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How to watch the presidential debate: Time, channel guide for Trump-Biden showdown

U.S. President  Joe Biden  and former President  Donald Trump  will face off on Thursday in the  CNN Presidential Debate , the first of the 2024 election cycle and more than four months before the November election.

June 27 will mark the first match-up since 2020 featuring either Trump or Biden since neither participated in primary debates this cycle and the first-ever debate between a sitting and former president, according to the Atlanta-based network.

It’s also the first in decades not to be held by the  Commission on Presidential Debates , which has organized presidential debates since 1988.

Viewers can tune into the ‘CNN Presidential Debate,’ Thursday, June 27, at 8 pm Central time on CNN or simulcast on USA Today via YouTube. The debate, hosted by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will last 90 minutes with two  commercial breaks .

The  rules and setting of the debate  will be different from those that have come before. Notably, no live audience will be present on the Atlanta soundstage, and each candidate’s microphone will be cut off when it’s not their turn to speak.

Prep for the polls:   See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Candidates  won’t be allowed to talk  with their staff during breaks or bring any  pre-written notes  with them. They’ll be provided only a pen, pad, and water bottle.

No other candidates  met all of the criteria set out by CNN to participate in the CNN Presidential Debate, which included that they appear on enough state ballots to be able to win the necessary  270 electoral votes  and be polling at or above 15% in four different national polls of registered or likely voters.

The  second presidential debate  is set for September 10, hosted by  ABC News , with David Muir and Linsey Davis serving as moderators, as announced by the network.

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Fact-checking Biden and Trump's claims at the first debate

Forget alternative facts and political spin: Thursday's presidential debate was more like a tsunami of falsity.

Former President Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of misinformation on topics from terrorism to taxes during the first debate of the 2024 general election, while President Joe Biden flubbed figures and facts about military deaths and insulin prices.

More than a dozen NBC News reporters, editors and correspondents fact-checked the key claims the presidential candidates made Thursday night. Here they are by topic:

Economy, trade and health care

Fact check: did biden inherit 9% inflation.

“He also said he inherited 9% inflation. Now, he inherited almost no inflation, and it stayed that way for 14 months, and then it blew up under his leadership,” Trump said about Biden.

This is false.

The inflation rate when Biden took office in January 2021 wasn’t 9%. It was 1.4%. It has risen on his watch, peaking at about 9.1% in June 2022, but by last month it had come down to 3.3%. Pandemic-related stimulus policies put in place by both Trump and Biden were blamed, in part, for the rise in the inflation rate.

Fact check: Did Biden lower the cost of insulin to $15 a shot?

“We brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for an insulin shot — as opposed to $400,” Biden said.

Biden capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month under Medicare, not $15 a shot, and some drug companies have matched that cap. The price cap doesn’t apply to everyone , however. 

What’s more, Biden’s also significantly overstating how much insulin cost before the change. A 2022 report by the Department of Health and Human Services found that patients using insulin spent an average of $434 annually on insulin in 2019 — not $400 a shot.

Fact check: Did Trump lower the cost of insulin?

Trump claimed credit for lowering the cost of insulin for seniors, saying, “I am the one who got the insulin down for the seniors.”

That is mostly false.

In 2020, Trump created a voluntary program under Medicare Part D. The program allowed Medicare Part D plans to offer some insulin products for no more than $35 per month. It was active from 2021 to 2023, with fewer than half of the plans participating each year. 

In 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included a provision that lowered the out-of-pocket cost for people on Medicare to $35 a month and covered all insulin products. The cap didn’t apply to those with private insurance. However, after the law was implemented, insulin manufacturers voluntarily lowered the out-of-pocket cost to $35 a month for people with private insurance.

Fact check: Does Biden want to raise ‘everybody’s taxes’ by four times?

“Nobody ever cut taxes like us. He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times,” Trump claimed. “He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire.”

Biden’s tax plan “holds harmless for 98% of households,” said Kyle Pomerleau, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. And Biden wants to extend the majority of the Trump tax cuts, too, though he has advocated for hiking taxes on very high earners.

Fact check: Biden said the U.S. trade deficit with China is at its lowest since 2010

“We are at the lowest trade deficit with China since 2010,” Biden said.

This is true.

The U.S. had $279 billion more in imports than exports to China last year, the lowest trade deficit with the world’s second-largest economy since 2010. The highest deficit in recent years was $418 billion, in 2018, when Trump began a trade war with China. 

The decline has been driven largely by tariffs that Trump imposed in office and that Biden has maintained and in some cases expanded.

Fact check: Are immigrants taking ‘Black jobs’?

Asked about Black voters who are disappointed with their economic progress, Trump claimed Black Americans are losing their jobs because of illegal border crossings under Biden’s administration.

“The fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come through the border. They’re taking Black jobs now,” Trump said.

There’s no evidence that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from Black Americans. In fact, according  to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , the Black unemployment rate fell to 4.8% in April 2023 — an all-time low. Before that, the Black unemployment rate was as high as 10.2% in April 2021.

Immigration

Fact check: did trump end catch and release.

“We ended ‘catch and release,’” Trump said.

Trump did not end “catch and release,” a term used to describe the practice of releasing migrants into the country with court dates while they await court hearings. The U.S. doesn’t have enough facilities to detain every migrant who crosses the border until they can see judges, no matter who is president, so Trump — like Barack Obama before him and Biden after him — released many migrants back into the U.S.

Fact check: Did the Border Patrol union endorse Biden?

“By the way, the Border Patrol endorsed me, endorsed my position,” Biden said.

The National Border Patrol Council, the labor union for U.S. Border Patrol agents and staff members, has endorsed Trump. 

“The National Border Patrol Council has proudly endorsed Donald J. Trump for President of the United States,” the group’s vice president, Hector Garza, said in a statement shared exclusively with NBC News. 

The union posted on X , “to be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”

Biden may have been referring to a Senate immigration bill that he backed, which earned the union’s endorsement .

Fact check: Did Trump have ‘the safest border in the history of our country’?

“We had the safest border in the history of our country,” Trump said.

It’s a clear exaggeration. In 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic brought down border crossings, there were roughly 860,000 illegal border crossings, far more than in any year during the Obama administration.

Fact check: Trump says Biden is allowing ‘millions’ of criminals to enter U.S.

“I’d love to ask him … why he’s allowed millions of people to come in from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country,” Trump said.

There is no evidence of this.

Venezuela doesn’t share law enforcement information with U.S. authorities, making it very hard to verify criminal histories of immigrants coming to the U.S. But there’s no evidence that Venezuela is purposefully sending “millions” of people from mental institutions and prisons to the U.S.

Fact check: Did Virginia’s former governor support infanticide?

“They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth. After birth. If you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do so, and we’ll determine what we do with the baby. Meaning we’ll kill the baby. ... So that means he can take the life of the baby in the ninth month and even after birth. Because some states, Democrat-run, take it after birth. Again, the governor, the former Virginia governor, put the baby down so that we decide what to do with it. He’s willing to, as we say, rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill the baby. Nobody wants that to happen, Democrat or Republican; nobody wants it to happen,” Trump said.

While some Democrats support broad access to abortion regardless of gestation age, infanticide is illegal, and no Democrats advocate for it. Just 1% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks’ gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Trump first made the claim in 2019, after Virginia’s governor at the time, Ralph Northam, made controversial remarks in discussing an abortion bill. NBC News debunked the claim then, reporting that Northam’s remarks were about resuscitating infants with severe deformities or nonviable pregnancies. 

Asked on a radio program what happens when a woman who is going into labor desires a third-trimester abortion, Northam noted that such procedures occur only in cases of severe deformities or nonviable pregnancies. He said that in those scenarios, “the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

Terrorism, foreign policy and the military

Fact check: trump said there was ‘no terror’ during his tenure.

“That’s why you had no terror, at all, during my administration. This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him,” Trump said.

There were two ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks while Trump was president. The first occurred in October 2017, when Sayfullo Saipov killed eight people and injured a dozen more in a vehicle ramming attack on the West Side Highway bike path in New York City. The second occurred in December 2017, when Akayed Ullah injured four people when he set off a bomb strapped to himself.

Fact check: Biden suggests no troops died under his watch

“The truth is I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any this decade and any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did,” Biden said.

The Defense Department confirmed that 13 U.S. service members were killed in a suicide bombing attack at Abbey Gate at the Kabul airport by a member of ISIS-K as the U.S. was leaving Afghanistan. 

Environment

Fact check: did trump have the ‘best environmental numbers ever’.

“During my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage, actually,” Trump said.

The figure Trump is referring to is the fact that carbon emissions fell during his administration. He posted the talking points his former Environmental Protection Agency chief emailed him on social media before the debate.

And it’s true that carbon emissions are falling — they have been dropping for years. Emissions particularly plunged in 2020, dropping to levels around those in 1983 and 1984. That drop was in large part thanks to Covid lockdowns, and emissions rose again when air travel and in-person working resumed. 

Still, climate activists and experts are quick to note that those drops are nowhere near enough to head off predicted catastrophic effects of global warming. Other major countries cut their emissions at a much faster rate during the Trump administration.

