Biden stumbles in first prez debate with Trump

Atlanta: Joe Biden, seeking a second term in the White House, stumbled in his first televised presidential debate with his predecessor Donald Trump, setting off alarm bells among top Democrats about whether the incumbent president can stay atop in the gruelling months ahead of the elections.

During their roughly 90-minute debate defined by personal attacks on Thursday night, Trump, the presumptive Republican Party candidate in the November 5 presidential election, clashed right from the start with 81-year-old Biden, arguing pointedly about the American economy, foreign relations and migration. "We're like a Third World nation and it's a shame," Trump, 78, said. "We're no longer respected," he said, blaming a halting and raspy-voiced Biden. "They think we're stupid."

Responding to Trump's statement, Biden said, "He is exaggerating, he's lying," underlining that 40 per cent fewer migrants are now crossing the border since he recently imposed tighter entry restrictions. The two leaders called each other a liar and the worst president in the history of the US.

Biden called Trump a sucker and loser.

“I was recently in France for D-Day, and I spoke to all about those heroes that died. I went to the World War II cemetery — the World War I cemetery he refused to go to,” Biden, the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party, said, referring to Trump, who declined to visit the cemetery in 2018. “He was standing with his four-star general, and he told me, he said, ‘I don’t want to go in there, because they’re a bunch of losers and suckers. My son was not a loser. He’s not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” Biden said.

Trump said that the quotes were made up in a third-rate magazine and he later fired the general. On the age factor, Biden reminded Trump that he was just three years younger than him. At 81, Biden is the oldest president in US history. Trump called Biden a criminal after the latter called him a “convicted felon,” referring to his conviction in a New York hush-money case. “Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he’s done, he’s done horrible things. This man is a criminal. This man, you’re lucky, you’re lucky, I did nothing wrong. We have a system that was rigged and disgusting,” Trump said. “When he talks about a convicted felon, his son (Hunter Biden) is a convicted felon, at a very high level,” he alleged.

As the two leaders sparred over various issues, Biden accused Trump that he does not know what he is talking about. Biden alleged that Trump has the morals of an alley cat.

Trump won debate: CNN poll

Former US president Donald Trump turned in a better performance than President Joe Biden during the first of presidential debates, a shift from 2020 when debate watchers saw the 81-year-old Democrat as outperforming his Republican rival. Sixty-seven per cent to 33 per cent of the registered debate watchers said that Trump turned in a better performance, according to a CNN flash poll conducted by SSRS.