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    Rate the Presidential Debate

    Our writers and editors are formulating their thoughts on Donald Trump and President Biden’s first debate of the 2024 presidential race. As we await their scorecards, Times Opinion wants to hear from readers: Who do you think won the night? What were some of the most significant moments and did things go as you expected?Share your conclusions in the form below. We’ll publish a selection of your responses in the coming days. A member of our team will be in touch by email if we decide to include your comments.Fill out your debate scorecard

    The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads. More

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    Biden’s Truth Is Being Overshadowed by His Stumbles

    The president who walked haltingly to the podium as the debate began Thursday night was not State of the Union Joe Biden. There was no sign of the joy and fire that he brought to his speech before Congress in March, which briefly brought life to the hopes of Democrats that Biden had the vitality to run this race.Instead, his voice was hoarse, he stumbled over facts, and occasionally he seemed to lose his train of thought and became a little incoherent. You could almost hear the whispered gasps of his supporters across the country.And yet, despite his terrible delivery, Biden was at least telling voters the truth. Donald Trump might have looked more healthy and sounded more energetic, but what came out of his mouth was a mix of word foam and outright lies.Trump said he never got any credit for getting the country out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course he didn’t; his policies and lack of action made the pandemic far worse. He dismissed the huge job gains under Biden as “bounce back” jobs, as if they would have happened automatically, when in fact they were created by Biden’s huge investments and skillful handling of pandemic recovery.Trump said everyone wanted to end Roe v. Wade, which is nonsense, and stunningly claimed that “the country is now coming together” on abortion, which he said has been a “great thing.”Biden summoned the strength to call this stuff “foolishness” and “malarkey,” adding that “everything he just said was a lie.” He noted forcefully that the economy was “flat on its back” when he took over from Trump. He reminded the world that Trump was a felon and had encouraged the rioters of Jan. 6.But the substance (or lack of it) of what the two men said at the beginning of the debate was heavily overshadowed by the way they said it. Biden did nothing to change the minds of those voters who feel he is no longer up to the job, and his performance on Thursday night may mean that many Americans won’t pay attention to whether his thoughts and his actions were the right ones. More

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    Fact-Checking the Biden-Trump ‘Suckers and Losers’ Quote

    — President BidenThis needs context.The quotes “losers” and “suckers” originate from an article published in The Atlantic in 2020 about former President Donald J. Trump’s relationship to the military. He continues to dispute the reports.The article relied on anonymous sources, but many of the accounts have been corroborated by news outlets, including The New York Times, and by John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general who was Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff. Mr. Trump has emphatically denied making the remarks since the Atlantic article was published.Here is a breakdown of the quotations. More

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    Biden Campaign Takes Aim at Project 2025, a Set of Conservative Proposals

    Hours before the presidential debate on Thursday, President Biden’s campaign launched a website targeting Project 2025, a policy and staffing playbook assembled by allies of former President Donald J. Trump that proposes an overhaul of the government under a new Republican administration.The Biden campaign’s website associates Project 2025 — a transition agenda compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and dozens of similarly aligned groups — with Mr. Trump, saying it would enable him to “gut democratic checks and balances, and consolidate power in the Oval Office.”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 pornography, 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. More

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    Hillary Clinton: He debatido con Trump y con Biden. Esto es lo que creo que veremos

