Part of the 2024 U.S. presidential election
The 2024 United States presidential debates were a series of debates held during the 2024 presidential election. Three debates in total were held during the election season. The first general election debate between the major candidates was sponsored by CNN and attended by then-presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump on June27, 2024. Biden was widely considered to have performed poorly during the first debate, with many commentators and Democrats calling for him to drop out of the race. He withdrew his bid for re-election on July21. A second debate, sponsored by ABC, was held on September10 between Trump and Kamala Harris; it was widely reported that Harris won. A vice presidential debate, which was sponsored by CBS, was held on October 1.
Four general election debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) were originally scheduled to be held between September16 and October9, 2024. Both Biden and Trump opposed the CPD's debate format and schedule. In May 2024, both campaigns agreed to bypass the CPD and hold the alternative debates, canceling the CPD debates.
Background.
Commission on Presidential Debates.
In April 2022, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted unanimously to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD); committee chair Ronna McDaniel called the organization "biased" and stated that they would find "newer, better debate platforms" for future Republican nominees. This announcement came after years of tension between the organizations, including a threat made earlier in the year by the RNC to change its rules to prohibit nominees from participating in CPD debates. In response, the commission stated that "[its] plans for 2024 will be based on fairness, neutrality and a firm commitment to help the American public learn about the candidates and the issues".
Former president Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, did not attend any primary debates, describing them as unnecessary to his campaign and claiming unfair treatment by organizers. The DNC did not support hosting any official primary debates, and Biden did not participate in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential debates and forums unsanctioned by the DNC. Trump has previously accused the CPD of unfair treatment in the 2016 and 2020 debates. Despite this, Trump told Fox News host Bret Baier in a June 2023 interview that he was interested in debating incumbent president Joe Biden should he become the Democratic nominee. At that time, Biden had not committed to attending the debate either, as his campaign was also in conflict with the commission for failing to enforce its rules against Trump, though in April 2024 he confirmed he planned to debate Trump.
Biden and Trump became the presumptive nominees of their respective parties in March 2024, setting up the first presidential rematch since 1956. On April 14, 2024, a number of major news organizations signed an open letter to the presumptive nominees urging them to attend the debates, arguing for its "rich tradition in our American democracy" and that the "exceptionally high" stakes require debates to be held. Signatories include ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, and Fox News, among others.
If either major party nominee chooses not to attend a general election debate, it would be the second consecutive time its happened, the first being the 2020 debates, when President Trump refused to attend the second debate with Biden because it would have been virtual rather than in person following Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis. It previously occurred in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter refused to attend the first debate with Ronald Reagan due to the presence of independent candidate John B. Anderson.
Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, campaign managers for Trump, had pushed for more debates to be held by the CPD, in addition to holding them earlier than the planned September date, though the commission refused to accede. Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump confirmed his intention to cooperate with the CPD repeatedly and challenged Biden to debate "anywhere, anytime, anyplace".
The CPD announced the schedule for its four debates on November 20, 2023. All debates would have started at 9 p.m. ET and would have run for 90 minutes uninterrupted. In order to qualify for the CPD-sponsored debates, presidential candidates would have needed to meet the following criteria: (vice presidential candidates would have qualified by being the running mate of a qualifying presidential candidate)
On June 24, 2024, the CPD announced that it was releasing the sites it had selected for its 2024 debates from their contracts, adding that "CPD stands ready to sponsor 2024 debates should circumstances change."
Biden–Trump alternative debates.
On May 15, 2024, the Biden campaign announced that it would not participate in the CPD-hosted debates and instead invited Trump to participate in two alternative debates to take place in June and September, each hosted in a TV news studio without an audience. Jen O'Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign manager, laid out three reasons for sidelining the CPD, indicating that the debates were not completed until early voting started, that the debates had become "a spectacle" and that the CPD could not "enforce its own rules". Frank Fahrenkopf, the head of the CPD, pushed back against the claims in an interview with "Politico", indicating that the September 16 debate date was the best date, as the "key date" to secure ballot access for independents is September 6. Fahrenkopf also noted that the general election debates are "not like the primary debates" and that Trump himself had not followed the debate rules during the 2020 general election debate moderated by Chris Wallace. Biden and Trump accepted an offer from CNN to hold the first of these debates on June 27 and from ABC to hold the second on September 10.
