Person. Woman. Man. Shark. Battery. Your Biden/Trump Debate Liveblog!
We will get through this together, or we won't.
Joe Biden, you have one job, and it is to get Donald Trump talking about his fear of sharks.
Joe Biden, you have two jobs, and it is to also get Donald Trump to mention that he (allegedly) aced a dementia test in 2018.
Joe Biden, you have three jobs, and it is to do the first two things, and every time that flaccid prick tries to change the subject, you talk about abortion.
Joe Biden, you have four jobs, because to do the first three you probably need to say the word “abortion,” instead of the awkward way you’re always like “women should have the right to choose … their choice!” Don’t care if you don’t like abortion personally.
Donald Trump doesn’t like sharks personally, but oh boy he talks about ‘em.
OK get out there and kick bottoms, Joseph!
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8:52: CNN is sharing its stream with lots of places, so you can watch it everywhere, probably even PornHubs. Rebecca is watching ABC News and says they’re interviewing some REAL spare parts about “what do you want to hear from the candidates tonight?” I dunno, undecided voters, maybe they can explain what’s wrong with y’all.
8:56: Melania is NOT THERE, it has been confirmed.
We thought for sure she’d …
Oh well.
No, Don Jr., you cannot have the ticket reserved for Stepmother. Keep out.
8:59: Your president, everyone.
Dude.
I would like one million cans of Dark Brandon Secret Mountain Dew Boner Water, please.
9:01: OK well here we go. Jake Bash and Dana Tapper say the rules are that Trump has to shut his hole when Joe Biden is talking (and vice versa). If one interrupts “he will be difficult to understand for viewers at home.” (Because Dana is going to zap them with something, probably.”)
9:04: What do you say to voters who don’t see how things are better from when Trump was president, when everybody was dying of COVID and nobody had a job?
Biden says well, you have to remember where we were then, and this dude was like “hey it’ll be fine, let’s eat the bleach in our arms.”
Trump says he prevented the Great Depression, which was in 1929, and everything was “rockin’ good.” He says he never got credit for “getting us out of that COVID mess.”
Does Trump think he and Biden were president at the same time?
Biden says Trump is the first president since Hoover to have fewer jobs than when he started. Also he needs some water.
9:08: Trump says you are not allowed to take credit for “b jobs,” by which he means jobs that bounced back after Trump’s pandemic. Huh.
9:10: We should probably send the troops back to Afghanistan so Trump can bring them back MORE PROPERLY, that’s what we think we’re hearing.
Trump thinks we had “largely fixed” COVID when he left, and then Biden came in to do these mandates and these vaccines, BOOOOO.
Heh, now Biden is grinning. Trump is starting to babble about weaponizing the Justice Department and the border. He’ll fall off the rails by 9:30.
9:18: OK, we’re on the abortion part. Or the first one anyway.
BASH: Trump, you love bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade. Should people havre abortion pills?
TRUMP: Abortion pills are great, my favorite. But I got Roe v. Wade overturned! I also am still under the fantasic delusion that anybody besides religious extremists wanted it overturned. I will say it over and over again, and everyone will see I am insane.
Meanwhile, Democrats like to do the abortin’ to the babies after they’re born! (They do not.)
Biden is looking at him like LOL WTF.
Biden: “It’s been a terrible thing what you’ve done.”
Says the idea that people wanted it back to the states is insane. Notes that they’re literally in a state with a 6-week ban, and that sending it back to the states is like saying you should send civil rights back to the states.
Trump talking about the border now.
9:18: Trump says the founding fathers wanted abortion decided by the states, had they known about abortion, which they didn’t.
9:19: Trump is just lying over and over again and saying Joe Biden wants to pull babies out and kill them. Biden says it’s a lie.
Of course, the moderators are doing nothing to push back against it, because Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are fucking useless.
Biden closes that section noting that if a MAGA Congress passes an abortion ban, he’ll veto it. Trump will sign it.
9:22: Trump just used his rehearsed line “I don’t know what he just said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he does either.” Hope he rehearsed a few more because he used that one.
They’re talking about “border.”
9:26: Trump is babbling about “migrant crime” and people getting MURDERRRRRRED, but he’s doing it quickly, so that means Trump is winning.
Biden says every single thing Trump just said is a lie. Trump hates veterans and troops, by the way.
Biden also just called Trump a “sucker” and a “loser” to his face, also.
9:28: Trump seems to be saying that Joe Biden made up the story in The Atlantic about Trump calling troops suckers and losers. Biden notes that it was a general (John Kelly) who confirmed that story.
“The idea that I have to apologize to you for ANYTHING …” says Biden.