    Debatir con el expresidente es como hacer malabarismo con disparates, divagaciones y fanfarroneríasLa semana pasada la pasé increíble en los premios Tony cuando presenté una canción de Suffs, el musical de Broadway que coproduje sobre las sufragistas que lograron que las mujeres tuviéramos derecho a votar. Me sentí emocionada cuando nuestra obra ganó los premios a la mejor partitura original y al mejor libreto.Desde Suffs hasta Hamilton, el teatro político me fascina. Pero no al revés. Con demasiada frecuencia analizamos momentos clave como el debate de esta semana entre el presidente Biden y Donald Trump como si fuéramos críticos de teatro. Pero elegiremos a un presidente; no al mejor actor.Yo soy la única persona que ha debatido con ambos (con Trump en 2016; con Biden en las primarias presidenciales demócratas de 2008). Conozco la insoportable presión que supone subir a ese escenario, y sé que, con Trump en la ecuación, es casi imposible centrarse en lo importante. En nuestros tres debates de 2016, dio rienda suelta a un torbellino de interrupciones, insultos y mentiras que abrumó a los moderadores y perjudicó a los millones de votantes que querían conocer nuestras visiones para el país (tan solo nuestro primer debate tuvo la cifra récord de 84 millones de espectadores).Tratar de refutar los argumentos de Trump como si se tratara de un debate normal es una pérdida de tiempo. Incluso descifrar sus argumentos es casi imposible. Comienza por decir disparates; luego divaga. Esto no ha hecho sino empeorar en los años que han pasado desde que debatimos. No me sorprendió enterarme de que, tras una reunión reciente, varios directores ejecutivos comentaran que Trump, en palabras de uno de los periodistas, “no podía seguir el hilo de la conversación” y “hablaba de todo y de nada”. Por otro lado, las expectativas puestas en él son tan bajas que si el jueves por la noche no se prende fuego –literalmente– habrá quienes digan que estuvo muy presidencial.Puede que Trump despotrique en parte para evitar dar respuestas directas sobre sus posturas impopulares, como las restricciones al aborto, las exenciones fiscales a los multimillonarios y la venta de nuestro planeta a las grandes petroleras a cambio de donaciones de campaña. Interrumpe y acosa (en cierto momento incluso me persiguió por el escenario) porque quiere parecer dominante y desequilibrar a su oponente.Estas estratagemas fracasarán si Biden es tan directo y contundente como lo fue cuando enfrentó a los republicanos que lo abuchearon durante su discurso sobre el Estado de la Unión en marzo. El presidente, además, tiene los hechos y la verdad de su parte. Él encabezó la recuperación de Estados Unidos tras una crisis sanitaria y económica histórica, con más de 15 millones de empleos creados hasta la fecha, aumentó los ingresos de las familias trabajadoras, frenó la inflación y elevó las inversiones en energías limpias y fabricación avanzada. Si logra transmitir todo eso, él ganará.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    President Biden and Donald Trump, Some Tough Questions for Each of You

    The stakes in this year’s presidential election are the greatest in my lifetime. So as a way to frame the choice before voters, I offer these foreign policy questions for President Biden and Donald Trump in the debate on Thursday:President Biden, for months you called on Israel to refrain from invading Rafah and to allow more food into Gaza. Yet Israel did invade Rafah, and half a million Gazans are reported starving. Haven’t you been ignored? And isn’t that because of your tendency to overestimate how much you can charm people — Senate Republicans, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu — to cooperate with you? When will you move beyond charm and use serious leverage to try to achieve peace in the Middle East?Mr. Trump, the Abraham Accords you achieved among Israel and several Arab countries were a legitimate foreign policy success, but you largely bypassed Palestinians. Perhaps as a result, those accords may have been a reason Hamas undertook its terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, to prevent Saudi Arabia from joining and recognizing Israel. So did the Abraham Accords bring peace or sow the seeds of war? Isn’t it a mistake to ignore Palestinians and to give Israel what it wants, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, without getting anything in return?President Biden, you have been pushing a plan for Gaza that involves a cease-fire and a three-way deal with Saudi Arabia, America and Israel ending in a path to Palestinian statehood. Maybe it’ll come together, but if not, what’s your Plan B? If this war drags on, or expands to include Lebanon and perhaps Iran, how do you propose to deal with the Middle East more effectively than you’ve dealt with it so far?Mr. Trump, you’ve suggested that Israel is taking too long to finish the war in Gaza. So what precisely are you advocating? Are you saying that Israel should use more 2,000-pound bombs to level even more of Gaza and kill many more civilians? Or are you saying that Israel should cut a deal that leaves Hamas in place and then pull out?President Biden, Iran has enriched uranium to close to bomb-grade levels. In days or weeks, it could probably produce enough fuel for three nuclear weapons (though mastering a delivery system would take longer). Can we live with an Iran that is a quasi-nuclear power? What is the alternative?Mr. Trump, the reason Iran is so close to having nuclear weapons is that you pulled out of the international nuclear deal in 2018, leading Iran to greatly accelerate its nuclear program. Since you created this dangerous situation, how do you suggest we get out of it? If you are president again, do you contemplate solving this problem through a war with Iran — one that might now involve nuclear weapons? Or will you accept a nuclear Iran as the consequence of your historic mistake?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Cómo ver el debate presidencial Biden-Trump

