The first presidential debate of 2024 between President Joe Biden and criminally convicted former President Donald Trump was filled with false facts and heavy criticism. CNN, which declined to provide Black-owned media with any of the more than 800 credentials it passed out, enabled a boatload of misinformation and flat-out lies to pass through their airwaves like bad wind.
“Absolutely disgraceful that the CNN moderators refuse to fact-check Trump on anything,” said human rights activist and attorney Qasim Rashid. “This is journalistic malpractice, and it is decimating our democracy.”
Writer and attorney Olayemi Olurin noted that the journalists and current president should have been better equipped to make such a move.
“It is a failure on CNN not to fact-check Trump’s lies, but the thing is… if Joe Biden were performing the way he’s supposed to in a debate, his answers would be the fact check. So, three things are true: Trump is lying his [butt] off, the mediator isn’t doing their job, and neither is Biden.”
Biden, whose campaign said he suffered from a cold during the debate, took some of his biggest shots at Trump after the former president refused to accept the results this fall regardless of who won. Trump said he would only accept the results “if it’s fair, legal, and good.”
“You’re a whiner,” Biden said. “When you lost the first time… you appealed and appealed to courts all across the country. Not one single court in America said any of your claims had any merit, state or local, none. But you continue to promote this lie about somehow, there’s all this misrepresentation, all this stealing. There’s no evidence of that at all. And I tell you what, I doubt whether you’ll accept it, because you’re such a whiner. The idea if you lose again, you accepting anything? You can’t stand the loss. Something snapped in you when you lost last time.”
Without any rebuttal, Trump also incredulously asserted that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was primarily to blame for the violent uprising on January 6.
“I don’t agree with former President Trump saying he had nothing to do with the insurrection, which he actually did. He actually presented that and basically cheered those insurrectionists on,” Torrence Terrell, director of Youngnificent Youth Engagement in Southeast, D.C., told The Informer at Busboys and Poets Anacostia.
After Trump’s false accusations, moderators then cut to a commercial, criticized as a tiny part of CNN’s wrongdoings surrounding the debate.
Meanwhile, at a People for the American Way reception and watch party at the Wharf in D.C., attendees sighed and expressed anger at their television sets as Trump told lie after lie. Despite having two anchors and a mute button, the host network failed to challenge him.
“The debate turned into a 90-minute Trump rally,” said Alice Wilkes of Northeast. “I waited and waited for the moderators to say something, or, at least, cut him off,” Wilkes said.
At Busboys & Poets on K Street in Northwest, where former lawmaker Nina Turner hosted a watch party, a packed house cheered as Biden called Trump “a sucker” and noted that he had “sex with a porn star” behind his wife’s back.
During the debate, Biden addressed questions about his age and stumbled when he tried to mock Trump’s fitness. “You can see he is 6-foot-5 and only 223 pounds or 235 pounds… well, anyway,” Biden said. Later, he agreed to Trump’s challenge of a golf match on one condition: “If you carry your own bag.”
Several Black voters expressed disappointment in the way both candidates talked about Black people. “It’s like they forgot about Black people,” Byron Cooper of Southeast stated.
“Trump commuted some sentences and pardoned some drug dealers. That’s supposedly what he did for the Black community,” Cooper remarked. “Unfortunately, to some Black people, that’s enough, which is ridiculous because the guy is a stark raving racist.”
During the debate, Trump revived attacks on Biden and Democrats over the 1994 crime bill that disproportionately harmed African Americans. Neither Biden nor CNN failed to mention Trump calling for the execution of five Black and Brown teenagers who were innocent of sexually assaulting a white woman in Central Park.
Biden did mention how Trump has called skinheads and white nationalists “good people.”
In his two-minute closing argument, Trump personally attacked Biden’s record abroad.
“They don’t respect you throughout the world,” he said. Trump claimed he had the largest tax cut and the largest regulation cuts in history, but the country is now “exploding.” “We’re a failing nation, but it’s not going to be failing anymore,” he said. We’re going to make it great again.”
For his close, Biden noted, “We have made significant progress from the debacle President Trump left in his last term.”
Biden then summarized some of his signature policies. In terms of the economy, he vowed not to raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year and to continue his work to reduce health care and childcare costs and give families financial breathing room.
“We’re going to continue to fight to bring down inflation and give people a break,” Biden said in closing.
While some people were underwhelmed at the close of the debate, People for the American Way President Svante Myrick emphasized that voting in 2024 is key no matter how one feels about the presidential candidates.
“You don’t always get to vote for a perfect person or a perfect candidate, but, rarely do you get a clearer choice than the one we have this November. If you vote for President Biden, it’s guaranteed that we will have future elections. You will have the opportunity to push your legislative agenda forward, you can support other people in 2028 and beyond,” Myrick told The Informer at a watch party in Northwest, D.C. “I truly believe…that if President Trump wins, you may not get a chance to vote for another candidate for the rest of your life.”
Washingtonians Weigh In on Both Candidates
Many Washingtonians attended debate parties around the District with hopes of hearing the candidates address issues that are important to them.
“The issues I sought out to hear in this debate are issues that impact my family. My grandmother, 80 years old, is an early educator, so we care about childcare. I’m also [from] an immigrant family, I’m a first-generation American, so treating immigration with compassion is important,” said Travis Ballie at Busboys and Poets Anacostia during the debate. “The only candidate that I’ve seen that has addressed my family’s issues and concerns is President Biden. That’s why I’m supporting him.”
Taylor Brigman, a junior at Spelman College from Alexandria, Virginia, said while she felt the debate was important, she didn’t feel Biden or Trump addressed issues that are important to her including access to education, and a woman’s “right to choose.”
“I don’t think either candidate [is attacking the issues that matter to me,” she said. “However, I think one leverages the other more than the other.
For Brigman, it was unbelievable to see someone with Trump’s criminal record vie for another chance to occupy the Oval Office.
“Thirty-four felony counts. That’s extremely terrible. I think if someone of the opposite race were to do that, this wouldn’t even be a question if [Trump] was at the debate,” she said. “I think this goes to show white privilege and also the increase in ignorance– how we view other people, other races, and gender and sexuality. It’s just not as valued as other groups of people.”
As a local youth leader in the District, Terrell came to Busboys Anacostia to hear candidates address issues from human rights to wars, but was disappointed in what they had to say.
“ I wanted to hear about abortion, I wanted to hear about the war in Ukraine, Russia, and I also wanted to hear the issue with Israel and Hamas. The top issues, of course, both did not say anything different than I thought they were going to say,” he told The Informer. “I don’t believe that either politician has really hit the issues correctly. So they’re both really two sides of the same coin at this point. Neither one has taken the lead on those issues.”