Fact check: The Jan. 6 crowd was not ‘ushered in’ by the police

“If you would see my statements that I made on Twitter at the time and also my statement that I made in the Rose Garden, you would say it’s one of the strongest statements you’ve ever seen. In addition to the speech I made in front of, I believe, the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to, and I will tell you, nobody ever talks about that. They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol and, in many cases, were ushered in by the police. And as Nancy Pelosi said, it was her responsibility, not mine. She said that loud and clear,” Trump said.

During a lengthy answer to a question about whether he would accept the result of the 2024 election and say all political violence is unacceptable, Trump made several false statements, including the claim that police “ushered” rioters into the U.S. Capitol and that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was her responsibility to keep the chamber safe. 

Video and news reports of the Jan. 6 riots clearly captured the U.S. Capitol under attack by pro-Trump crowds who overran the law enforcement presence around and inside the complex. 

On Pelosi, Trump was most likely referring to video shot by Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra for an HBO documentary that showed her during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, tensely wondering how the Capitol was allowed to be stormed.

“We have responsibility, Terri,” Pelosi tells her chief of staff, Terri McCullough, as they leave the Capitol in a vehicle. “We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have. This is ridiculous.”

“You’re going to ask me in the middle of the thing, when they’ve already breached the inaugural stuff, ‘Should we call the Capitol Police?’ I mean the National Guard. Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi says in the video. 

“They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,” she says. 

Many allies of Trump have tried for the more than three years since the riots to paint Pelosi as somehow being responsible for the violence. Some Trump-backing Republicans have, for example, falsely claimed that she blocked the National Guard from going to the Capitol during the riots.

And everything else ...

Fact check: trump skipped world war i cemetery visit because the soldiers who died were ‘losers’.

Biden said that Trump “refused to go to” a World War I cemetery and that “he was standing with his four-star general” who said Trump said, “I don’t want to go in there, because they’re a bunch of losers and suckers.”

In 2018, during a trip to France, Trump canceled a visit to an American cemetery near Paris, blaming weather for the decision. 

But in September 2020, The Atlantic reported that Trump had axed the visit because he felt that those who’d lost their lives and been buried there were “losers.” The magazine cited “four people with firsthand knowledge of those discussions.”

According to The Atlantic, Trump said: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In another conversation, The Atlantic reported, Trump said the 1,800 American Marines who died were “suckers.” 

Several media outlets confirmed the remarks, and Trump’s former White House chief of staff John Kelly also said those specific comments were true.

Fact check: Trump says Biden didn’t run for president due to 2017 Charlottesville rally

“He made up the Charlottesville story, and you’ll see it’s debunked all over the place. Every anchor has — every reasonable anchor has debunked it, and just the other day it came out where it was fully debunked. It’s a nonsense story. He knows that, and he didn’t run because of Charlottesville. He used that as an excuse to run,” Trump said about Biden.

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 featured torch-bearing white supremacists marching to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue and chanting racist slogans like “You will not replace us.” It turned deadly when a car plowed into a crowd .

In recent months, Trump has downplayed the violence, saying it was “nothing” compared to recent pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses.

Meanwhile, Biden has always pointed to Trump’s 2017 comments as the primary reason he decided to seek the presidency in 2020, including in his campaign announcement video back in April 2019 .

Jane C. Timm is a senior reporter for NBC News.

Julia Ainsley is the homeland security correspondent for NBC News and covers the Department of Homeland Security for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Adam Edelman is a political reporter for NBC News.

Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Stanton Is Giving a Speech for the First Time

Question 18

Stanton is giving a speech for the first time. He thinks he is doing well, but his audience can tell that he is very insecure and nervous. This example can be categorized into which part of the Johari window.

A) Open area B) Blind area C) Hidden area D) unknown area E) Deceptive area

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Fact-checking the first Biden-Trump 2024 presidential debate

Trump made dozens of false claims, many of them his favorites. Biden made a few.

In the contentious first presidential debate between President Biden and former president Donald Trump , Trump confidently relied on false assertions that have been debunked repeatedly. Biden, in what was viewed as a faltering performance , stretched the truth on occasion.

Here’s a roundup of 35 of the most noteworthy claims that initially caught our interest, in the order in which they were made. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates.

“All he said was is [it’s] not that serious, to inject a little bleach in your arm.”

Trump did not say people should inject bleach in their arm. Instead, at a pandemic briefing in 2020 he spoke confusingly of an “injection inside” of lungs with a disinfectant. He made the remarks after an aide presented a study showing how bleach could kill the virus when it remained on surfaces. Trump later claimed he was speaking “sarcastically,” though he seemed serious at the time.

Readers can judge for themselves. Here are his full remarks on April 23 that year: “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

“We brought on in a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.”

The number of manufacturing jobs has rebounded since the pandemic, but growth in these jobs has essentially stalled. Only about 25,000 of the nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs were created since January 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and there has been virtually no increase at all this year.

The level reached in May, a tad under 13 million, is still below that of 2008, before the Great Recession. Left unsaid is that overall manufacturing jobs have declined by a third since a peak was reached in 1979, even as the number of available workers has climbed by nearly 60 percent.

“We have the greatest economy in the history of our country and we have never done so well.”

2024 presidential election

Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring, the president could certainly brag about the state of the economy in his first three years as president. But he ran into trouble when he made a play for the history books to say it was the best economy in U.S. history. By just about any important measure, the economy under Trump has not done as well as it did under Presidents Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton.

The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period paled in comparison with the 1950s and 60s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In postwar 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.

“A lot of credit for the military and no wars.”

This is not true. Trump often says he was the first president in 72 years not to have any wars, which takes us back to 1948, when Truman was elected in his own right after stepping up to finish Franklin D. Roosevelt’s final term months before the end of World War II. This is a more broad-based claim than a statement Trump made in his farewell address as president — that he had started no new wars.

Jimmy Carter , president from 1977 to 1981, not only never formally declared war or sought authorization to use force from Congress during his presidency, but military records show not a single soldier died in hostile action during his presidency. Eight military personnel died during the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue mission, but the military deems those as nonhostile deaths. (A helicopter collided with another aircraft.) A Marine and an Army soldier were also killed when a mob burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

At least 65 active-duty troops died in hostile action in Trump’s presidency, the records show, as he ramped up commitments in Iraq and Syria to fight the ISIS terrorist group while also launching airstrikes on Syria as punishment for a chemical weapons attack. Trump also escalated hostilities with Iran, including the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Trump said at the time the strike was carried out in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of 2001.

“The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back jobs that bounce back from the covid.”

This is false. Biden’s jobs record in his first three years certainly tops Trump’s performance. In the first three years of Trump’s term , about 6.5 million jobs were created — less than half the number created under Biden in the same time period. The number of jobs is now 6.2 million higher than the peak under Trump in February 2020, before the pandemic struck the economy.

Meanwhile, employment for the native-born population has increased by almost 6.8 million under Biden, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (We start from February 2021, the first full month that reflects employment under Biden.) Employment of foreign-born workers increased about 5 million from February 2021 though May, the bureau says . The agency says this figure includes more than just undocumented immigrants; it also includes legally admitted immigrants, including refugees, and temporary residents such as students and short-term workers.

“He had the largest tax cut in history, $2 trillion.”

“The only thing he was right about is I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”

This is false. Trump’s tax cut amounted to nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product , meaning it was far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP. Trump’s tax cut is the eighth-largest in the past century — and smaller than two tax cuts passed under Barack Obama. Trump’s tax cut was heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations.

“I also gave you the largest regulation cut in history.”

Trump’s claim of the most or biggest regulation cuts cannot be easily verified and appears to be false. There is no reliable metric on which to judge this claim — or to compare him to previous presidents. Many experts say the most significant regulatory changes in U.S. history were the deregulation of the airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration, which are estimated to provide consumers with $70 billion in annual benefits. A detailed November 2020 report by the Penn Program on Regulation concluded that “without exception, each major claim we have uncovered by the President or other White House official about regulation turns out to be exaggerated, misleading, or downright untrue.” The report said that the Trump administration had not reduced the overall number of pages from the regulatory code book and that it completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data was examined.

“I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power.”

It’s fair game to criticize Biden’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but Trump played a significant role in the outcome as well. In March 2020, Trump approved an agreement with the Taliban (not the Afghan government) for U.S. forces to leave the country by May 2021. Despite abandoning many of Trump’s policies, Biden decided to stick with this one, just stretching out the departure by a few months.

“Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible,” Trump proclaimed after Biden announced he would complete the withdrawal by that September.

At a political rally in June 2021, just weeks before the Afghan government collapsed, Trump bragged: “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think? Twenty-one years. They [the Biden administration] couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.”

By that time, the bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group, in its final congressionally mandated report, warned that a quick departure of U.S. troops would probably not succeed. “The probability of maintaining some sort of stability in Afghanistan after a prompt withdrawal of troops and a substantial reduction in aid is minimal,” the report said. “Almost every interlocutor the Study Group consulted used the word ‘catastrophic’ or a synonym thereof to describe the effects of this option.”

“Remember, more people died under his administration, even though we had largely fixed it. More people died under his administration than our administration, and we were right in the middle of it, something which a lot of people don’t like to talk about.”

