Live Updates: What to Watch at the First Trump-Biden Debate (2024)

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A June presidential debate is early by modern standards. Here’s what to know.

Here’s what else to know:

• The dynamics in play: Both candidates have been eager for this rematch, with Mr. Biden aiming to focus on their starkly different visions for America, and Mr. Trump keen to attack his rival’s record. Can Trump make it about Biden, and vice versa? How does Biden navigate the age question? Here’s a rundown of what to expect.

• Preparations: Mr. Biden has been at the Camp David presidential retreat for several days, strategizing and rehearsing for the debate. Mr. Trump has not been preparing as intensively, but he has been holding policy sessions with senators and staff members. And he has been trying to game voters’ expectations, making a baseless suggestion that Mr. Biden will use performance-enhancing drugs.

• The candidates’ goals: In some election cycles, candidates will seek to emphasize divergent views on the same core issues. This cycle goes well beyond that: The two men do diverge on pretty much everything, but they are also trying to emphasize different issues entirely. Mr. Biden would like voters to prioritize abortion rights and the future of democracy. Mr. Trump would rather they focus on inflation and immigration.

• An unusual format: The 90-minute debate starts at 9 p.m. Eastern time and will be held in a television studio in Atlanta without a live audience, a request from the Biden campaign that Mr. Trump ultimately agreed to. It is being run not by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan entity that sponsored general-election debates for more than 30 years, but by CNN. Here’s how to watch.

• The rules: While some of the debate’s rules and formatting elements are standard, others are less typical, like no live audience and the automatic muting of candidates when it isn’t their turn to speak.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says he did not vote for Trump in the G.O.P. primary.

“I voted, but I didn’t vote for anybody,” Mr. Kemp said in an interview yesterday with CNN, adding he was resigned to the outcome. “Look, at that point, it didn’t really matter.”

Mr. Kemp said he would support the Republican candidates for president and vice president, and Mr. Trump was expected to be the likely presidential nominee. After the 2020 election, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Kemp for certifying the results in Georgia, a state that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by over 11,000 votes. Mr. Trump went so far as to call for Mr. Kemp’s resignation. Mr. Biden is the first Democrat to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992.

In March 2021, Mr. Kemp said that he would support Mr. Trump if he ran for president in 2024. Later that year, Mr. Trump said at a rally in Perry, Ga., that former state Representative Stacey Abrams, Mr. Kemp’s Democratic opponent in the 2018 and 2022 governor’s races, might run the state better than Mr. Kemp did. In 2022, Mr. Kemp easily defeated a primary challenge by former Senator David Perdue, who had been endorsed by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Kemp endorsed the former president tersely in March. “I think he’d be better than Joe Biden,” Mr. Kemp said of Mr. Trump, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It’s as simple as that.”

In his interview with CNN on Wednesday, Mr. Kemp said that he hoped Mr. Trump would take the debate stage and “not look in the rearview mirror” but instead be forward-thinking.

“I mean, regardless of, you know, our history together, I have a vested interest in Georgia remaining in Republican hands,” Mr. Kemp said.

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The Biden campaign is taking aim at Project 2025, a conservative platform.

Project 2025 is not Mr. Trump’s official platform; his campaign instead points to Agenda47, which focuses on substantially curtailing immigration and encouraging economic growth. But Project 2025 has nonetheless raised Democratic fears about what a second Trump term would look like.

Conservative policy groups in 2016 were largely unprepared for Mr. Trump’s win. Since its announcement in 2022, these groups prepared Project 2025, a 920-page document outlining a radical transformation of the executive branch. The platform proposes replacing many federal civil servant jobs with political appointees who would be loyal to the president. The plan also proposes a cracking down on abortion rights, criminalizing p*rnography, cutting climate research funding and eliminating the Commerce Department.

Detailed policy proposals rarely attract much attention, but Project 2025 has resonated in liberal social media circles. John Oliver released a “Last Week Tonight” segment on Project 2025 last week, which has more than five million views on YouTube. Charlamagne tha God, a podcaster, has told his fans that the platform would enshrine an “authoritarian state” in America. Excerpts from Project 2025 have also gone viral on TikTok.

Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign, said that Project 2025 underscored the stakes of the 2024 election.