Anyway, now we are talking about Russia, let’s see if Trump starts talking in broken Russian.
Trump says the troops love him more than they love any other president ever, which makes Biden start openly laughing.
Trump says Putin invaded Ukraine because Joe Biden did Afghanistan so bad. Says Putin never would have invaded Ukraine, and Hamas would never have invaded Israel, if he was president.
So that was a lot!
“I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my whole life,” says Biden.
9:33: Trump very excited that Biden keeps giving all this money to Zelenskyy, the opponent of Trump’s paramour. Says he’ll settle the war BEFORE he takes office.
Biden says, “Putin is a war criminal.”
Now we get to talk about Hamas and Israel, wheeee.
9:35: What will Biden do to get Hamas on board with his plan to end the war?
Biden says … a lot of things!
Trump cuts in to go back and talk about Ukraine and babble about forcing NATO members to pay for their own defense.
Biden notes that Trump wants to get out of NATO entirely, asks directly “You going to get out of NATO?” Trump makes a pursed face with his lips, because you know he is.
Trump, that peaceful hero, says Israel should be allowed to really go apeshit and finish the job in Palestine. (You know, because he’s the non-warmonger candidate.)
9:40: Jake Tapper finally asks Trump about January 6, the day of the terrorist attack he incited against the country to overturn the election and overthrow democracy.
Trump starts babbling about how good the border was on January 6 and some other things. And now he’s lying and saying Nancy Pelosi is responsible for the attacks.
Biden is going through the actual truth of what happened, how Trump did nothing, how Trump treats his terrorist supporters like peaceful and patriotic victims, when they’re just terrorists who should be in prison.
“Now he’s saying if he loses again, such a whiner that he is, there’s going to be a bloodbath?”
Trump just babbling conspiracy theories about the January 6 Committee deleting all the evidence that proved he was inocent.
“The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.”
9:46: Trump says NO FELON, NO FELON, Hunter Biden is a convicted felon, “AT A VERY HIGH LEVEL.”
Also says Joe Biden is going to be a convicted felon for “quid pro quo” in Ukraine,” and that he is only a convicted felon because RIGGED.
9:47: “You have the morals of an alley cat.” LOL.
Biden notes all the insane number of federal charges Trump is still facing, all the civil penalties he faces for “molesting a woman in public” and having sex with a porn star.
Biden does better when he’s pissed at Trump, you notice?
9:49: TAPPER: When you say voting for Trump is voting against democracy, are you saying all those MAGA people are voting for that?
BIDEN: The more they find out about what he’s done, yep.
9:50: Joe Biden apparently did not hear that Snopes has fully decided that Trump did not say he loves the fine people on both sides in Charlottesville! (Snopes is full of catshit.)
Trump is now publicly masturbating about “Snopes.” Trump says Joe Biden personally made up the story about Charlottesville, just like Joe Biden made up that story in The Atlantic.
Biden also notes that just about nobody who ever served under Trump has endorsed him.
OK finally break time!
9:54: What have we learned so far? That Donald Trump’s lie cannon is still very fast. He hasn’t said one thing of substance. It’s a debate in late June before the conventions, long before the American people even really tune in to the election.
Now is not a time for panicking.
9:56: OK we are back. The next question is what does Joe Biden say to Black voters who still haven’t felt the improvements of his economy.
Biden is listing off things he has accomplished. What does Biden say to those voters? He says he doesn’t blame them. He says he knows things like inflation are still hitting people hard.
Trump says Biden caused the inflation. He says he gave Joe Biden NO inflation, and Biden ruined it with his Green New Scam or something.
Lie cannon.
Also, BORDER! “They’re takin’ Black jobs now! And they’re taking Hispanic jobs!”
10:01: Biden notes that there was no inflation when he became president because “the economy was flat on its back” because of Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic.
Oh, and now Trump is lying and saying Biden called Black people “super-predators” for 10 years. Cool. Sure are glad these moderators don’t think it’s their job to correct even one lie Trump is telling.
Everybody drink, Trump mentioned Tim Scott, one of his two Black friends.
By the way, the question was “Will Trump do anything to fight climate change?”
10:04: “He hasn’t done a damn thing about the climate.” Biden is talking about Trump undoing everything Biden has done on climate. Trump is of course bitching now that the Paris Accords were bad because other countries weren’t paying as much as America was. (That is actually not the point of fighting climate change.)
10:06: Biden noting that Trump and Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and so forth.
Trump will lie and say “nuh uh” and the moderators won’t do anything about it.
10:09: Trump: “The laptop, Russia, Russia, Russia! Disinformation! Suckers and losers! I’ve never heard more lies!”
