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.
