The split-screen contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump put on vivid display a factor that voters have wrestled with throughout the campaign: The 81-year-old president and 78-year-old former president are the oldest candidates ever to compete in a White House race.
At times in the debate, Biden struggled to find words and offered answers that trailed off. Trump seized on one Biden response on border security, saying: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of the sentence. I really don’t think he knew what he said either.”
Trump, meanwhile, peppered the debate with falsehoods, such as contending that Democratic economic policies have only created jobs for people in the U.S. illegally or that Biden supports late-term abortions – something that the president directly refuted.
“He’s willing to rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby,” Trump said, drawing a fiery response from Biden: “That’s simply not true … we are not for late-term abortion, period, period, period.”
Abortion is among the issues Democrats see as one of their strongest electoral arguments, with polls by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other outlets showing most voters back expanding abortion rights.
Biden said he backed reinstating Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted a constitutional right to abortion that was overturned with the help of three Trump-appointed justices.
But the former president sought to shift the argument into friendlier territory, routinely painting a bleak picture of an “uncivilized country” and cities that have turned into “rat’s nests” because of illegal border crossings.
This was originally published on our Live Updates page.
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