And he, in fact, didn't do it at all.
He didn't, wasn't able to get it done.
And they've lost over, they've lost thousands and thousands of troops, 500,000 troops.
Thank you.
President Trump, I never said that.
I never said that.
For one minute, I just want to go back to my original question, which is, are Putin's
terms acceptable to you, keeping the territory in Ukraine?
No, they're not acceptable.
But look, this is a war that never should have started.
If we had a leader in this war, he led everybody along.
He's given $200 billion now or more to Ukraine.
He's given $200 billion.
That's a lot of money.
I don't think there's ever been anything like it.
Every time that Zelinsky comes to this country, he walks away with $60 billion.
He's the greatest salesman ever.
And I'm not knocking him.
I'm not knocking anything.
I'm only saying the money that we're spending on this war, and we shouldn't be spending,
it should have never happened.
I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelinsky as president-elect before I take
office on January 20th.
I'll have that war settled.
People being killed so needlessly, so stupidly.
And I will get it settled, and I'll get it settled fast before I take office.
And you have to set it.
The fact is that Putin is a war criminal.
He's killed thousands and thousands of people.
And he has made one thing clear.
He wants to reestablish what was part of the Soviet Empire, not just a peace that wants
all of Ukraine.
That's what he wants.
And then do you think he'll stop there?
Do you think he'll stop when he takes Ukraine?
What do you think happens to Poland?
What do you think of Belarus?
What do you think happens to those NATO countries?
And so if you want a war, you ought to find out what he's going to do because if in fact
he does what he says and walks away, by the way, all that money we give Ukraine and from
weapons we make here in the United States, given the weapons, not the money at this point.
And our NATO allies have produced as much funding for Ukraine as we have.
That's why we're strong.
Thank you.
Moving on to the Middle East.
In October, Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than a thousand people and taking hundreds of
hostages.
Among those held and thought to still be alive are five Americans.
Israel's response has killed thousands of Palestinians and created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
President Biden, you've put forward a proposal to resolve this conflict, but so far Hamas
has not released the remaining hostages and Israel is continuing its military offensive
in Gaza.
So what additional leverage will you use to get Hamas and Israel to end the war?
You have two minutes.
Number one, everyone from the United Nations Security Council straight through to the G7
to the Israelis and Netanyahu himself have endorsed the plan that put forward, endorsed the plan
that put forward, which has three stages to it.
The first stage is trade the hostages for a ceasefire.
Second phase is a ceasefire with additional conditions.
The third phase is no, the end of the war.
The only one who wants the war to continue is Hamas.
Number one, the only one standing out, we're still pushing hard to get them to accept.
In the meantime, what's happened in Israel we're trying to sit.
The only thing I've denied Israel was two thousand pound bombs.
They don't work very well in populated areas.
They kill a lot of innocent people.
We're providing Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them.
And by the way, I'm the guy that organized the world against Iran when they had a full blown
in a kind of ballistic missile attack on Israel.
No one was hurt.
No one Israeli was accidentally killed and it stopped.
We saved Israel.
We are the biggest producer of support for Israel of any one in the world.
And so that's two different things.
Hamas cannot be allowed to be continued.
We continue to send our experts and our intelligence people
as to how they can get Hamas like we did bin Laden.
You don't have to do it.
And by the way, they've been greatly weakened Hamas, greatly weakened and they should be.
They should be eliminated.
But you've got to be careful for what uses certain weapons among population centers.
Just going back to Ukraine for one second.
We have an ocean separating us.
The European nations together have spent a hundred billion or maybe more than that less than us.
Why doesn't he call them so you've got to put up your money like I did with NATO?
I got them to put up hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Secretary General of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I've ever seen.
They wouldn't have any, they were going out of business.
We were spending almost a hundred percent of the money was paid by us.
He didn't do that.
He's getting all, you've got to ask these people to put up the money.
We're over a hundred billion dollars more spent and it has a bigger impact on them
because of location, because we have an ocean in between.
You've got to ask them as far as Israel and Hamas.
Israel's the one that wants to go.
He said the only one that wants to keep going is Hamas.
Actually, Israel is the one.
And you should let him go and let him finish the job.
He doesn't want to do it.