Trump indicated the same day that he had accepted a Fox News debate to be hosted on October 2, 2024, though the Biden campaign dismissed the prospect of a third debate. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the two candidates of colluding to exclude him from televised debates "because they are afraid I would win"; both CNN and ABC had decided on eligibility criteria that were similar to those that had been used by the CPD, with Kennedy not appearing on a sufficient number of state ballots at that time. The Biden campaign had unsuccessfully proposed that third-party candidates be excluded from the debates. A May poll taken by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies/Harris indicated that 71% of the people surveyed were in favor of allowing a third-party candidate to debate. Kennedy's campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, maintaining that neither Biden nor Trump meet the ballot access threshold as they have not been nominated by their parties.
Trump announced on May 17 that he would be willing to hold another debate with Biden that would be hosted by NBC News and Telemundo.
On July 9, Trump challenged Biden to a debate with no moderators that would be done that week, as well as an 18-hole golf match.
June 27: First presidential debate (CNN, Atlanta).
The first presidential debate, which was the only one in which Biden participated before he dropped out, was held on Thursday, June 27, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. EDT in CNN's studios at the Techwood Turner campus in Atlanta, Georgia.
American writer and political consultant Tim Miller called Biden's performance the "worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates", a sentiment also shared by Jeff Greenfield of "Politico" and NewsNation chief political analyst Chris Stirewalt. Journalist Jake Sherman reported that several congressional Democrats thought that Biden "didn't even clear the lowest bar", and that Biden was not even able to articulate what his policies are even if they agreed on them. Some Democrats were unsure whether he should continue his campaign and be the Democratic nominee. CNN's chief national correspondent John King reported that there was "a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic" in the Democratic Party that started a few minutes into the debate. During the debate, unnamed elected officials, party strategists, and fundraisers were reported to have discussed replacing Biden as the party's candidate due to fears about him potentially hurting other Democrats' public perceptions, and deciding if prominent Democrats should make a public statement about asking Biden to step down.
Democratic Party response.
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"I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious. I don't walk as easily as I used to. I don't talk as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job, I know how to get things done. And I know what millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up."
—Joe Biden, responding to criticism of his debate performance during a speech in North Carolina the following day (June 28, 2024).
President Biden stated to reporters at a Waffle House after the debate: "I think we did well" and said he did not have any concerns about his performance or calls for him to drop out of the presidential race, stating that it was difficult to debate "a liar." Biden was congratulated by his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, on his performance at a post-debate gathering. She told him on stage that he did "such a great job. You answered every question." Biden's running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, claimed that while Biden "started off slow", he still managed to have a strong finish. Biden-Harris 2024 campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon praised Biden's debate performance, saying that he presented a "positive and winning vision" for the future.
Calls for President Biden to drop out.
Democrats such as Julian Castro and Dean Phillips had hurt their careers for publicly saying that Biden was too old before the debate, but immediately following the debate, some in the party began calling for President Biden to drop out of the presidential race. Democratic strategist James Carville and former 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate Andrew Yang were the first notable Democrats to make those calls. On July 2, U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democrat in Congress to publicly call for Biden to step aside as the party's nominee. He was joined by various Congressmembers in the following days. On July 7, four more House Democrats called for Biden to exit the race during a private call, including Adam Smith, Jerry Nadler, Mark Takano, and Joe Morelle. Smith went on the record the following day and called for Biden to withdraw.
Biden stated in an ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos on July 5 that he would not end his candidacy. The president again refused to drop out on July 8. That day Biden appeared on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC by telephone, advising the "elites in the party" against his nomination to "run against me. Announce for president. Challenge me at the convention". He sent a letter to Congressional Democrats before "Morning Joe" explaining his decision, stating that "The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it's time for it to end". In an attempt to show voters and Democratic politicians that he was capable of facing Donald Trump in the 2024 election, he held a solo press conference on July 11, 2024, following the NATO 2024 Washington summit.
Biden suspended his re-election campaign on July 21, 2024, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
On August 3, the "Minnesota Star Tribune" reported that primary challenger Representative Dean Phillips said, “If people write anything, I just hope that they might write if [Biden] had debated me then and he had been on one stage, unscripted, with a national audience, and he demonstrated that decline then, this would have been very different circumstances.” He continued, “And that’s what I was trying to do.”
September 10: Second presidential debate (ABC, Philadelphia).
The second presidential debate was held on Tuesday, September 10, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. EDT at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Prelude.
The Biden and Trump campaigns had agreed to a September 10 debate hosted by ABC, but after Biden suspended his re-election campaign, it became unclear whether Trump would debate a new rival candidate. In late July, after Harris secured enough support to become the presumptive nominee, Trump said he would debate her repeatedly, though he said he preferred not to do