President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set to resume hostilities with the first presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia. They are battling low expectations, legal records, and lingering doubts about their records and character, as well as each other. The Washington Examiner is taking a closer look at the event, which could transform the entire 2024 contest. Part 2 will focus on the promises both candidates made in 2020 and how, or if, they lived up to them.
President Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump said a lot of things during their 2020 debates, not all of which have aged well.
In their two appearances during the last cycle, COVID-19 dominated the proceedings. Both candidates were asked about the pandemic directly several times, and it colored the discussion of nearly everything else. But both Trump and Biden made plenty of claims and campaign pledges, too, on topics ranging from healthcare to immigration to electric vehicles.
Here’s a quick rundown of what was said — and how it looks today.
First debate — Sept. 29, 2020, Cleveland, Ohio
The initial showdown was held in late September, more than three months later in the year than this cycle’s first, which will take place June 27. It was mostly remembered for Trump’s talking over Biden and moderator Chris Wallace and for Biden’s “Will you shut up man?” one-liner.
Obamacare
Despite being relatively short on substance, the debate featured a number of policy squabbles. In one, Biden proposed to expand the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, while preserving private health insurance. Trump shot back, “Your party wants to go socialist medicine and socialist healthcare,” claiming Democrats wanted to end private health insurance.
“Right now, I am the Democratic Party,” Biden said, denying the accusation.
Biden then accused Trump of wanting to take away people’s healthcare by overturning Obamacare.
Four years later, both Obamacare and private health insurance remain intact, though Trump is still talking about replacing Obamacare, while Biden is still arguing Trump would rip away people’s healthcare.
Trump tax cuts
“I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts,” Biden boasted on the debate stage.
The cuts, passed by Congress in 2017, were arguably the biggest policy change of Trump’s entire presidency. While they lower taxes for most workers, Democrats have attacked them for benefitting high earners and corporations the most, with Biden claiming Trump pays proportionally less taxes than a school teacher.
Trump, meanwhile, has said the tax cuts were evidence that he gets things done.
“In 47 months, I’ve done more than you’ve done in 47 years, Joe,” Trump said.
Biden proposed raising taxes on people earning more than $400,000, while Trump warned such an increase would hurt the economy.
The problem with Biden pledging in 2020 to eliminate the Trump tax cuts was that they don’t expire until 2025. Biden has not majorly overhauled the tax code during his first term in office, but he says that if reelected, he will let Trump’s cuts expire, meaning millions could expect to see tax hikes as high as 4%.
Judicial appointments
Trump bragged in the debate that “by the end of the first term, I’ll have [appointed] approximately 300 federal judges and Court of Appeals judges, 300.”
Part of the reason for the high number was that, according to Trump, former President Barack Obama left 128 spots unopened when he left office, saying, “If you left us 128 openings, you can’t be a good president.”
However, this is one of Trump’s comments that has not aged well. For one, he finished with 234 appointed judges rather than 300. More importantly, Biden is on pace to beat his record, with 201 appointments as of June 14, which is more than Trump had at this point in his term.
Trump’s saving grace on this topic is the fact that he appointed three Supreme Court justices, while Biden to date has only one. Biden is hoping to change that if reelected.
Electric vehicle charging stations
“We’re going to make sure that we are able to take the federal fleet and turn it into a fleet that’s run on, that are electric vehicles,” Biden said. “Making sure that we can do that, we’re going to put 500,000 charging stations on all of the highways that we’re going to be building in the future.”
This one is a little hard to judge since Biden did not put an exact timeline on these proposals. But the federal fleet today still consists overwhelmingly of gas-powered vehicles. The website for the U.S. General Services Administration says it has a goal of purchasing only electric vehicles by 2035, which even if reached would leave gas-powered federal vehicles on the road for years afterward.
The GSA said it has “begun installing” more than 26,000 charging ports, with 7,000 in use.
The Biden administration did invest $7.5 billion in EV charging stations as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, but as of late March, it had only seven stations to show for it.
Trump is arguably campaigning harder on EVs than Biden is in 2024, repeatedly promising that the government’s EV push will wreck the automobile industry if he doesn’t win.
Second debate — Oct. 22, 2020, Nashville, Tennessee
The second 2020 debate was relatively tame, notably giving moderators the opportunity to mute mics, a power they will keep this year, and thus more substantive. It also focused, even more than the first one, on the pandemic.
220,000 dead
“[There are] 220,000 Americans dead [from COVID-19]. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this,” Biden said in his very first remarks of the debate. “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
This statement, perhaps more than any other, has not aged well.
In January 2022, when Biden had still been in office for less than a year, the total number of COVID-19 deaths’ under his watch surpassed those of Trump, even though vaccines became widely available early in the Biden presidency. By May 2022, there had been more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths, 60% of which occurred after Biden took office.
Needless to say, Biden remained as president even after surpassing the 220,000 mark. However, Trump also made pandemic-related statements he probably regretted later, such as saying, “I get along very well with Anthony [Fauci]. … He happens to be a good person.”
Fauci has since become an enemy of Republicans, who decry what they say is his embrace of school closures and mask mandates, along with his efforts to downplay the “lab leak” theory of the pandemic’s origins.
Hunter Biden’s laptop
“It’s the laptop from hell,” Trump said in 2020 of the younger Biden’s computer, which had recently hit the headlines in one of the campaign cycle’s biggest controversies.
Trump is likely to bring the Hunter Biden laptop up again next week now that it has been largely verified and admitted as evidence in court.
While it wasn’t a campaign promise, Trump cited the laptop and Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings as evidence that Joe Biden is a “corrupt politician.”
“Don’t give me the stuff about how you’re this innocent baby,” Trump said.
Biden, who had just said character is on the ballot in the election, strongly implied in 2020 that the laptop was not legitimate.
“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan,” Biden said. “They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”
Biden won’t be able to rely on that defense this time around, though it’s an open question how much most voters will be swayed by the actions of his son.
Tariffs
“I charged [China] 25% on dumped steel because they were killing our steel industry,” Trump said. “We were not going to have a steel industry, and now we have a steel industry.”
Trump was proud of his China tariffs, and Biden did not directly respond to the assertion during the debate, pivoting instead to middle-class economic struggles.
Biden elsewhere in 2020 suggested he would end Trump’s China tariffs, but after taking office, he not only kept them in place but is now trying to outdo Trump with even higher ones.
The topic is likely to come up again during the CNN debate as both candidates look to woo blue-collar Rust Belt voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Immigration and pathways to citizenship
“Within 100 days, I’m going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people,” Biden said.
Biden did in fact send Congress a bill on the first day of his administration, calling to “create an earned road map to citizenship for undocumented individuals.” While the bill hasn’t been passed, it has been repeatedly cited by figures such as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre when asked questions about Biden’s immigration policy.
More recently, Biden has moved on his own to ease the pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens, partly fulfilling his debate pledge.
But Biden has faced strong criticism over the record number of border crossings seen under his administration, with critics pinning blame on his immigration policies and lack of enforcement.
Trump’s message on immigration has not changed much in eight years.
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“We now have a stronger border than we’ve ever had,” he said during the second 2020 debate. “We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall, you see the numbers, and we let people in, but they have to come in legally.”
The two candidates will hit the stage once again on Thursday night in Atlanta to talk about their plans for a second term.
