The first presidential debate of the 2024 general election season went down Thursday night at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. As President Biden and former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump faced each other, the latter made sure to repeatedly bring the conversation back to one of the elephants in the room— immigration.
The Biden administration, among other things, has been characterized by an unprecedented number of border crossings, an aspect that Trump has made sure to hone down through the campaign trail and once again on Thursday's debate.
"He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists," Trump said in the debate.
But while several reports have shown these claims to be baseless, Trump nevertheless opted to continue emphasizing this point.
The imagery of having the border is open is one Republicans tend to use when referring to Biden's handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. Although it is true that unauthorized crossings hit a record high during his administration, Biden has simultaneously added more sections of the U.S. border walls, increased the number of expedited removals, and introduced an executive order that would essentially shut down the border once a daily threshold is met. This last measure was implemented over the past week as the Biden administration seemingly concluded immigration had become a political liability and took steps to curb it ahead of the November poll.
As part of the rhetoric he's focused on throughout his campaign, the former president also brought up the issue of crimes committed by migrants, claiming migrants are "killing our citizens at a level that we've never seen."
He said he recently spoke to the mother of a girl who was recently killed, adding "we had the safest border in the history of our country. All he had to do was leave it." Trump also accused Biden of undoing much of his restrictive border policies "just because I approved it, which is crazy," saying Biden has "killed so many people at our border."
The claims come after several high-profile cases of undocumented migrants committing crimes have entered the mainstream, including that of two Venezuelan immigrants being charged with capital murder for killing a 12-year-old girl.
However, data shows a vast majority of immigrants do not commit crimes. For instance, a study by Northwestern University examining a 150-year period found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.
Biden, on the other hand, stuck to his talking points on immigration, highlighting the 40% drop in arrests for illegal immigration since issuing an executive order suspending asylum.
But this strategy did not prevent voters, loyal Democrats and politics experts alike from being sent into a state of panic following his "disappointing" performance, as Biden's former communications director Kate Bedingfield concluded.
The president, who desperately needed to use the debate to reassure skeptical voters that he has the physical and mental stamina to lead the nation, instead offered a shaky performance, especially in the early minutes, when more voters were likely to be watching, according to The Washington Post.
Alarmingly, he also played into Trump's rhetoric, one that paints him as a frail man past his prime. His voice was raspy, and he repeatedly tried, and failed, to clear his throat as he rambled and at one point froze up.
"He had one thing he had to accomplish and that was to reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight," said Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator from Missouri. "I'm not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There's a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden.
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