“The American people are tuning in to just how extreme and unpopular Donald Trump’s second-term playbook is — and they’re ready to stop him this November,” Ms. Chitika said in a statement.

It remains to be seen if Mr. Biden will make Project 2025 a focus of his comments at the debate tonight.

Trump turned to familiar tactics before the debate, like a wild claim about drugs.

Mr. Biden’s advisers see these outbursts as an attempt by the former president and his campaign to fling some red meat at his base and move the goal posts ahead of a high-stakes event. For Mr. Trump, this is not an uncommon tactic: He accused Mr. Biden of taking performance-enhancing drugs in 2020, and suggested Hillary Clinton was taking drugs ahead of a debate in 2016. In all of those cases, Mr. Trump also falsely claimed that the election itself was rigged.

“Donald Trump is so scared of being held accountable for his toxic agenda of attacking reproductive freedom and cutting Social Security that he and his allies are resorting to desperate, obviously false lies,” Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump had for months said that Mr. Biden was afraid to debate him, and not long ago he suggested that Mr. Biden would be spending most of his debate preparations sleeping. Earlier this year, he called Mr. Biden “the WORST debater I have ever faced. He can’t put two sentences together!”

But he’s shifted his tone after the two sides agreed in May to a pair of debates, one on Thursday and another on Sept. 10.

In recent days, he has called the president a “worthy debater,” reminding his audience of Mr. Biden’s performance in vice-presidential debates against Paul Ryan in 2012.

On Saturday in Philadelphia, at his final campaign stop before the debate, Mr. Trump also criticized debate rules his campaign had agreed to, including the network hosting the event and the lack of a live audience. His campaign has also attacked the debate moderators, two veteran CNN journalists, by accusing them of biased coverage of Mr. Trump in the past.

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Here are the rules for the debate.

Here is an overview of the rules that the two campaigns have agreed to with CNN, the evening’s host.

How long will the debate be?

Ninety minutes, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time, with two commercial breaks. That is a normal length for a presidential debate, but the commercial breaks are noteworthy: General-election debates in past cycles, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates rather than an individual news organization, did not have them.

The candidates will not be allowed to talk to their aides during the commercial breaks, but they will have time to take a breather and collect themselves in a way they would not have in past years.

Will there be an in-person audience?

No. The candidates will debate in a CNN studio with no live audience.

This was a demand from the Biden campaign, most likely based on a recognition that Mr. Trump tends to play to and feed off supportive crowds.

It is a change from most past election cycles, in which debates had large in-person audiences. But it will be similar to the setup in the last presidential election, albeit for different reasons: In 2020, because of the pandemic, only small groups of people were allowed into the debate venues.

How will the candidates be positioned?

They will stand at lecterns. Mr. Biden won a coin toss to choose his spot, and he will be on the right side of viewers’ TV screens.

Will there be opening and closing statements?

Opening statements, no; closing statements, yes.

The order of the closing statements was determined by a coin toss. Mr. Biden will make his first, and Mr. Trump will have the last word of the debate.

How long will the candidates have to answer questions?

CNN will allow two minutes for each answer and one minute for rebuttals. The moderators, CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will be able to grant extra time at their discretion.

How will the moderators prevent interruptions?

The candidates’ microphones will be muted when it isn’t their turn to speak. That was another Biden request, intended to guard against Mr. Trump’s penchant for interrupting and speaking over debate opponents.

It is not unusual for moderators to have the ability, at their discretion, to cut off a candidate’s microphone if the candidate is refusing to abide by their allotted time. But automatic muting is less common. In the last debate in 2020, opponents’ mics were muted during each candidate’s initial statement in each 15-minute segment, but not at other times.

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More voters expect a strong debate from Trump than from Biden, poll shows.

Overall, nearly half of voters anticipated a poor showing for Mr. Biden, signaling that the president enters the televised event facing widespread skepticism and scrutiny over his ability to demonstrate his fitness for office.

The debate will be the first time the two men will share a stage since October 2020, when they participated in the final debate of that year’s presidential race. It will be the earliest presidential debate in the nation’s history, occurring at the start of the summer rather than in the fall when the debates typically begin, and with a notably different format.

Nearly three-quarters of the participants in the poll said they planned to watch the debate. Republicans expressed the most enthusiasm: Eighty-three percent of Republican voters said they planned to watch, compared with 74 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of independents.