He's become like a Palestinian.
But they don't like him because he's a very bad Palestinian.
He's a weak one.
President Biden, do you have a minute?
I've never heard so much foolishness.
This is a guy who wants to get out of NATO.
Are you going to stay in NATO?
Are you going to pull out a NATO?
The idea that we have our strength lies in our alliances as well is maybe a big ocean,
but we're able to avoid a war in Europe, a major war in Europe.
What happens if, in fact, you have Putin continue to go into NATO?
We have an Article 5 agreement.
Attack on one is attack on all.
You want to start the nuclear war he keeps talking about?
Go ahead.
Let Putin go in and control Ukraine and then move on to Poland and other places.
What happens then?
He has no idea what telly's talking about.
And by the way, I've got 50 other nations around the world to support Ukraine,
including Japan and South Korea, because they understand that this kind of dislocation
has a serious threat to the whole world peace.
No major war in Europe has ever been able to be contained just in Europe.
President Trump, just to follow up,
would you support the creation of an independent Palestinian state in order to achieve peace
in the region?
I'd have to see.
But before we do that, the problem we have is that we spend all the money.
So they kill us on trade.
I made great trade deals with the European nations.
Because if you add them up, they're about the same size economically.
Their economy is about the same size as the United States.
And they were no cars, no.
They don't want anything that we have, but we're supposed to take their cars,
their food, their everything, their agriculture.
I changed that.
But the big thing I changed is they don't want to pay.
And the only reason that he can play games with NATO is because I got them
to put up hundreds of billions of dollars.
I said, and he's right about this.
I said, no, I'm not going to support NATO if you don't pay.
They asked me that question.
Would you guard us against Russia at a very secret meeting of the 28 states at that time,
the nations at that time?
And I said, no, if you don't pay, I won't do that.
And you know what happened?
Millions and billions of dollars came flowing in the next day and the next months.
But now we're in the same position.
We're paying everybody's bills.
Let's turn to the issue of democracy.
Former President Trump, I want to ask you about January 6, 2021,
after you rallied your supporters that day, some of them stormed the Capitol
to stop the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral votes.
As president, you swore an oath to, quote, preserve, protect, and defend,
unquote, the Constitution.
What do you say to voters who believe that you violated that oath through your actions
and inaction on January 6 and worried that you'll do it again?
Well, I don't think too many believe that.
And let me tell you about January 6.
On January 6, we had a great border.
Nobody coming through.
Very few.
On January 6, we were energy independent.
On January 6, we had the lowest taxes ever.
We had the lowest regulations ever.
On January 6, we respected all over the world, all over the world we respected.
And then he comes in and we're now left at.
We're like a bunch of stupid people.
That what happened to the United States' reputation under this man's leadership
is horrible, including weaponization, which I'm sure at some point you'll be talking about,
where he goes after his political opponent because he can't beat him fair and square.
You have 80 seconds left.
My question was, what do you say to those voters who believe that you violated your constitutional oath
through your actions in action on January 6, 2021 and worry that you'll do it again?
Well, I didn't say that to anybody.
I said peacefully and patriotically.
And Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago,
on tape to her daughter, who's a documentary filmmaker, that they say,
but she's saying, oh, no, it's my responsibility.
I was responsible for this because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or national guard,
and she turned them down.
And the mayor of, in writing, by the way, the mayor, in writing turned it down, the mayor of D.C.
They turned it down.
I offered 10,000 because I could see.
I had virtually nothing to do.
They asked me to go make a speech.
I could see what was happening.
Everybody was saying they're going to be there on January 6.
They're going to be there.
And I said, you know what?
That's a lot of people coming.
You could feel it.
You could feel it, too, and you could feel it.
And I said, they ought to have some national guard or whatever.
And I offered it to her.
And she now admits that she turned it down.
And it was the same day she was, I don't know, he can't be very happy with her daughter
because it made her into a liar.
She said, I take full responsibility for January 6.
President Biden?
Look, he encouraged those folks to vote on Capitol Hill, number one.
I sat in the dining room off the Oval Office.
He sat there for three hours.
Three hours watching, begging, being begged by his vice president and a number of his
colleagues in the Republican side as well to do something, to call for a stop, to end it.
