Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate with now-President Donald Trump one year ago Friday changed the course of the 2024 election.
The octogenarian Delawarean appeared on-stage tired and with a raspy voice, while some of his responses were at times unintelligible, leading to Trump landing several wisecracks in response.
While giving a response about wealthy Americans paying sufficient taxes, Biden said there are at least 1,000 billionaires – first muttering ‘1,000 trillionaires’ – in the U.S. and that they purportedly pay only 8.2% in taxes.
‘If they just paid 24%; 25%, either one of those numbers, they’d raise $500 million – billion I should say in a 10-year period. We’d be able to wipe out the debt,’ and ‘all those things we need to do [with] child care, elder care.’
His response went on for several more seconds, transitioning into a sidewinder about making every person eligible for ‘what I’ve been able to do with COVID,’ before mumbling for several seconds and declaring, ‘We finally beat Medicare.’
When moderator Jake Tapper turned to Trump for a response, he said:
‘Well, he’s right, he did beat Medicare, he beat it to death.’
Biden also claimed to have reduced illegal immigration at the southern border by 40% over the course of his term.
‘It’s better than when [Trump] left office. And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,’ Biden said.
‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,’ Trump replied.
Trump also sharply criticized Biden for ‘destroy[ing] our country,’ and that he came out with a ‘nothing’ border plan to score a few political points.
The current president also labeled Biden ‘a Palestinian’ – a title he also bestowed on Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is Jewish – in relation to how they have responded to the Israel-Gaza conflict, after Biden accused him of disrespecting the military.
Biden said his late son, former Delaware Attorney General Joseph Beau Biden III, contracted glioblastoma from being stationed near burn pits in Iraq. He went on to accuse Trump of the widely-debunked ‘suckers and losers’ line about World War I casualties buried in a French cemetery.
‘My son was not a loser, he was not a sucker – you’re the sucker, you’re the loser,’ Biden fumed, speaking sternly through gritted teeth.
‘First of all, that was a made-up quote – suckers and losers – they made it up; it was in a third-rate magazine,’ Trump replied.
The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg cited multiple anonymous sources in publishing the bombshell allegations in September 2020.
Fox News Digital’s Kiera McDonald, Emma Woodhead and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.