Melinda Cassetta, a federal employee from Clarksville, Md., said she was excited to see the matchup between the president and his predecessor.

“In this house, we will be live watching,” said Ms. Cassetta, 58, who is supporting Mr. Biden. “I told my kids, ‘No talking allowed.’”

Ms. Cassetta said she expected Mr. Biden to deliver a strong performance, though she worried about his age and speaking style, which she attributed to his childhood speech disorder.

“For Biden, we all know what everybody talks about: age. I get it, but Trump isn’t that much younger than him. And maybe he stutters,” she said, adding, “but Biden’s mind is there.”

Notably more Biden supporters expressed doubts about the performance of their candidate than Republicans. Ninety-two percent of Republicans said they expected Mr. Trump to deliver a strong showing. Eighty-four percent of Democrats said the same about the president.

The divergent images of the two men may be tied to views about Mr. Biden’s vitality. While Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are only three years apart, voters continue to give Mr. Biden, 81, lower ratings than Mr. Trump, 78, when asked about their ability to be effective in office.

Forty-five percent of voters said Mr. Biden’s age was such a problem that he is not capable of handling the job of president. Only 16 percent said the same about Mr. Trump. Those numbers are largely consistent with Times/Siena polling in February.

Still, the president retains a base of support when it comes to the debate. Steven Bergstein, a lawyer from Bala Cynwyd, Pa., said he expected Mr. Biden to deliver a strong performance.

“He’s a bright guy. He’s intelligent. He’s been through this many, many times. And he’s what is referred to in Yiddish as a ‘mensch,’” said Mr. Bergstein, 70, who is backing Mr. Biden. “Unfortunately, his opponent doesn’t have that skill.”

Still, Mr. Bergstein expressed some concerns about how others might perceive the president’s age.

“The only thing I worry about is sometimes I think people don’t listen and they just look. So Biden’s, you know, 80 whatever years old and he doesn’t run. He walks,” he said. “You know, so do I sometimes.”

Mr. Trump has also spent months mocking Mr. Biden as a weak and incompetent debater. In May, he called Mr. Biden “the WORST debater I have ever faced. He can’t put two sentences together!”

But in recent days, he has sought to reset some of those expectations. Last week, he called Mr. Biden a “worthy debater,” praising Mr. Biden’s performance in vice-presidential debates against Paul Ryan in 2012.

Samuel Palmer, a retiree from Nampa, Idaho, said he expected Mr. Trump to be “extremely well prepared” for the debate. But he worries about the format, which includes no audience and a rule that each candidate’s microphone will be muted when it is not their turn to speak. In recent days, the Trump campaign has attacked the debate moderators, two veteran CNN journalists, by accusing them of biased coverage of Mr. Trump in the past.

“With the debate moderators having such control over, you know, how this whole thing is going to be going, I think that puts him at a little bit of a disadvantage to a certain extent,” said Mr. Palmer, 68, who is supporting Mr. Trump. “But he’s more than capable of putting on what I would hope to be an extremely well done and factual performance.”

Camille Baker contributed reporting.

Here’s what to watch for in the first presidential debate of 2024.

Mr. Biden sought this historically early confrontation to force into focus the stark difference of their competing visions for America. His team wants to nudge voters away from seeing 2024 as an up-or-down vote just on Mr. Biden’s leadership — the buzzwords in Bidenland are choice and contrast — and warn that a second Trump term would be more radical and vengeful than the first.

Mr. Trump has been eager to debate, too. He sees Mr. Biden as cognitively diminished since they last clashed on the debate stage in October 2020. Mr. Trump is savoring the chance to lay into Mr. Biden’s record on the border and inflation in particular.

There is little mutual respect between them. The animosity is expected to be palpable inside the audience-free CNN television studio in Atlanta, where they will debate for 90 of the most consequential minutes of the campaign.

Here is what to watch for:

Can Trump make it about Biden? And vice versa?

The debate is a first in modern history because both candidates have already been president.

Voters know them. But many voters don’t like them. And so the imperative is to talk as much about the other guy and his record as their own.

The Trump team believes an election that is a referendum on Mr. Biden’s tenure — including long periods of high inflation, increased migrant border crossings and instability abroad in Israel and Ukraine — will result in a victory.