This statement lacks context. Of the 1.2 million Americans who died of covid, about 60 percent died under Biden compared to 40 percent for Trump. But Trump was president during the pandemic for a much shorter time — about 10 months, compared with more than three years under Biden. So the monthly death toll under Trump is higher. A vaccine was created in record time, but it was left to the Biden administration to distribute it in an efficient manner.

With some justification , the Biden team can claim the Trump administration did not leave behind much of a national strategy beyond vaccinating health-care workers and people living in long-term care facilities, both of whom were at fixed sites where they could receive vaccines. Trump more than 20 times promised 100 million doses of vaccine would be delivered by the end of 2020 — a goal his administration badly failed to meet.

The Biden administration came up with ways to provide states with resources to deliver vaccines — which Trump had resisted — and to prevent states from hoarding doses. The new administration also fleshed out details of a national plan that had remained vague under Trump.

“We’re like a Third World nation between weaponization of his election, trying to go after his political opponent, all of the things he’s done, we’ve become like a Third World nation.”

Trump refers to “weaponization,” code for Biden’s supposedly using the resources of the U.S. government to target his political opponent. There is no evidence that Biden directed the Justice Department or local prosecutors to pursue prosecutions of Trump.

“I’d love to ask him why he allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”

This is poppycock. Immigration experts know of no effort by other countries to empty their prisons and mental institutions. As someone who came to prominence in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Trump appears to be channeling Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 1980 Mariel boatlift. About 125,000 Cubans were allowed to flee to the United States in 1,700 boats — but there was a backlash when it was discovered that hundreds of refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities.

Helen Fair, research associate at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research in Britain, which tracks the world prison population (except for a handful of countries), says the numbers keep growing. In 2013, 10.2 million people were in prison globally — and that had grown to 10.77 million in 2021. A preliminary estimate for February 2024, not ready to be published, indicates the population has grown even more. “In short, I would disagree with Donald Trump’s assertion,” she said.

“He’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in. They’re putting them on Medicare. They’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security.”

Undocumented immigrants improve the health of Social Security and Medicare by paying payroll taxes without receiving benefits.

In a fact check , we calculated the figure for Social Security payments made by undocumented immigrants is now about $27 billion. For Medicare, it should be at least $6 billion, as the Medicare tax is about 23 percent of the Social Security tax.

“Fifty-one years ago, you had Roe v. Wade and everybody wanted to get it [the power to legislate on abortion ] back to the states. Everybody without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders. … Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted it brought back to the States.”

This is absurd. The docket for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , the case in which the right to abortion was overturned, is filled with briefs from legal scholars saying it would be a mistake to overturn decades of legal precedent.

“The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth. If you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we’ll put the baby aside and we’ll determine what we do with the baby, meaning we’ll kill the baby.”

This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.

The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful emotional and even moral decisions.

About two-thirds of abortions occur at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and nearly 90 percent take place in the first 12 weeks, or within most definitions of the first trimester, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute , which favors abortion rights. About 5.5 percent of abortions take place after 15 weeks, with just 1.3 percent at 21 weeks or longer.

Meanwhile, Trump once again grossly mischaracterizes remarks by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D), a physician.

Northam told a radio show in 2019 that late-term abortion procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Critics suggested the governor was endorsing infanticide. His office later said Northam was referring to medical treatment, not ending the life of a baby.

“I changed in a way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally. That’s better than when he left office.”

Biden’s framing is misleading. He is referring to a Department of Homeland Security estimate that the seven-day average of migrant apprehensions dropped more than 40 percent to less than 2,400 encounters per day since he issued an executive action barring asylum at the southern border. But the numbers are still higher than when Trump was president.

“We had the safest border in history in that final couple of months of my presidency.”

This is false. Trump’s efforts to completely shut the border did not bear fruit until the coronavirus pandemic emerged in 2020 and he was able to turn away migrants by citing a public health emergency — but even then apprehensions at the southern border were lower than April 2017, shortly after he took office. Then the numbers began to spike again. Apprehensions in Trump’s final two months in office were much higher than in President Barack Obama’s last two months in office. Apprehensions were 43,251 in December 2016 and 31,576 in January 2017, the last two months of the Obama presidency, compared with 71,141 and 75,316 in Trump’s last two months. The highest number of apprehensions under Obama was 67,342, in March 2009.

“We have a thousand millionaires in America, I mean billionaires. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent taxes.”

We’ve given the president two Pinocchios for this claim. He’s referring to a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. But that estimate included unrealized gains in the income calculation. That’s not how the tax laws work. People are taxed on capital gains when they sell their stocks or other assets. So this is only a figure for a hypothetical tax system.

According to IRS data on the top 0.001 percent — 1,475 taxpayers with at least $77 million in adjusted gross income in 2020 — the average tax rate was 23.7 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers (income of at least $548,000) paid nearly 26 percent.

“I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the V.A. [Veterans Affairs]. He is the worst.”

This is a favorite falsehood of Trump’s. The approval rating — he usually cites the number of 91 percent — is based on an independent survey conducted in 2013, when Obama was in office. “Veterans strongly endorsed VA health care, with 91 percent offering positive assessments of inpatient care and 92 percent for outpatient care,” according to a news release from the Department of Veterans Affairs announcing the survey results in 2014, when Obama was still in office. A quarterly survey of veterans , obtained by Wisconsin Watch , found that trust in the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department reached a high of about 80 percent under both Trump and Biden. (The range was 55 percent to 80.2 percent under Trump and 75.8 percent to 80.4 percent under Biden.)

“There was a made-up quote, suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third-rate magazine that’s failing like many of these magazines. He made that up. He put it in commercials. We’ve notified him. We had 19 people that said, I didn’t say it.”

Trump strongly disputes this, but elements have been corroborated.

The original source for this story was a 2020 article in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg titled: “ Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers. ’” Goldberg, citing “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day,” reported that Trump canceled a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he did not believe it was important to honor American war dead.

“In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,’” Goldberg wrote. “In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood [during World War I] as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.”

However, John R. Bolton, then Trump’s national security adviser and later a sharp critic, said the trip was scrubbed because of weather.

In 2023, John F. Kelly, Trump’s White House chief of staff in 2018 — who had previously not commented on the controversy — issued a statement to CNN that Trump “rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Absent a recording, there’s no way to definitively confirm the story. Trump references 19 people who denied it — he used to say 25 — but when we examined their statements , 11 were not even with Trump and most of the others were just his communications staff.

There are numerous examples of Trump suggesting that he thinks soldiers who were wounded or died in combat were losers. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump derided Arizona Sen. John McCain’s legacy as a war hero, saying of his years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, “ I like people who weren’t captured .”

The Washington Post reported that Trump complained bitterly to Kelly that he didn’t understand why Kelly and others in the military treated McCain, who had been tortured as a POW, with such reverence. “Isn’t he kind of a loser?” Trump asked, according to an unnamed official.

“Fifty-one intelligence agents said that the laptop was Russia disinformation. It wasn’t. That came from his son Hunter.”

After the New York Post in 2020 said it had obtained emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, more than 50 former senior intelligence officials, including five CIA chiefs, signed a letter saying the release of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The letter itself artfully did not say the laptop was Russian disinformation — but in the presidential debates Biden used the letter to falsely claim the laptop story was a “Russian plan,” “a bunch of garbage,” “disinformation from the Russians” and “a smear campaign.”

The emails in question have since been confirmed to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“I got them [NATO] to put up hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Throughout the 2016 campaign, his presidency and now this election, Trump has demonstrated that he has little notion of how NATO is funded and operates. He repeatedly claimed that other members of the alliance “owed” money to the United States and that they were delinquent in their payments. Then he claimed credit for the money “pouring in” as a result of his jawboning, even though much of the increase in those countries’ contributions had been set under guidelines arranged during the Obama administration.

Since 2006, NATO guidelines have asked each member country to spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. In 2014, NATO decided to increase its spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, with the goal of reaching 2 percent in each country by 2024. This money does not end up in NATO’s coffers, as Trump often asserts. (Direct funding, for military-related operations, maintenance and headquarters activity, is based on gross national income — the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country — and is adjusted regularly.)

NATO figures show that the defense expenditures for NATO countries other than the United States have been going up — in a consistent slope — since 2014. As we noted, that’s when NATO decided to boost spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea.

“The secretary general of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I’ve ever seen.”

When he was president, Trump often attributed quotes to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that could not be confirmed, such as: “Secretary Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump’s biggest fan, to be honest with you. He goes around telling — he made a speech the other day. He said, ‘Without Donald Trump, maybe there would be no NATO.’ ” Stoltenberg said no such thing .

“I offered her [then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.”

Trump and his allies have invented the claim that he requested 10,000 troops before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, twisting an offhand comment into a supposed order to the Pentagon. A Colorado judge in November considered testimony on this point and dismissed a Trump aide’s account as “incredible” and “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”

In 2021, we explored this claim twice and debunked it , each time awarding Four Pinocchios. Then, in late 2022, the Jan. 6 committee released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provided new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.

That report underscored how Trump has little basis to make this claim, saying that he brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order.

“The Unselect Committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now and out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats, they destroyed and deleted all of the information they found because they found out we were right.”

This is false . Trump is seizing on House GOP claims that the Jan. 6 committee archive is missing some records. Not only is that claim rejected by the chair of the Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), but not even Republicans have claimed “all” of the documents are missing. Instead, we are talking about videos and some sensitive materials — and there is no indication any of these materials concerned the alleged troop order.