Instead, he talked about these people being patriots and great patrons of America.
In fact, he says he'll now forgive them for what they've done.
You know?
They've been convicted.
He says he wants to commute their sentences and say that no.
He went to every single court in the nation.
I don't know how many cases, scores of cases, including the Supreme Court.
And they said, they said, no, no.
This guy, this guy is responsible for doing what is being done.
He did do a damn thing.
And these people should be in jail.
And they should be in the ones that are being held accountable.
And he wants to let them all out.
And now he says that he loses again such a whiner that he is, that there could be a blood bat.
Thank you, President Biden.
President Trump,
what they've done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
What you have done, how you've destroyed the lives of so many people.
When they ripped down Portland, when they ripped down many other cities,
you go to Minnesota, Minneapolis, what they've done there,
with the fires all over the city.
If I didn't bring in the National Guard, that city would have been destroyed.
When you look at all of the, they took over big chunks of Seattle.
I was all set to bring in the National Guard.
They heard that.
They saw them coming.
And they left immediately.
What he said about this whole subject is so off.
Peacefully patriotic.
One other thing, the Unselect Committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans
that are all gone now, out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats,
they destroyed and deleted all of the information they found,
because they found out we were right.
We were right.
And they deleted and destroyed all of the information.
They should go to jail for that.
If a Republican did that, they'd go to jail.
Thank you, President Trump.
President Biden, I want to give you a minute.
The only person in this stage is a convicted felon is the man I'm looking at right now.
And the fact of the matter is he isn't, when he's telling you,
it's simply not true.
The fact is that there was no effort on his part to stop what was going on
up in Capitol Hill and all those people.
Every one of those who were convicted deserves to be convicted.
The idea that they didn't kill somebody just went in and broke down doors,
broke the windows, occupied offices, turned over desks, turned them over statues.
The idea that those people are patriots, come on.
When I asked him about the first two debates we had,
the debates we had the first time around, I said,
will you denounce the proud boys?
He said, no, I'll tell them to stand by.
The idea he's refusing, will you denounce these guys?
We denounce the people we're talking about now.
We denounce the people who attack that Capitol.
What are you going to do?
I'm going to give you a minute, President Trump, for a follow-up question I have.
After a jury convicted you of 34 felonies last month,
you said if reelected, you would, quote,
have every right to go after, unquote, your political opponents.
You just talked about members of the Select Committee on January 6 going to jail.
Your main political opponent is standing on stage with you tonight.
Can you clarify exactly what it means about you feeling you have every right to go after your political opponents?
Well, I said my retribution is going to be success.
We're going to make this country successful again, because right now it's a failing nation.
My retribution is going to be success.
But when he talks about a convicted felon, his son is a convicted felon at a very high level.
His son is convicted, going to be convicted probably numerous other times.
Should have been convicted before, but his justice department let the statute of limitations lapse on the most important things.
But he could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office.
Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he's done.
He's done horrible things.
All of the death caused at the border, telling the Ukrainian people that we're going to want a billion dollars,
or you change the prosecutor, otherwise you're not getting a billion dollars.
If I ever said that, that's quid pro quo.
That we're not going to do anything.
We're not going to give you a billion dollars unless you change your prosecutor having to do with his son.
This man is a criminal.
This man, you're lucky.
You're lucky.
I did nothing wrong.
We'd have a system that was rigged and disgusting.
I did nothing wrong.
Thank you, President Trump.
President Biden, you have said, I'm coming right to you, sir.
Well, you want to respond?
Go ahead.
I'll give you a minute to respond.
The idea that I did anything wrong relative to what you're talking about is outrageous.
It's simply a lie.
Number one.
Number two, the idea that you have a right to seek retribution against any American just because your President is wrong.
It's simply wrong.
No President's ever spoken like that before.
No President in our history has spoken like that before.
Number three, the crimes that you are still charged with.
And think of all the civil penalties you have.
How many billions of dollars do you own in civil families for molesting a woman in public, for doing a home range of things,
of having sex with a porn star on the night while your wife was pregnant?
I mean, what are you talking about?
You have the morals on an alley cat.