For Mr. Biden, making the debate about Mr. Trump means confronting him on his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, his willingness to pardon people convicted in the riot — whom Mr. Trump has called “hostages” — and his remark that he’s not going to be a dictator “except for Day 1.”

And one more — Mr. Trump’s new status as a convicted felon. The Biden campaign has begun to cast Mr. Trump’s legal woes under a broader umbrella, arguing that the former president cares only about himself and is running, in part, to avoid prison.

Mr. Trump does not want to get dragged into a long back-and-forth on his role in the Jan. 6 riot, potential pardons or his “Day 1” dictator remark. He has prepared for the debate with a series of discussions with allies and advisers that his team likes to brand “policy sessions.” Mr. Biden has been readying himself at Camp David, surrounded by his closest advisers for days of intensive preparations, with mock debate rehearsals that started on Monday.

Abortion vs. immigration: The debate within the debate

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump represent fundamentally different approaches to the economy, taxation, abortion, the border, America’s role in the world and the democratic process itself.

The debate within the debate will be about which of these issues dominate the discussion.

Mr. Biden wants to pin down Mr. Trump on abortion. Four years ago, Mr. Biden said in a debate that Roe v. Wade was “on the ballot,” which Mr. Trump repeatedly denied. “It’s not on the ballot,” Mr. Trump said at the time. Since then, Mr. Trump has taken credit for the Supreme Court ruling that overturned the federal right to abortion.

Now, Mr. Trump says he wants to let states pass whatever abortion restrictions they want. He supports exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

Mr. Biden is expected to argue that Mr. Trump will eventually back a national abortion ban, and has opened the door to restrictions on I.V.F. or even birth control.

If abortion is Mr. Biden’s top topic, Mr. Trump’s team sees the border — and crimes committed by migrants who cross it illegally — as a weak spot for the current president.

In the most recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College, 84 percent of the voters who said immigration was their top issue believed Mr. Trump was better on the topic. The reverse was true of abortion, with 81 percent of those who rated that as their top issue favoring Mr. Biden.

Does Trump come out brawling?

Mr. Trump knows that his aggression in the first 2020 debate was so intense — “Will you shut up, man?” Mr. Biden sighed at one point — that it caused a backlash. But the former New York businessman has always been a relentless brawler on debate stages, comfortable with the kind of personal invective and insults rarely seen at this level of politics before his arrival.

For months, Mr. Trump has made casting doubts on Mr. Biden’s mental state a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign. He has scrambled to try to lift up those expectations in recent days. In May, Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden the “WORST debater” he had ever faced. By June, he was praising him as a “worthy debater.”

Pre-debate spin is the norm. But Mr. Trump and his team have gone far beyond that, indulging in baseless allegations that Mr. Biden will be on performance-enhancing drugs, a Trump hobbyhorse ahead of general-election debates since 2016.

“Trump is unhinged,” said Cedric Richmond, a former White House adviser who has been part of the Camp David debate-prep team. “Him and the truth aren’t on the same planet. It makes it difficult.”

How does Biden navigate the age question?

Mr. Biden, 81, is the oldest president in American history. Mr. Trump, 78, would break that record if he’s elected, turning 82 before his term would end. Yet months of polling show that voters are chiefly concerned with the incumbent’s capacity to serve.

Whatever one-liner Mr. Biden unfurls to defuse questions around his age and competence will be among the most scrutinized of the debate. There are risks of being too glib on a topic that some 70 percent of voters have concerns about. But he also needs to be forceful enough that his answer is not quickly forgotten. Those around Mr. Biden believe the public’s perception of his fitness will be shaped by simply demonstrating command of the issues for 90 minutes.

Few Americans — besides those who watched his State of the Union address in March — have seen more than short snippets of Mr. Biden of late. And while a strong performance won’t fully answer questions about his fitness to serve another term that would end at age 86, it would serve to quiet them. On the flip side, a stumbling showing would fuel doubts about Mr. Biden in the run-up to the Democratic convention.

Whatever happens, the historically early debate means it will be months until there’s a chance at a redo.

Who handles the new format better?

This debate will be different. For one thing, there is no live audience for the candidates to react to. For another, CNN has said that mics will be muted when candidates aren’t supposed to speak. The rules say the network’s moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will use “all tools at their disposal” to ensure a civilized discussion.