First, the committee did not include raw videos as part of the permanent records, but instead provided official transcripts of the video interviews. Thompson also said that some materials gathered by the committee contained “law enforcement sensitive operational details and private, personal information that, if released, could endanger the safety of witnesses.” That material was sent to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for archival purposes because the Jan. 6 committee dissolved before a full review of the sensitivity of this material was completed, Thompson wrote.

However, according to special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump, those sensitive materials from the White House and the Secret Service were provided to Trump months ago as part of pretrial discovery.

“Telling the Ukrainian people that … you change the prosecutor, otherwise you’re not getting $1 billion. … That’s quid pro quo.”

Biden’s role as vice president in Ukraine, and his son’s involvement there, make for a complex story that we have examined many times. Trump has seized on kernels of truth to build an appearance of scandal that resonated with his supporters. Trump argued that Biden had demanded a quid pro quo from the Ukrainians, but at its core, Trump’s tale was a fiction: There had been no prosecution or investigation of Biden’s son Hunter in this matter, and Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine were coordinated with the State Department and America’s European allies.

Here’s what really happened: During Obama’s second term, Biden was in charge of the Ukraine portfolio, keeping in close touch with the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko. Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and pressure Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as part of Ukraine’s escape from Russia’s orbit. But the Americans saw an obstacle to reform in Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor whom the United States viewed as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs.

During a 2015 visit to Ukraine, Biden privately told Poroshenko that loan guarantees would be withheld unless Shokin was replaced. After repeated calls and meetings between the two men over several months, Shokin was removed and the loan guarantees were provided. Trump had it completely backward. Biden was thwarting corruption, not abetting it.

Meanwhile, in 2014, Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company that was owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden showed questionable judgment in taking such a position while his father had a high-profile role in U.S.-Ukraine relations, and the possible conflict of interest was well-documented in news reports at the time.

Years after Biden forced the ouster of Shokin, the former prosecutor cried foul, falsely claiming he was removed because he had had Burisma in his sights — a story he peddled to Trump’s allies.

“They moved a high-ranking official, a DOJ, into the Manhattan DA’s office to start that case.”

False. There is no evidence that Biden has anything to do with this case, which was brought by Alvin Bragg , a local Democratic prosecutor. Bragg inherited the file from a previous prosecutor, Cyrus Vance Jr. The tenuous connection cited by Trump supporters is that Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors working for Bragg, served as acting associate attorney general, the third-ranking position at the Justice Department, before joining Bragg’s office in late 2022. But prosecutors change jobs all the time — and Bragg’s office had already been working on the case.

“He caused this inflation. I gave him a country with no essentially no inflation.”

Higher prices for goods and services would have happened no matter who was elected president in 2020. Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply-chain issues, as companies had reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe.

“It could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people.”

Trump never met a number that he could not double, triple or quadruple. Here, he manages to take a real number — about 5 million migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency — and increase it fourfold. Then he offers a prediction to make it sound even larger.

Here’s the reality: Customs and Border Protection recorded about 9.5 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through April. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.

CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways”— which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million.

That’s a big number, but apparently not big enough for Trump.

“What he’s done to the Black population is horrible, including the fact that for 10 years he called them superpredators … in the 1990s. We can’t forget that superpredators was his name, and he called it to them for 10.”

This is false. Biden sponsored the 1994 crime bill, now seen as a source of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. But Biden never used the term “superpredators” to describe African Americans.

That was Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in 2016.

“I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever.”

This is false. As president, Trump cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency and got rid of more than 70 environmental regulations, weakening climate protections. The United States in 2020 ranked 24th in the world, according to the authoritative Environmental Performance Index , a project of Yale and Columbia universities. It ranked 16th for air quality and 26th for water and sanitation. An analysis of EPA data released in 2020 found that after improving for the better part of a decade, air quality in the United States is worsening again — and could be associated with nearly 10,000 premature deaths. Fine particulate matter in the air that Americans breathe fell by 24 percent between 2009 and 2016. But concentrations increased by 5.5 percent in 2017 and 2018, and premature deaths associated with exposure to the dangerous particles spiked by 9,700 in 2018, the study said.

“The Paris [environmental] accord was going to cost us $1 trillion. And China, nothing, and Russia nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip-off of the United States.”

Each country set its own commitments under the Paris accord, so Trump’s comment makes little sense. He could have unilaterally changed the commitments offered by Obama, which is technically allowed under the accord. Indeed, the agreement is nonbinding, so there was nothing in the agreement that stops the United States from building, say, coal plants or gives permission to China or India to build coal plants. Trump’s estimates of the costs came from industry-funded studies that did not consider possible benefits from reducing climate change.

“He wants to raise everybody's taxes by four times.”

This is false. For five years, Biden has been consistent in saying he will not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year, which leaves about the top 2 percent of taxpayers. Biden reiterated this pledge in the budget plan he released earlier this year.

“He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China.”

There is no evidence that Biden — who unlike Trump has released decades of tax returns — gets money from China and thus is somehow compromised in his dealings with Beijing.

“I took two tests, cognitive tests. I aced them, both of them.”

Trump has frequently mischaracterized the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a test aimed at detecting dementia or cognitive decline. He has sometimes suggested that the test included identifying drawings of three animals such as a whale or a tiger. The creator of the test told The Washington Post it has never included the specific combination of animals described by Trump in any of its versions over the years.

“Well, I shouldn’t have to say that [political violence in any form is unacceptable]. But of course I believe that it’s totally unacceptable. And if you would see my statements that I made on Twitter at the time, and also my statement that I made in the Rose Garden, you would say it’s one of the strongest statements you’ve ever seen.”

This is revisionist history. In reality, as documented in the House select committee report on the Jan. 6 attack and other reporting, Trump was reluctant to take action to calm the situation, even as his staff pleaded with him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. Trump’s tweets were so inadequate , in the view of staff members, that many resolved to resign. Even his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. found the tweets to be inappropriate. Nearly three hours passed before Trump finally told the rioters to “go home.”

As for the video, it had its intended effect — the riot ended — but it came nearly three hours after Trump learned of the attack. The committee’s report suggests Trump issued the video only once it was clear the riot would fail to end the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

Then, after a video, Trump issued one more tweet that left many aides aghast and prompted many to resign: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

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Follow live updates from the 2024 campaign trail a day after President Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of 2024. Here are takeaways and fact checks from the debate .

Who is running: President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch .

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Seneca Falls Convention

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 2, 2024 | Original: November 10, 2017

The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Held in July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, the meeting launched the women’s suffrage movement, which more than seven decades later ensured women the right to vote.

What Was the Seneca Falls Convention?

Originally known as the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls Convention fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women. The meeting was held from July 19 to 20, 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York .

Despite scarce publicity, 300 people—mostly area residents—showed up. On the first day, only women were allowed to attend (the second day was open to men).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton , one of the meeting’s organizers, began with a speech on the convention’s goals and purpose:

“We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.”

The convention proceeded to discuss the 11 resolutions on women’s rights . All passed unanimously except for the ninth resolution, which demanded the right to vote for women. Stanton and African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave impassioned speeches in its defense before it eventually (and barely) passed.

Who Organized the Seneca Falls Convention 

The five women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention were also active in the abolitionist movement , which called for an end to slavery and racial discrimination. They included:

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton , a leading women’s rights advocate who was a driving organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention. Stanton first became invested in women’s rights after talking to her father, a law professor, and his students. She studied at Troy Female Seminary and worked on women’s property rights reform in the early 1840s.
• Lucretia Mott , a Quaker preacher from Philadelphia, was known for her anti-slavery, women’s rights and religious reform activism.
• Mary M’Clintock , the daughter of Quaker anti-slavery, temperance and women’s rights activists. In 1833, M’Clintock and Mott organized the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. At the Seneca Falls Convention, M’Clintock was appointed secretary.
• Martha Coffin Wright , Lucretia Mott’s sister. In addition to being a lifelong proponent of women’s rights, she was an abolitionist who ran a station on the Underground Railroad from her Auburn, New York, home.
• Jane Hunt , another Quaker activist, was a member of M’Clintock’s extended family through marriage.

Stanton and Mott first met in London in 1840, where they were attending the World Anti-Slavery Convention with their husbands. When the convention excluded women delegates solely based on their sex, the pair resolved to hold a women’s rights convention.

Did you know? Susan B. Anthony did not attend the Seneca Falls Convention. She would meet Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851 and spend the next fifty years fighting for women’s rights alongside her, including co-founding the American Equal Rights Association.

Back in the United States, women’s rights reformers had already begun contending for women’s rights to speak out on moral and political issues beginning in the 1830s. Around the same time in New York, where Stanton lived, legal reformers had been discussing equality and challenging state laws prohibiting married women from owning property. By 1848, equal rights for women was a divisive issue.

In July of 1848, Stanton, frustrated with her role staying at home raising kids, convinced Mott, Wright and M’Clintock to help organize the Seneca Falls Convention and write its main manifesto, the Declaration of Sentiments.

Together, the five women drafted a notice to announce “a Convention to discuss the social, civic and religious condition and rights of Woman” around Hunt’s tea table .