OK.
10:16: Biden says 159 presidential historians have voted Trump the “worst president in the country,” and also brings up that Trump fired John Kelly, the guy who confirmed that Trump thinks the troops are suckers and losers. Trump thinks that’s a point in his column.
Trump now babbling about how Joe Biden never fires anybody. MAGA piglets out there probably think that’s a good businessman thing, firing people, because they thought his TV show was real life.
We were just supposed to be talking about childcare for the past three minutes, by the way.
Just gonna suggest that debates are an exercise that have outlived their usefulness in today’s media climate. The moderators have tried, I think, four times to ask about childcare.
And the media is so vapid — and Republican voters are so vapid, sorry — that tomorrow all we’re going to hear is one million hot takes about how Old Befuddled Joe Biden talks more slowly than Trump and can’t keep up with his firing lie cannon.
Well guess what? Keeping up with Donald Trump’s fucking lie cannon isn’t the job of the president of the United States.
So if you want the snap reaction from at least THIS particular Wonkette, that’s what you get.
Now we get to talk about helping people suffering from opioid addiction, ha ha just kidding, Trump just called Biden a “Manchurian candidate.”
10:17: TRUMP: GIIIIINA GIIIIIINA GIIIIINA.
TAPPER: The question was opioids.
TRUMP: WE DID GREAT AT OPIOIDS UNTIL COVID. COVID GAVE EVERYBODY THE OPIOIDS. BORDER. BORDERRRRRRR. HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
BIDEN: Says something more slowly, but of more substance. Actually mentions fentanyl, which is related to the question. Talks about the immigration deal Trump killed because he would rather immigration be a racist Hitler crisis he can campaign on.
MEDIA TOMORROW: Biden stumbles through answer about opioids!
10:20: Somehow Trump is now saying he’s going to bring Evan Gershkovich back from Russia, probably because Joe Biden is paying Russia for … something?
Oh good now we get to talk about old.
BASH: Joe Biden are you old?
BIDEN: I was once young but now am old. He is three years younger but less competent. I’m bringing computer chips back to the US and A.
Also, we’re not a failing country. It’s gross when candidates like asshole over there talk like that.
BASH: Donald Trump you are also old.
TRUMP: I TOOK A DEMENTIA TEST AND I WAS SO GREAT AT IT. JOE BIDEN COULDN’T DO IT. I KNOW WHICH ONE IS “CAMEL.”
Trump also lying that he just won two golf tournaments. (He cheats at them.)
Biden says he’ll play golf with Trump if Trump willing to carry his own bag.
10:25: Now the stupidest question of all, will Trump accept the 2024 election results and say political violence is bad. He says of course violence is bad, and immediately pivots to lying about January 6. Also if the election is fair … and then trails off.
“He indicted meeeee because I was his opponent!” Says he doesn’t want to be here right now, but he has to because Joe Biden is too bad at presidenting.
Trump mentions his boyfriends Kim Jong-un, Xi and Putin, says they don’t like Joe Biden.
Biden talking now. He obviously doesn’t need to answer the original question, because he hasn’t tried to overturn any elections or incited terrorist attacks.
Bash tries to get Trump to answer the question again. Nope.
10:29: Trump now lying about fraud in the 2020 election, saying he would accept the results if there was no fraud. Repeats that he doesn’t want to be here.
“You’re a whiner,” Biden repeats. Notes that zero courts found any merit to any of his whining. “I doubt whether you’ll accept it because you’re such a whiner. […] Something snapped in you when you lost last time.”
Another commercial break, somehow this 90 minutes is going over, SURFUCKINGPRISE.
10:35: Are these the final remarks? Oh good. The calamity will be over soon.
Again, he’s not as fast as Trump. He also doesn’t lie like Trump.
Trump says “this man is just a complainer,” which TBH doesn’t land like Biden calling him a whiner. And Trump’s closing statement is babbling. Says left-wing pro-Palestine protesters are “100 times Charlottesville.”
Nothing of value was gained tonight, but then again, there hasn’t been a presidential or vice presidential debate where something was gained in the last 20 years.
It got better as it went along, obviously. Maddow just noted that Trump was strongest at the beginning, Biden much weaker, especially with his quiet “I need water” voice, and then they switched places toward the end. Doesn’t think either campaign is going to love the result tonight.
Oh, it turns out Joe Biden also has a cold.
Miles to go before this election is over.
ANYWAY, PLEASE TIP YOUR BARTENDERS.
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Oh dear.
Oh no.
Oh my fucking god we're all going to die.
Please stop with who is the more manly man by deciding who is the better golfer. This is dumb.