The interplay between Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump and the moderators will be closely watched. Mr. Biden does not want to get bogged down in correcting every falsehood that Mr. Trump says. As Mr. Biden said in one 2020 debate, “I’m not here to call out his lies.”

Mr. Trump himself has framed the debate as a 3-on-1 contest while his advisers have lobbied for a hands-off approach from the moderators. “Will CNN decide that they are a facilitator?” Chris LaCivita, a top Trump adviser, told reporters on Tuesday. “Or will CNN become a participator?”

Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden will be standing at lecterns that are only eight feet apart, according to CNN. That means that even if a microphone is muted, they will be able to hear each other, adding another X factor.

Who can generate more memorable (meme-able) moments?

The debate will last only 90 or so minutes. But both sides are preparing for the minutes and hours that follow, which can just as heavily shape public opinion.

Mr. Trump has a MAGA army ready to amplify his greatest hits. Mr. Biden’s campaign has aggressively reached out to social-media influencers, too, but with some mixed results.

How important are these online influencers?

The Democratic Party just invited content creators to the party’s convention to help spread the word while former President Barack Obama met with 80 content creators in Los Angeles ahead of his joint fund-raiser with Mr. Biden this month to urge them to get engaged. “What’s the point in having four million followers if you’re not doing anything with it,” Mr. Obama told them.

Moments that go viral are typically unscripted — an eye-roll or even a fly landing on the vice president’s head. But modern campaigns think hard about generating memorable collisions on favorable policy terrain.

Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee who has passed along recommendations to the Biden team, said the goal was to “capture policy debates through the prism of high-vibes moments likely to go viral afterward.” No matter how many winning exchanges a candidate has, Mr. Green warned, “if the ones that go viral don’t include those moments, you’re in trouble.”

Michael Gold and Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.

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Here’s how to watch the presidential debate.

Where can I watch it?

• The New York Times will stream the debate alongside real-time commentary and analysis from reporters.

• CNN will broadcast or stream the debate on all its platforms, including its flagship cable channel, as well as CNN International, CNN en Español and CNN Max. The network also plans to stream the debate on CNN.com. You will not have to log in or be a subscriber to watch the stream.

• CNN is also sharing its feed with other broadcast and cable news networks so that they could simulcast the debate. That means you can also watch it on Fox News, ABC News, NBC News and probably elsewhere.

Will Robert F. Kennedy Jr. be onstage?

No. He failed to meet CNN’s requirements, which means Ross Perot remains the last independent candidate to have qualified for a general election presidential debate — and that was in 1992. For this debate, participants had to receive at least 15 percent support in four approved national polls and qualify for the ballot in enough states to have the chance to earn the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Who is moderating the debate?

The moderators will be Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who are fixtures on the anchor desk at CNN and the hosts of the network’s Sunday political talk show, “State of the Union.” Mr. Tapper is CNN’s chief Washington correspondent, and Ms. Bash is the network’s chief political correspondent.

The debate is Thursday. We’ll be streaming it with real-time analysis and insights from our reporters.

The New York Times will livestream the debate, and 60 Times journalists will be on hand Thursday night to offer context, insight, photos, reactions and fact-checking as part of our live coverage beginning around 8 p.m.

Our Reporting Team

These Times reporters, photographers and videographers will be in the studio to cover the debate:

• Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent who covers Republicans and Democrats running for the House, Senate and presidency, including how they are campaigning and how they would govern if elected.

• Michael Gold, who reports on Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. He has also covered Capitol Hill and mayoral, governor and congressional elections in New York.

• Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent who covers Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign, his administration and his family.

• Maya King, who is based in Atlanta and writes about campaigns, elections and movements in the American South.

• Ruth Fremson, a photojournalist for more than 34 years who has covered the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Al Gore.

• Kenny Holston, a photojournalist in Washington who covers Congress, the military and the White House.

• Claire Hogan, who produces videos for The Times’s website and social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and X.

• Gabriel Blanco, who works with reporters to create videos for The Times’s website and its other platforms.

They will be joined by three dozen Times reporters and editors in New York, in Washington and across the country to provide deeper insight on the issues. This includes a team of 29 Times reporters to check the facts live, led by Linda Qiu, a reporter who fact-checks statements from politicians.