Live coverage: Trump and Biden face off for first presidential debate
President Joe Biden and Donald Trump will share a stage in Atlanta Thursday as they face off in the season’s first presidential debate. The format for the evening will be unique, with no audience and both men speaking into microphones that will be muted when it’s not their turn to prevent them from speaking over each other.
Trump supporters have been doing everything they can to lower expectations by complaining about the moderators, inflating the time Biden spent preparing, and concocting wild conspiracy theories that Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs. But those same supporters have to be concerned about Trump’s recent rally performances, in which his usual word salad has seemed more like word coleslaw when he was forced to speak without a teleprompter.
Biden’s last major primetime appearance before the public was a powerful State of the Union address in March, but since then, there have been months in which media has harped endlessly on Biden’s age and outlets have edited videos to make him seem incompetent.
With a huge percentage of the public expected to tune in, this is a critical night for both candidates. Join us for the blow by blow.