Highlights: Biden and Trump face off in heated first presidential debate of 2024

Shortly before midnight, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on MSNBC, where Rachel Maddow asked for her response to viewers who felt like this was not Biden’s finest performance.

“Well, it was a slow start — there’s no question about that,” Harris said. “But I thought it was a strong finish.”

The vice president said Biden showed that he was someone who wanted to have a debate “based on facts, based on truth,” while Trump continued to be someone who’s going to “push lies and distract from the reality of the damage he has created and continues to create in our country.”

Harris added: “And look, of the two people on that debate stage, only one of them has the endorsement of his vice president. And let’s not forget that.”

Biden’s debate performance makes it inarguably clear that he comes across as compromised in his ability to communicate and focus due to his advanced age.

Is it true that a great deal of mainstream media focuses on his age in a different way than Trump’s, even when that’s unfair? Yes. Is it true that during this debate Trump was often incoherent? Yes. That doesn’t change the simple fact that the 81-year-old Biden appears — in the way he comports himself, in the way he speaks, and in the way he tries to convey ideas — feeble and unclear.

While the overwhelming majority of voters won’t make a decision based on those qualities, it is the kind of thing that can affect his appeal to low-information swing voters.

Lawrence O’Donnell made a great point of drawing a distinction between assessing the optics and audio of tonight’s event — which favored Trump — and the veracity of what was being said, which I’d argue are far more important and favored Biden.

The president was more factual than Trump. And in a sensible world, that would drive the discussion over the next few days. But I do feel he did a poor job vigorously communicating the absurdity and illiberal dangers Trump represents.

Biden made passing references to these dangers: He brought up Trump’s criminal conviction, his claims about “bloodshed” resulting from his potential loss in November, and his war on abortion rights. But at times these things felt like interludes in an album — brief departures from the topic at hand — when Trump’s illiberalism really should have been a more constant theme that Biden harped on.

Biden did not come out of this debate looking like a strong or capable leader. He meandered through his thoughts and stumbled over his words. He appeared unfocused and, at times, disoriented. His voice was hoarse, as Hayes previously pointed out, something that his campaign seemed to blame on having a cold.

Biden’s performance tonight has set off a panic among Democrats, NBC News reported. Before the debate even ended, there were calls for him to withdraw from the race, and at least one Democratic member of Congress suggested to NBC News that there should be “an open convention and a new Democratic nominee.” If Biden went into this debate hoping to reassure voters that he can ably serve four more years as president, he certainly failed.

Chris Hayes, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

The job of the president is making decisions. The job of a presidential candidate is to communicate. It just is. That’s the job. It’s a communications job. It is talking to people and communicating them, persuading them and trying to get people who don’t agree with you.

I think Joe Biden has a very good record on making decisions, and I think he’s a very poor communicator right now. That inability to communicate, I see this all the time. Joe Biden is not good at communicating his own record. And in the context of the campaign right now, his job — No. 1 — is communicating.

I think the reason there is all this anxiety in all this stuff is because ultimately, and particularly in the television age, a lot of the presidency is communicating. But particularly when you’re running for re-election, it is the thing that is the most important thing.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Joy Reid, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

Obviously, Joe Biden comes in with certain deficits; he has a stutter. It is more difficult for him to communicate for that reason. So there’s a lot to mitigate the way that he speaks, and you can understand it, and we’ve observed him for a long time.

That said, I too was on the phone throughout much of the debate, with Obama World people, with Democrats, with people who are political operatives, with the campaign. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic.

The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak. And you know, I’ll just reiterate what I said earlier: President Biden had one job tonight. He had to settle his own party. He had to settle Democrats.

Democrats are always panicking; they’re always scared. Joe Biden’s job was to reassure them tonight. His job was to calm his party. ... He did not do that. He did the opposite of that.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Nicolle Wallace, speaking on MSNBC moments ago:

There is a conversation happening inside Biden’s circle and certainly much more frank conversations happening inside the Democratic coalition. I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight. I think the conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him.

These comments have been slightly edited for length and clarity.