    El debate será transmitido desde Atlanta a partir de las 9 p. m. hora del Este el jueves.El momento se ha estado gestando durante cuatro años: el presidente Joe Biden y el expresidente Donald Trump en el escenario de un debate, otro punto álgido de sus largas hostilidades.El debate, organizado por CNN en sus estudios de Atlanta a partir de las 9 p. m., hora del Este, se llevará a cabo sin público y antes de que Trump y Biden acepten formalmente las candidaturas de sus partidos este verano, en un cambio radical respecto al pasado.¿Dónde puedo verlo?The New York Times retransmitirá el debate con comentarios y análisis en tiempo real de los periodistas.CNN emitirá el debate en todas sus plataformas, incluido su principal canal por cable, así como CNN International, CNN en Español y CNN Max. La cadena también tiene previsto retransmitir el debate en CNN.com. No será necesario iniciar sesión ni estar suscrito para ver la transmisión.CNN también compartirá su señal con otras cadenas de televisión y de noticias por cable para que puedan emitir el debate simultáneamente. Eso significa que también podrás verlo en Fox News, ABC News y probablemente en otros sitios.¿Robert F. Kennedy Jr. estará en el escenario?No. No cumplió los requisitos de CNN, lo que significa que Ross Perot sigue siendo el último candidato independiente que se ha clasificado para un debate presidencial de elecciones generales, y eso fue en 1992. Para este debate, los participantes tenían que recibir al menos un 15 por ciento de apoyo en cuatro encuestas nacionales aprobadas y clasificarse para la votación en suficientes estados para tener la oportunidad de obtener los 270 votos electorales necesarios para ganar la presidencia.¿Quién moderará el debate?Los moderadores serán Jake Tapper y Dana Bash, quienes son presentadores fijos en la mesa de CNN y los anfitriones del programa dominical de entrevistas políticas de la cadena, State of the Union. Tapper es el corresponsal jefe de CNN en Washington y Bash es jefa de la corresponsalía política de la cadena.Neil Vigdor cubre temas políticos para el Times, y se enfoca en cuestiones relacionadas con el derecho al voto y la desinformación electoral. Más de Neil Vigdor More

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    J.D. Vance Says He’ll Be Disappointed if Trump Doesn’t Pick Him for V.P.

    Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio has long been considered one of Donald J. Trump’s top running mate choices and worked as hard as anyone to win the job — raising money for the campaign, speaking with a seemingly endless stream of cable news reporters and even sitting in the Manhattan courtroom with the former president to demonstrate his support.Now, as Mr. Trump’s increasingly theatrical selection process enters its final phase, Mr. Vance acknowledged Wednesday that he would feel a tinge of dejection if he were not the pick.“I’m human, right?” Mr. Vance said in an interview on Fox News. “So when you know this thing is a possibility, if it doesn’t happen, there is certainly going to be a little bit of disappointment.”Mr. Trump has said he would announce his pick closer to the Republican National Convention next month, but his campaign has fed speculation that an announcement could happen as soon as this week.Mr. Vance and other top contenders for the job, including Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have been invited to join Mr. Trump in Atlanta on Thursday for the former president’s first debate this year with President Biden, campaign aides said. Mr. Vance’s interview is the first of a series announced by Fox News on Tuesday that will feature a handful of the leading prospects. Mr. Burgum and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina will also appear in the coming days to essentially pitch themselves to viewers on their qualifications to be vice president, alongside their significant others.Mr. Vance and his wife, Usha, sat for an interview at their home in Ohio. When asked about what issue she may focus on if she became “second lady,” Ms. Vance laughed off the question, saying it was “getting a little ahead of ourselves there.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More