Declaration of Sentiments

The Declaration of Sentiments was the Seneca Falls Convention’s manifesto that described women’s grievances and demands. Written primarily by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, it distilled the importance of the Seneca Falls Convention: for women to fight for their Constitutionally guaranteed right to equality as U.S. citizens.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal,” the document stated. Inspired by the Declaration of Independence , the Declaration of Sentiments asserted women’s equality in politics, family, education, jobs, religion and morals.

The declaration began with 19 “abuses and usurpations” that were destined to destroy a woman’s “confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”

Because women didn’t have the right to vote—a right given to “the most ignorant and degraded men”—they were forced to submit to laws to which they did not consent. Women were denied an education and issued an inferior role in the church.

Moreover, women were required to be obedient to their husbands and prevented from owning property, including the wages they earned (which technically belonged to their husbands). And they received unequal rights upon divorce.

In light of these abuses, the declaration called on women to “throw off such government.”

The Resolutions

Next came a list of 11 resolutions, which demanded women be regarded as men’s equals. The resolutions called on Americans to regard any laws that placed women in an inferior position to men as having “no force or authority.” They resolved for women to have equal rights within the church and equal access to jobs.

The ninth resolution was the most controversial, as it called women “to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise,” or the right to vote.

Although its passage led many women’s rights proponents to withdraw their support, the ninth resolution went on to become the cornerstone of the women’s suffrage movement.

Reactions to the Seneca Falls Convention

In New York and across the U.S., newspapers covered the convention, both in support and against its objectives.

Horace Greely , the influential editor of The New York Tribune , echoed the opinion of many people at the time. While skeptical of giving women the right to vote, he argued that if Americans really believed in the Constitution , women must attain equal rights:

“When a sincere republican is asked to say in sober earnest what adequate reason he can give, for refusing the demand of women to equal participation with men in political rights, he must answer, None at all. However unwise and mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and such must be conceded.”

The Fight for Women’s Rights

Two weeks later, on August 2, 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention reconvened at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York, to reaffirm the movement’s goals with a larger audience.

In the following years, the convention’s leaders continued to campaign for women’s rights at state and nationwide events. Reformers frequently referred to the Declaration of Sentiments as they campaigned for women’s rights.

Between 1848 and 1862, the participants of the Seneca Falls Convention used the Declaration of Sentiments to “employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf.”

After 72 years of organized struggle, American women finally achieved the same rights as men at the polling box when, in 1920, women won the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution .

In November 1920, more than 8 million American women cast their vote in the presidential election. These voters included many Black women , though many others were prevented from voting by discriminatory laws, intimidation and other tactics of disenfranchisement. Native American women (and men) did not secure suffrage until four years later, when the Indian Citizen Act made Native Americans U.S. citizens. By 1965, the Voting Rights Act protected the right to vote for all American citizens—men and women.

Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Rutgers University . Elizabeth Cady Stanton. National Park Service . Jane Hunt. National Park Service . Lucretia Mott. National Park Service . Mary M’Clintock. National Park Service . Martha C. Wright. National Park Service . Report of the Women’s Rights Convention. National Park Service . Second Day of Seneca Falls Convention, July 20, 1848. Library of Congress . Seneca Falls Convention. The Encyclopedia of New York State . The Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Conference, 1848. Fordham University . The Seneca Falls Convention. Library of Congress . The Seneca Falls Convention: Setting the National Stage for Women’s Suffrage. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

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What would happen if Biden stepped aside from the 2024 presidential race?

By Kathryn Watson

June 28, 2024 / 5:32 PM EDT / CBS News

President Biden's lackluster debate performance Thursday night, marked by a raspy voice , gaping facial expressions, rambling answers on key questions and a perceived failure to refute several lies from former President Donald Trump, has fueled concern among many Democrats in Washington and sparked some discussion about whether there's a way to replace him on the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential election. 

Biden campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg, asked if the president would step aside after his debate performance, replied, "Absolutely not." Asked if there are conversations about Mr. Biden stepping aside, campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said, "There are no conversations about that whatsoever."

And a newly re-energized Mr. Biden showed no sign of backing away when he spoke at a campaign rally in North Carolina the following day. "I don't debate as well as I used to," he acknowledged, but added, "I know how to get things done. And I know, like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up."

Whether the 81-year-old presumptive Democratic nominee should be replaced is a question for Democrats. How that process would work in accordance with Democratic National Committee rules is another. 

Here's what the process could look like, according to experts and DNC rules. 

Biden would have to step aside voluntarily 

The president couldn't be forced to step down from the race, election law and process experts agree. It's something he would have to do voluntarily. Mr. Biden possesses nearly all of the delegates from the primary process and most states have already completed their primaries.

"This is all premised on Biden himself agreeing to do this," said John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the Electoral College process and continuity of government. 

Replacing a party nominee like Mr. Biden is "really hard and unlikely to happen," Fortier said. 

"I don't think it's going to happen because there are all sorts of reasons why it's difficult," he said. 

The timing of any replacement of a major party's nominee 

If Mr. Biden were to step aside, that would almost certainly happen "before or during the convention," Fortier said. 

Stepping aside before the Democratic convention is legally easy but politically difficult, said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in election law. 

"It's politically messy before the convention but it's not legally messy," Muller said. There is no legal impediment to his stepping aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Biden would likely have significant influence on his successor if he were to step aside before the convention

If Mr. Biden were to step aside before the convention, which begins on Aug. 19 in Chicago, he would likely have significant influence on the Democratic Party's choice of who would take his place on the ticket. The most likely candidate would be Vice President Kamala Harris, Muller and Fortier agree. 

"He could negotiate of course beforehand with people to try to get a common front," Fortier said. "By far the most likely outcome is that it would go to Kamala Harris."

Delegates are loyal party people, and Fortier said he suspects they "would be able to rally the troops" around one candidate. 

"I think Harris would be the default option because she is the vice president and is the presumptive vice presidential nominee," Muller said. 

If Harris were to become the presidential nominee before the convention, she would be able to pick her VP replacement, perhaps another big-name Democrat who performed well in an open convention. 

But it wouldn't have to be Harris.

A contested convention?

At this point, the Democratic National Committee is expected to hold a virtual roll call about a week and a half before the convention, on Aug. 7, to formally nominate Mr. Biden and Harris, in order to meet a ballot certification deadline in Ohio on that date.

The convention is scheduled to begin Aug. 19 in Chicago, but an Ohio law requires that presidential candidates formally be nominated 90 days before Election Day. 

Because of the virtual roll call, "I don't know what that looks like in the event that there's going to be a contested convention," Muller said. 

If Mr. Biden did step aside and Democrats were unclear on who the nominee should be, they could decide to jettison the virtual roll call and cede Ohio to Trump, in order to give candidates a little longer to prepare their pitches for the convention.

DNC rules say delegates "elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them."

Fortier says this means delegates must vote for Mr. Biden on the first ballot. 

"The delegates are bound on the first vote, and Biden would essentially decline or release them, and then we move onto the second round where everybody is uncommitted," he said, if Mr. Biden steps aside. 

Muller said there could be some room for interpretation, and if Democrats were to coalesce around a new candidate ahead of the convention, they might be able to vote for someone other than Mr. Biden. 

"I think there would be a strong incentive for people to not vote for Mr. Biden, but to show strength for some other candidate."

If a first ballot is inconclusive, so-called superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials in the party — could vote in subsequent ballots. And delegates would continue to vote until a nominee is secured. That could be a lengthy process, depending on how united or divided delegates are. 

If Democrats don't throw their support to one candidate, it could get messy. 

Past convention fights

Convention fights can be long and grueling. The 1924 Democratic National Convention took a record 103 ballots to nominate presidential nominee John W. Davis and vice presidential nominee Charles W. Bryan, who went on to lose in November. 

In 1968, Robert Kennedy — father of current independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — jumped in the race late, after President Lyndon Johnson announced in late March he wouldn't seek reelection. Kennedy was on track to win more delegates than anti-war candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy when he was gunned down just after his speech following his victory in the California primary. 

Instead of nominating an existing candidate, the Democratic Party chose then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's pick, at the convention in Chicago. Humphrey lost that November to Richard Nixon. 

If Democrats held a contested convention today, presidential hopefuls would go and make their pitch to the state delegations. 

But again, Fortier said replacing the top of the ticket is "really hard and unlikely to happen." 

• Democratic Party
• 2024 Elections

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

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Declaration of Sentiments

Text of stanton's declaration.

• Trebuchet MS

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Delivered at the Seneca Falls Convention in July, 1848

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.

Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.

He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of the women - the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.

After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration.

He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.

He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.

He allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.

He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.

He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.

Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.

Similarly to the Declaration of Independence, the final paragraph of Stanton’s declaration is a call to action. Stanton encourages women to fight for change and hopes that these conventions, or similar conventions, continue to grow. Although the Seneca Falls Convention was radical for declaring that women should have the right to vote and caused many supporters to back away from women’s rights, the convention did in fact serve as the impetus for change. Two weeks later, another successful women’s rights assembly took place at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. Since these two historic events in 1848, women’s rights conventions have been held annually across the country. Although Stanton would never live to see it, her revolutionary words and efforts provided the groundwork for the 1920 adoption of the 19th amendment, which ratified women’s suffrage and made it illegal to deny any citizen the right to vote based on sex.

