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Amid Increasing Calls to Replace Him After Debate, Biden Spotlights Trump’s Lies
After Thursday night’s disastrous debate, President Joe Biden is ignoring calls to replace him on the ballot, instead focusing on former President Donald Trump’s lies during the debate.
Biden was hoarse when he took the stage on Thursday at CNN’s first presidential debate due to a cold, according to the White House. The president did not handle himself well; at one point, trailing off during an answer, only to say “we beat Medicare” right before running out of time.
But while Biden appeared out of it, particularly in the first half of the debate, Trump used his platform to issue several unchallenged lies. Trump accused Democrats of supporting “after-birth abortion,” or, in other words, literal infanticide.
READ MORE: Supreme Court Declines To Rule on Trump Immunity Before Debate
Despite a number of opinion pieces written immediately following the debate from the likes of Raw Story, Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Times and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Biden says he’s here to stay.
“Of course he’s not dropping out,” Seth Schuster, a Biden campaign spokesperson, told The Hill.
And Biden himself reiterated this, telling folks at a Waffle House campaign stop afterward that he wasn’t dropping out, it was just “hard to debate a liar.”
After the debate, Biden’s messaging on social media has been to take the spotlight off himself and to point it at Trump’s lies.
“This guy just can’t stop lying,” Biden wrote in a tweet alongside a supercut of falsehoods Trump said during the debate.
This guy just can’t stop lying.pic.twitter.com/CblFadcvLB
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2024
Another tweet showed a clip of Biden, taken from his appearance at a watch party in Atlanta, where the president sounds much better and clearer, again talking about how much Trump lied.
“Look, folks, what’s going to happen over the next couple days is they’re going to be out there fact-checking all the things he said,” Biden said. “I can’t think of one thing he said that was true. I’m not being facetious. But look, we’re going to beat this guy. We need to beat this guy. And I need you in order to beat him. You’re the people I’m running for.”
Donald Trump is a liar.
We’re going to beat him again. pic.twitter.com/IZYAlnUokr
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2024
And this is true — a number of fact-checks have appeared Friday morning. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, in an interview immediately after the debate, said Trump made at least 30 lies during the debate. He added that Biden made at least nine false claims.
Of course, Trump’s lies were a major factor of his 2020 campaign, and some Democratic hopefuls are hoping for a repeat. “Joe Biden is the only one who has beaten Trump,” is a common refrain. But with both candidates’ favorability low, it’s a question as to whether America will have the same result in November.
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