Give me a minute, sir.
I didn't have sex with a porn star.
Number one.
Number two, that was a case that was started and moved.
They moved a high-ranking official, a DOJ, into the Manhattan DA's office to start that case.
That case is going to be appealed in one.
We had a very terrible judge, a horrible judge, Democrat.
The prosecutor were all high-ranking Democrats appointed people and both the civil and the criminal.
He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.
But when the public found out about these cases, because they understand it better than he does, he has no idea what these cases are.
But when they found out about these cases, you know what they did?
My poll numbers went up way up, you know that because you're reporting it.
And we took in more money in the last two weeks than we've ever taken in the history of any campaign.
I don't think any campaign has ever taken hundreds of millions of dollars came pouring in because the public knows it's a scam.
And it's a guy that's after his political opponent because he can't win fair and square.
Thank you, President Trump.
President Biden, you have said, quote, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy.
Do you believe that the tens of millions of Americans who are likely to vote for President Trump will be voting against American democracy?
The more they know about what he's done, yes. The more they know about what he's done.
And there's a lot more coming. He's got a lot of cases on the road coming around.
He's got a whole range of issues he has to face.
I don't know what the jury's will do, but I do not know he has a real problem.
And so the fact that, could you ever think you hear any President say that I'm going to seek retribution?
Do you ever hear any President say that I thought hit by some good ideas?
What got me involved to run the first place after my son died and decided in Iraq because of Iraq, I said I wasn't going to run again
until I saw what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.
People coming out of the woods carrying swastikas on torches and sending the same anti-Semitic bio they sang back in Germany.
And the young woman got killed. They spoke to the mother.
And they asked him, they said, what do you think of those people?
The people who wanted to get killed, the ones who tried to stop it, and the ones who said I think they're fine people on both sides.
What American President would ever say, Nazis coming out of fields carrying torches, singing the same anti-Semitic bio, carrying swastikas, or fine people?
And this is the guy who says Hitler's done some good things. I'd like to know what they are.
The good things Hitler's done, that's what he said. This guy has no sense of American democracy.
President Trump.
Jake, both of you know that, sir, has been totally wiped out because when you see the sentence, it said 100% exoneration on this.
So he just keeps it going. He says he ran because of Charlottesville. He didn't run because of Charlottesville.
He ran because it was his last chance. He's not equipped to be president. You know it, and I know it. It's ridiculous.
We have a debate. We're trying to justify his presidency. His presidency, without question, the worst president,
the worst presidency in the history of our country. We shouldn't be having a debate about it. There's nothing to debate.
He made up the Charlottesville story. And you'll see it. It's debunked all over the place.
Every anchor, every reasonable anchor has debunked it. And just the other day, it came out where it was fully debunked.
It's a nonsense story. He knows that. And he didn't run because of Charlottesville. He used that as an excuse to run.
And debunked. It happened. All you have to do is listen to what we said at the time.
And the idea that somehow that's the only reason I ran. I ran because I was worried a guy like this guy could get elected.
If he thought they were good people coming out of that forest carrying those those woods, carrying those torches,
then he didn't deserve to be president, didn't deserve to be president at all.
And the idea that he's talking about all this being fabricated, we saw with our own eyes. We saw what happened on January 6th.
We saw the people breaking through the windows. We saw people occupying their own vice president. Look, there's a reason why
40 of his 44 top cabinet officers refused to endorse him this time. His vice president hasn't endorsed him this time.
So why? Why? They know him well. They serve with him. Why are they not endorsing him?
Thank you, President Biden. We're going to be right back with more from the CNN presidential debate.
Here we go again. This election is heating up. I can't wait to watch like this.
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Sometimes I imagine what I'd write today for my dear friend Martin.
I'd remind people that all hate thrives on one thing. Silence.
The people who will change the nation are those who speak out, who refuse to be bystanders, who raise their voices against injustice.
When we stand up to silence, we stand up to all hate.
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No matter what Joe Biden promised tonight, ask yourself, are you financially better off since he became president?
Are you and your family safer since he became president?
Is our country more secure since he became president?
Four years of failure under Joe Biden, it's time to make America prosperous and strong again.
Donald Trump for president again.
I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.