In a final appeal to pathos, Stanton employs impassioned diction to draw attention to the systematic oppression of women and the effects of the aforementioned grievances. Without the basic rights to vote, to financially support oneself, and to make decisions regarding their marriage, women are “aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived”—an emotionally charged phrase Stanton employs to arouse sympathy in her audience and readers.

The noun “disfranchisement” [sic] or “disenfranchisement” means the state of being deprived of the right to vote. Stanton saw the disenfranchisement of women as one of the major hurdles of the women’s rights movement.

The adjective “abject” means cast down to the lowest, most spiritless state or condition. In this final grievance, Stanton claims that under men’s control, women lose their own identity and fall into despondency and hopelessness.

The verb “usurped” means to seize illegally; the noun “prerogative” refers to an exclusive right. In the Hebrew bible, the word “Jehovah” is one of the seven names for the God of Israel. This phrase suggests that men have commandeered God’s position by controlling women’s rights. Stanton claims to the contrary that “her conscience” belongs to the true, real God, not to the men who have falsely usurped the authority of God.

Today, this grievance is known as a “double standard,” a term used to describe how one group of people is treated differently than another. More particularly, this term is used to describe how a set of ethical values is more rigorously applied to women than to men.

The adjective “Apostolic” means relating to the twelve biblical apostles. Here Stanton discusses the spiritual authority these apostles held and passed onto other religious leaders in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches.

Although the majority of American colleges were male-only, Oberlin College, which was founded in 1833, was the first college to admit both men and women. At Oberlin, women were allowed to study in the Female and Teacher Departments. Four years after its founding, Oberlin permitted women to enter the Collegiate Department, and in 1841, women were able to receive Bachelor of Arts degrees.

The adjective “scanty” refers to an insufficient quantity; the word “remuneration” means to pay the equivalent for an expense. Through the process of coverture and the monopolization of women’s rights, men prevented women from working and making their own living. Instead, women were completely dependent on men, without the proper means or resources to sustain themselves financially.

During the 19th century, divorce was an especially controversial and taboo topic. Divorces were often difficult to attain due to strict rules that restricted couples from doing so. Sometimes, they were granted under the catch-all “omnibus” rule that allowed divorce on the grounds of abuse or adultery. However, even then, evidence was required to prove wrongdoing to the court. Divorce continued to carry a heavy stigma well into 20th century.

The noun “chastisement” means the act of scolding or censuring someone. Under the laws of coverture, a woman is legally bound and subservient to her husband, who acts as her “master.” He rules her every move and can “deprive her of her liberty.” The woman cannot raise her voice or live freely; she must remain docile and passive.

In 1848, fragments of English common law continued to subsist in American law. One of the major tenets of this antiquated law system was known as “coverture,” a legal doctrine by which a married woman was considered to be under her husband’s protection. A woman’s legal status were “covered”—also called “feme covert” in legal jargon—meaning that her rights and financial independence were subsumed by her husband’s. In William Blackstone’s 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England , the author describes how the “legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover , she performs everything.” In the 1845 novel Essays on Human Rights and their Political Guaranties , Elisha P. Hurlbut further demonstrates the dehumanizing effects of this law, writing that “in the eye of the law” a married woman “exists not at all.” Like Stanton says here, married women are “civilly dead”; they are placed, as Hurlbut writes, in a “legal tomb.”

This point speaks to New York’s 1846 constitution, which defined eligible voters strictly as “males.” White men were granted universal suffrage and some black men who owned sufficient property could vote. After the Civil War in 1870 and the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, it was illegal to prohibit citizens of color from voting. However, it wasn’t until 1920 with the passing of the 19th Amendment that the United States provided both men and women equal voting rights.

Through a list of sixteen facts, Stanton appeals to the audience’s sense of pathos . The audience of women would likely have identified with each grievance on a personal level. They would have understood how women are acquiesced through an oppressive system of patriarchy, strict marriage laws, and disenfranchisement. In addition, the poignant diction Stanton employs in words like “oppressed” and “dead” would have inspired recognition in her audience.

The first point of grievance Stanton mentions is that women do not have the ability to vote. Stanton saw suffrage or “elective franchise” as perhaps the most important right women needed in order to gain autonomy in society. Without enfranchisement and the right to vote, women were essentially voiceless in the public sphere. Ironically, on the second day of the convention, when the “Declaration of Sentiments” was adopted, the convention also considered twelve resolutions. Eleven passed unanimously, but the last one—women’s “sacred right to the elective franchise”—aroused much debate because it was so controversial at the time. Eventually when Frederick Douglass joined Stanton’s side, all resolutions passed, including the resolution for enfranchisement.

So begins the list of “sentiments”—or grievances—in Stanton’s declaration. In the Declaration of Independence, the pronoun “he” explicitly referred to the tyrannical King George III. However, here the pronoun “he” is a form of collective synecdoche, a type of figurative speech in which the part represents the whole. “He” implicitly stands in for “American men.” Each point of sentiments begins with this pronoun to demonstrate the direct injustices perpetrated by men on women.

In an exact reiteration of the Declaration of Independence, Stanton appeals to her audience’s sense of logos or reason by providing “facts” in the following section. By submitting her facts to the “candid world,” Stanton suggests that her audience is impartial and unbiased, having never witnessed such an unprecedented moment in the history of women’s rights.

The word “despotism” refers to a political system wherein one individual has absolute authority over others. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson uses the word to characterize King George III’s tyrannical rule. Here, the word takes on an entirely different meaning. Stanton views the patriarchal system of society as a form of despotism that has absolute authority over women—total “tyranny over her .”

Used in both declarations, the noun “prudence” means caution or the quality of having good sense in practical affairs. In both documents, the word is used to claim that governments should not be changed for inconsequential reasons; instead they should be changed only when faced with “a long train of abuses and usurpations.” Through diction, Jefferson was able to demonstrate that Revolution was viable. Stanton does the same, claiming that it is prudent and reasonable for women to resist oppression any further.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson writes that “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish [a destructive form of government].” Here, Stanton writes that “it is the right of those who suffer from [a destructive form of government] to refuse allegiance to it.” While the former encourages Americans to completely abolish ties to the monarchy, the latter encourages women to stand up against the system of oppression. Although the wording changes only slightly, the meaning behind those words change vastly.

The mirroring structure Stanton employs continues throughout the course of this entire paragraph, again nearly a word-for-word reproduction of Jefferson’s founding text. However, Stanton subverts the original by adding modifications and implementing slight but significant subsitutons. Now, the meaning of her words take on an added layer of complexity. For example, in the opening line—originally “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal”—Stanton adds the word “women.” Through this augmentation, Stanton demonstrates the failure of the Declaration of Independence to include women and thus integrates them into her own declaration. In addition, the original wording about “colonies,” “the present King of Great Britain,” or “these States,” is replaced with the phrases “women under this government,” “mankind,” and “on the part of man toward woman.” Stanton reroutes the original document to fit her purposes and in doing so highlights the failures of the nation to include women at its founding.

In the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson delineates the purpose of his document. Here, Stanton reproduces the same structure but establishes her differing purpose: to lay out women’s grievances and provide a call to action. By placing her thesis early on in the document, as the Founding Fathers did in theirs, Stanton creates a structure that allows her to easily list her grievances in a logical manner.

The ending clauses of this introductory paragraph nearly exactly mirrors the Declaration of Independence, which states that “the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to the separation.” By alluding to one of the nation’s most important founding doctrines and creating a parallel between these two documents nearly word-for-word, Stanton asserts her declaration’s validity as a critical revolutionary document for women’s rights. The audience of women at the convention would immediately recognize the parallel Stanton draws and identify her words as ones of utmost importance.

Stanton was a rebellious intellectual, passionate suffragist, and practiced orator who understood the power of language to appeal to her audience. In a brilliant rhetorical move, Stanton establishes her credibility and appeals to the ethos of her audience by mirroring the structure and diction of the “Declaration of Sentiments” to those of the United States Declaration of Independence . Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced the impetus for the American Revolution. By mirroring the document that delineated all the grievances of British rule and established autonomy for the thirteen colonies, Stanton makes a strong claim about women’s rights: that women—like the thirteen colonies almost seventy-five years prior—have long suffered grievances at the hands of an oppressive force, namely American patriarchal society and strict doctrines of marriage. Straightaway, Stanton asserts her authority, mirroring the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence by stating “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary…” However, the phrasing and meaning of the declaration diverge when Stanton lays out her thesis, claiming that one “portion” of society has been usurped by another.

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Opinion Maureen Dowd

Sean Penn, Rebel With Many Causes

Credit... Balazs Gardi for The New York Times

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By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Malibu, Calif.

• June 22, 2024

Don’t mellow my harsh, dude.

I was coming to talk to Sean Penn, the notorious Hollywood hothead who helped launch the word “dude” into the American bloodstream when he played stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli in the 1982 classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

I was nervous because the Times photographer was already inside the Spanish-style ranch house with Penn, who has a history of throwing punches at paparazzi. I hurried past Penn’s three surfboards and silver Airstream in the front yard, half expecting to see the un-pacific denizen of the Pacific Coast wrestling on the floor with the photographer.

Nah. Penn, in dark T-shirt, Columbia utility pants and sneakers, was charming, trailed by his adoring dogs, a golden retriever and a German shepherd rescue puppy.

When I joked that I was relieved to see him treating the photographer sweetly, he laughed. “When I did my 23andMe,” he said, “I thought I might be part Hopi because they don’t like to be photographed.”

Penn, a lifelong Malibu resident, pointed in the direction of his old grade school in the days of a more rural Malibu. He said he gets up at 5:30 a.m. and goes, barefoot, out to his wood shop. “I even forget to smoke for five hours.”

As it turns out, Penn has finally mellowed.

At 63, the weathered, tattooed rebel with many causes is a certified humanitarian — riding the crest into dangerous crises around the globe and saving lives in New Orleans and Haiti after disasters — and a crusading documentarian. He started out making the documentary “Superpower,” thinking it would be a story of how Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian, ascended to Ukraine’s presidency. But then Vladimir Putin pounced.

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Trump gloats and mocks Biden in first post-debate rally

CHESAPEAKE, Va. - Former President Donald Trump reveled Friday in his debate success against current President Joe Biden, saying their primetime showdown watched by nearly 50 million Americans demonstrated that the Democratic incumbent is simply not up to the job.

“Man, that was a big one,” Trump told thousands of supporters who trekked to a farm in southeastern Virginia, a state Trump hopes to take from Biden in November.

Trump constantly mocked Biden shortly after his Democratic rival, during a North Carolina rally , said that voters will ultimately hold the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee accountable for his many lies about the country.

In his Virginia speech, Trump made fun of Biden over his intelligence, honesty, and economic policies; at one point, Trump joked that age was not Biden’s problem.

“It’s his competence,” Trump said.

Trump also praised the Supreme Court ruling that requires a lower court review into how the Justice Department applied the law to bring obstruction charges against hundreds of the Jan. 6 rioters. He called for release of defendants affected by the ruling. “Free the J6 hostages now,” said the former president, who is also facing four federal criminal counts tied to his efforts to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Biden.

A busy July ahead: Sentencing, VP, and RNC

Trump's Virginia rally also came before a series of pivotal events for the former president. He's scheduled on July 11 to be sentenced for his conviction in the New York hush money trial. In the weeks ahead, Trump plans to pick a running mate and headline the Republican nominating convention , to be held July 15-18 in Milwaukee .

The Biden campaign, under criticism from fellow Democrats over Thursday night's debate performance , sought to change the narrative by focusing on Trump's repeated lies on issues ranging from border security to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In a memo to the media, the Biden team said independent voters were turned off by Trump's attacks on the president. "The more voters heard from Donald Trump, the more they remembered why they dislike him," the memo said.

During his speech in Raleigh, N.C., Biden rejected calls that he step aside. His remarks focusied on Trump's lies during the debate, on everything from the circumstances of the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, to his culpability in the four sets of indictments against him.

"I don't know what you did last night, but I spent 90 minutes on the stage debating a guy who has the morals of an alley cat," the president said.

Is Virginia in play in November?

Trump and his allies say they believe they can flip a few Biden states, though their list includes long-time Democratic bastions like New York and New Jersey.

Virginia (and Minnesota) seem more realistic given large pockets of Republican voters. Virginia also elected a Republican governor in 2021, Glenn Youngkin .

Trump and his aides are even more confident about Virginia - and other states - in light of Biden’s struggles during the debate. “The (Virginia) race is now tied,” said senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita.

Right after the debate, LaCivita said Biden's struggles in the debate will be part of future ads: "I discuss ad strategy but ... duh." He added: "Clearly there's a lot of material that the debate produced, and we'll obviously utilize a lot of that material."

Democrats are seeking to counter Trump's efforts in Virginia, including an appearance in the state just before the debate on Thursday by First Lady Jill Biden.

Barbara Nesbitt, a member of the Virginia Democratic Party, agreed that Virginia is a "purple state" that could be won by either party. She also questioned whether Trump could get the job done.

“He’s a felon, why is he even allowed to run?" she said. "I don’t get it. Republicans have a long way to go, if that’s their choice, it does not say a lot for them.” 

Charles “Charlie” Stanton, 69, chair of the Norfolk City Democratic Party, called Youngkin's narrow victory a "lightning strike" that Trump will not able to repeat.

“Trump and his folks are going to try to make it so, but it’s not going to happen." he said, adding that most Virginia voters have "buyer's remorse" about Youngkin.

In an earlier interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said he still believes Biden "will be the nominee," despite Democratic suggestions that the president give up the race.

As for Thursday's debate against Biden, Trump said: "No one else would have been better."

'Taking advantage of this old guy'

Trump backers who braved a hot afternoon to see Trump speak at the local farm told USA TODAY they thought the Republican won the debate, especially given Biden's troubles.

“There were times when he did not seem like he was fully present and that he was really struggling," said Elizabeth Skertic, 37, a Virginia voter who attended Trump’s rally on Friday.

“If they keep with Biden, I think it’s going to be a pretty easy win [for Republicans] for most of Virginia,” she said.

Rhonda Kundrat, 51, a resident of Chesapeake, said she was thrilled by Trump’s performance during Thursday’s debate.

“It was also said, because – I’m definitely not a Joe Biden fan but he’s the same age as my dad and the fact that they’re [the Democratic Party] taking advantage of this old guy who clearly has all kinds of problems for their political gain is extremely sad,” she said.

Emmanuel Martinez, 26, from Richmond City, said he considers himself to be more of a center-right Republican. He described Thursday’s debate as brutal. 

“I always considered Joe to be a good guy,” he said. “Just as an American, not as a Republican or Democrat it was hard to watch, and it was hard to not make Trump look good.”

Ed Hendrickson, a military veteran and Virginia resident said he watched part of the debate. He wished Trump had answered more of the questions posed to him by the moderators.

“I don’t think either one of them hit the mark,” he said. “Too much catty-ness, going back and forth.”

Contributing: Zac Anderson from Atlanta.

Address Delivered at Seneca Falls

• July 19, 1848

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I should feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you at this time, having never before spoken in public, were I not nerved by a sense of right and duty, did I not feel the time had fully come for the question of woman’s wrongs to be laid before the public, did I not believe that woman herself must do this work; for woman alone can understand the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of her own degradation. Man cannot speak for her, because he has been educated to believe that she differs from him so materially, that he cannot judge of her thoughts, feelings, and opinions by his own. Moral beings can only judge of others by themselves. The moment they assume a different nature for any of their own kind, they utterly fail.…

Among the many important questions which have been brought before the public, there is none that more vitally affects the whole human family than that which is technically called Women’s Rights. Every allusion to the degraded and inferior position occupied by women all over the world has been met by scorn and abuse. From the man of highest mental cultivation to the most degraded wretch who staggers in the streets do we meet ridicule, and course jests, freely bestowed upon those who dare assert that woman stands by the side of man, his equal, placed here by her God, to enjoy with him the beautiful earth, which is her home as it is his, having the same sense of right and wrong, and looking to the same, and looking to the same Being for guidance and support. So long has man exercised tyranny over her, injurious to himself and benumbing to her faculties, that few can nerve themselves to meet the storm; and so long has the chain been about her that she knows not there is a remedy.…

As the nations of the earth emerge from a state of barbarism, the sphere of woman gradually becomes wider, but not even under what is thought to be the full blaze of the sun of civilization, is it what God designed it to be. In every country and clime does a man assume the responsibility of marking out the path for her to tread. In every country does he regard her as a being inferior to himself, and one whom he is to guide and control. From the Arabian Kerek, whose wife is obliged to steal from her husband to supply the necessities of life; from the Mahometan who forbids pigs, dogs, women and other impure animals, to enter a Mosque, and does not allow a fool, madman or woman to proclaim the hour of prayer; from the German who complacently smokes his meerschaum, while his wife, yoked with the ox, draws the plough through its furrow; from the delectable carpet-knight, who thinks an inferior style of conversation adapted to woman; to the legislator, who considers her incapable of saying what laws shall govern her, is the same feeling manifested.…

Let us consider … man’s superiority, intellectually, morally, physically.

Man’s intellectual superiority cannot be a question until woman has had a fair trial. When shall we have had our freedom to find out our own sphere, when we shall have had our colleges, our professions, our trades, for a century, a comparison then may be justly instituted. When woman, instead of being taxed to endow colleges where she is forbidden to enter – instead of forming sewing societies to educate “poor, but pious,” young men, shall first educate herself, when she shall be just to herself before she is generous to others; improving the talents God has given her, and leaving her neighbor to do the same for himself, we shall not hear so much about this boasted superiority.…

In consideration of man’s claim to moral superiority, glance now at our theological seminaries, our divinity students, the long line of descendants from our Apostolic fathers, the immaculate priesthood, and what do we find there? Perfect moral rectitude in every relation of life, a devoted spirit of self-sacrifice, a perfect union of thought, opinion and feeling among those who profess to worship the one God, and whose laws they feel themselves call upon to declare a fallen race? Far from it.… Is the moral and religious life of this class what we might expect from minds said to be fixed on such mighty themes? By no means.… The lamentable want among principle among our lawyers, generally, is too well known to need comment. The everlasting backbiting and bickering of our physicians is proverbial. The disgraceful riots at our polls, where man, in performing the highest duty of citizenship, ought surely to be sober-minded, the perfect rowdyism that now characterizes the debates in our national Congress, – all these are great facts which rise up against man’s claim for moral superiority. In my opinion, he is infinitely woman’s inferior in every moral quality, not by nature, but made so by a false education. In carrying out his own selfishness, man has greatly improved woman’s moral nature, but by an almost total shipwreck of his own. Woman has now the noble virtues of the martyr. She is early schooled to self-denial and suffering. But man is not so wholly buried in selfishness that he does not sometimes get a glimpse of the narrowness of his soul, as compared with woman. Then he says, by way of an excuse for his degradation, “God made woman more self-denying than man. It is her nature. It does not cost her as much to give up her wishes, her will, her life, even, as it does him. He is naturally selfish. God made him so.”

No, I think not.… God’s commands rest upon man as well as woman. It is as much his duty to be kind, self-denying and full of good works, as it is hers. As much his duty to absent himself from scenes of violence as it is hers. A place or position that would require the sacrifice of the delicacy and refinement of woman’s nature is unfit for man, for these virtues should be as carefully guarded in him as in her. The false ideas that prevail with regard to the purity necessary to constitute the perfect character in woman, and that requisite for man, has done an infinite deal of mischief in the world. I would not have woman less pure, but I would have man more so. I would have the same code of morals for both.…

Let us now consider man’s claim to physical superiority. Methinks I hear some say, surely, you will not contend for equality here. Yes, we must not give an inch, lest you take an ell. We cannot accord to man even this much, and he has no right to claim it until the fact has been fully demonstrated.… We cannot say that the woman might be physically, if the girl were allowed all the freedom of the boy in romping, climbing, swimming, playing whoop and ball. Among some of the Tartar tribes of the present day, women manage a horse, hurl a javelin, hunt wild animals, and fight an enemy as well as a man. The Indian women endure fatigues and carry burdens that some of our fair-faced, soft-handed, moustached young gentlemen would consider quite impossible for them to sustain. The Croation and Wallachian women perform all the agricultural operations in addition to their domestic labors, and it is no uncommon sight in our cities, to see the German immigrant with his hands in his pockets, walking complacently by the side of his wife, whilst she bears the weight of some huge pack or piece of furniture upon her head. Physically, as well as intellectually, it is use that produces growth and development.

But there is a class of objectors who say they do not claim superiority, they merely assert a difference. But you will find by following them up closely, that they soon run this difference into the old groove of superiority.…

We have met here today to discuss our rights and wrongs, civil and political, and not, as some have supposed, to go into the detail of social life alone. We do not propose to petition the legislature to make our husbands just, generous and courteous, to seat every man at the head of a cradle, and to clothe every woman in male attire. None of these points, however important they may be considered by leading men, will be touched in this Convention.…

We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed – to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love; laws test against such unjust laws as these that we are assembled today, and to have them, if possible, forever erased from our statute-books, deeming them as a shame and a disgrace to a Christian republic in the nineteenth century.…

And, strange as it may seem to many, we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of government under which we live.… We have no objection to discuss the question of equality, for we feel that the weight of argument lies wholly with us, but we wish the question of equality kept distinct from the question of rights, for the proof of the one does not determine the truth of the other. All white men in this country have the same rights, however they may differ in mind, body or estate. The right is ours. The question now is, how shall we get possession of what rightfully belongs to us. We should not feel so sorely grieved if no man who had not attained the full stature of Webster, Clay, Van Buren, or Gerrit Smith could claim the right of elective franchise. But to have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman to be longer quietly submitted to. The right is ours. Have it we must. Use it we will. The pens, the tongues, the fortunes, the indomitable wills of many women are already pledged to secure this right. The great truth, that no just government can be formed without the consent of the governed, we shall echo and re-echo in the ears of the unjust judge, until by continual coming we shall weary him.…

But what would woman gain by voting? Men must know the advantages of voting, got they all seem very tenacious about the right. Think you, if woman had a vote in this government, that all those laws affecting her interests would so entirely violate every principle of right and justice? Had woman a vote to give, might not the office-holders and seekers propose some change in her condition? Might not Woman’s Rights become as great a question as free soil?

“But you are already represented by your fathers, husbands, brothers and sons?” Let your statute books answer the question. We have had enough of such representation. In nothing is woman’s true appiness consulted. Men like to call her an angel – to feed her on what they think sweet food – nourishing her vanity; to make her believe that her organization is so much finer than theirs, that she is not fitted to struggle with the tempests of public life, but needs their care and protection!! Care and protection – such as the wolf gives the lamb – such as the eagle the hare he carries to his eyrie!! Most cunningly he entraps her, and then takes from her all those rights which are dearer to him than life itself – rights which have been baptized in blood – and the maintenance of which is even now rocking to their foundations the kingdoms of the Old World.

The most discouraging, the most lamentable aspect our cause wears is the indifference, indeed, the contempt, with which women themselves regard the movement. Where the subject is introduced, among those even who claim to be intelligent and educated, it is met by the scornful curl of the lip, and by expression of ridicule and disgust. But we shall hope better things of them when they are enlightened in regard to their present position. When women know the laws and constitutions under which they live, they will not publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied, nor their ignorance, by declaring they have all the rights they want.…

Let woman live as she should. Let her feel her accountability to her Maker. Let her know that her spirit is fitted for as high a sphere as mans, and that her soul requires food as pure and exalted as his. Let her live first for God, and she will not make imperfect man an object of reverence and awe. Teach her her responsibility as a being of conscience and reason, that all earthly support is weak and unstable, that her only safe dependence is the arm of omnipotence, and that true happiness springs from duty accomplished. Thus will she learn the lesson of individual responsibility for time and eternity. That neither father, husband, brother, or son, however willing they may be, can discharge her high duties of life, or stand in her stead when called into the presence of the great Searcher of Hearts at the last day.…

Let me here notice one of the greatest humbugs of the day, which has long found for itself the most valuable tool in woman – “The Education Society.” The idea to me, is simply absurd, for women, in their present degradation and ignorance, to form sewing societies for the education of young men for the ministry. An order of beings above themselves, claiming to be gifted with superior powers, having all the avenues to learning, wealth and distinction thrown freely open to them, who, if they had but all the energy to avail themselves of all these advantages, could easily secure an education for themselves, while woman herself, poor, friendless, robbed of all her rights, oppressed on all sides, civilly, religiously and socially, must needs go ignorant herself. Now, is not the idea preposterous, for such a being to educate a great, strong, lazy man, by working day and might with her needle, stitch, stitch, and the poor widow always throws in her mite, being taught to believe that all she gives for the decoration of churches and their blackcoated gentry, is given unto the Lord. I think a man, who, under such conditions, has the moral hardihood to take an education a the hands of woman, and such an expense to her, should, as soon as he graduates, with all his honors thick upon him, take the first ship for Turkey, and there pass his days in earnest efforts to rouse the inmates of the harems to a true sense of their degradation, and not, as is his custom, immediately enter our pulpits to tell us of his superiority to us, “weaker vessels,” – his prerogative to command, ours to obey, his duty to preach, ours to keep silence.… The last time when an appeal of this kind was made to me, I told the young girl that I would send her to school a year, if she would go, but I would never again give one red cent to the Education Society. And I do hope that every Christian woman, who has the least regard for her sex, will make the same resolve. We have worked long enough for man, and at a most unjust and unwarrantable sacrifice of self, yet he gives no evidence of gratitude, but has, thus far, treated his benefactors with scorn, ridicule and neglect.…

One common objection to this movement is, that if the principles of freedom and equality which we advocate were put into practice, it would destroy all harmony in the domestic circle. Here let me ask, how many truly harmonious households have we now? … The only happy households we now see are those in which husband and wife share equally in counsel and government. There can be no true dignity or independence where there is subordination to the absolute will of another, no happiness without freedom. Let us then have no fears that the movement will disturb what is seldom found, a truly united and happy family.…

There seems now to be a kind of moral stagnation in our midst. Philanthropists have done their utmost to rouse the nation to a sense of its sins.… Our churches are multiplying on all sides, our missionary societies, Sunday schools, and prayer meetings and innumerable charitable and reform organizations are all in operation, but still the tide of vice is swelling, and threatens the destruction of everything, and the battlements of righteousness are weak against the raging elements of sin and death. Verily, the world waits the coming of some new elements, some purifying power, some spirit of mercy and love. The voice of woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided. There are deep and tender chords of sympathy and love in the heart of the downfallen and oppressed that woman can touch more skillfully than man. The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source. It is vain to look for silver and gold from mines of copper and lead. It is the wise mother that has the wise son. So long as your women are slaves you may throw your colleges and churches to the winds.… Truly are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. God, in his wisdom, has so linked the whole human family together that any violence dome at one end of the chain is felt throughout its length, and here, too, is the law of restoration, as in woman all have fallen, so in her elevation shall the race be recreated.

…We do not expect our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and prejudice will be our way, and on our banners will beat the dark stormclouds of opposition from those who have entrenched themselves behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and who have fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft. Undaunted we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it, “Equality of Rights.”

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