The wildest moments from Trump and Biden’s 2020 presidential debates
Donald Trump and Joe Biden are getting ready to pick up where they left off four years ago and face-off in another debate. REUTERS
Here we go again.
Four years after then-President Donald Trump clashed with Joe Biden on the debate stage, Americans will get to see them go at it again beginning Thursday night.
Before you settle in for the first of two forums between the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees, here’s a look back at the most memorable moments from their 2020 showdowns.
Trump comes in ‘too hot’
Even by Trump’s standard of freewheeling politics, the first debate with Biden on Sept. 29, 2020, was memorable.
The 45th president opted for a confrontational tack, running roughshod over moderator Chris Wallace and frequently talking over his Democratic rival.
The Post cover story on the first debate in 2020. rfaraino
During one memorable exchange, Biden chastised Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A lot more are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter, a lot quicker –” the future president began.
“Did you just use the word ‘smart?’ Don’t ever use the word smart with me,” Trump shot back.
“There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.”
Wallace, then of Fox News and now of CNN, publicly groused about Trump’s conduct, complaining he felt like he had “baked this beautiful, delicious cake and then, frankly, the president put his foot in it.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, then an ally of Trump who helped him prep for the debate, assessed afterward that the Republican was “too hot,” and other supporters of the president felt the same way.
“He’s going on — everything he says is a lie,” the 78-year-old explained himself in an interview with the Washington Examiner published this week. “So I would call him [out], because calling him out two minutes later is very tough because, you know, it’s a lie, it’s a lie, everything is a lie. I’ve never seen anything like it. So when I would interrupt, it looked like — I agree, though. The second debate I handled it much differently and got very good marks.”
Chris Wallace later lamented how that debate went down. REUTERS
‘Stand back and stand by’
Perhaps the most controversial moment of the first debate came after Wallace took note of how Trump had badgered Biden over Antifa riots and asked if Trump would denounce white supremacy.
Trump responded that “almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing,” but said “sure,” he would condemn right-wing violence.
“Then do it,” piped up Biden, who name-dropped the Proud Boys as an example of a right-wing group.
“Proud Boys: stand back and stand by,” Trump said hurriedly before adding: “But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.”
Many liberal commentators took the remark as direct orders from the president to the group, which would later become notorious for its members’ role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
In that same debate, Trump also laid the groundwork for his rejection of the election result that would lead to his indictment last year.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden are engaged in the first presidential rematch the US has seen in decades. AFP via Getty Images
“I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen,” he said. “If it’s a fair election, I am 100% on board. If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”
‘Will you shut up?’
Biden grew visibly exasperated with Trump during the first debate, at one point asking: “Will you shut up, man?” as the Republican repeatedly interrupted him.
At one point, Wallace tried to instruct Trump to allow Biden to finish his point, to which the Democrat responded that his rival “doesn’t know how to do that.”
During another key moment of the debate, Biden called Trump a “liar” and a “clown” seconds apart.
‘I am the party’
In one exchange during that first debate, Trump slammed Biden and warned about the far-left flank of his party being on the march.
“Your party wants to go socialist,” Trump contended. “They’re going to dominate you, Joe, you know that.”
Biden pushed back by underscoring his win in a grueling Democratic primary while rejecting far-left wish list items such as Medicare for All.
“I am the party.”
Could Trump die?
Three days after the first debate, Trump announced that he had contracted COVID-19.
Social media companies were forced to take down posts by users rooting for his death and fears grew for Trump’s health.
The president was flown to Walter Reed Hospital, where he received Remdesivir therapy as well as an experimental drug cocktail and managed to recover.
Subsequent reporting suggests that some top administration officials were deeply worried about Trump and believed he was “gravely ill.”
A fly landed on Mike Pence’s head during the vice presidential debate. AFP via Getty Images
Fly on Pence’s head
Amid the drama over the president’s health, then-Vice President Mike Pence and then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) squared off in the vice presidential debate on Oct. 7, 2020.
The showdown is best remembered for a pesky intruder that not even Secret Service could stop
A fly landed on Pence’s well-coiffed head in the middle of the face-off and quickly went viral, even spawning a popular Halloween costume.
The debate that wasn’t
As Trump recovered from COVID-19, plans for an Oct. 15, 2020, debate in Miami were thrust into disarray.
The Commission on Presidential Debates rolled out plans for a virtual debate, to which Biden agreed and Trump rejected.
Around that time, would-be debate moderator Steve Scully, who once worked as a Biden intern before moving on to C-SPAN, raised eyebrows with a tweet asking former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci for advice after the then-president bashed him as a “Never Trumper.”
“@Scaramucci should I respond to Trump,” he wrote.
Scully initially claimed that he had been hacked, but then he admitted to lying about his communications with Scaramucci and was suspended from C-SPAN.
With no moderator and the candidates unable to agree on a format, the debate was canceled.
President Biden scoffed at Donald Trump’s claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Hunter Biden’s laptop
The second and final debate was held Oct. 22, 2020, eight days after The Post published the first of its bombshell stories about documents from now-first son Hunter Biden’s laptop implicating his dad in influence-peddling.
At the time, Biden leaned on a letter from dozens of purported former intelligence officials claiming the world exclusives were nothing but Russian disinformation.
“Fifty former national intelligence professionals said this: What he’s accusing me of is a Russian plot,” Biden contended at the time.
Four years later, Hunter’s infamous laptop was admitted into evidence during the federal trial that ultimately led to his conviction for lying about his drug use to buy a gun.
NBC’s Kristen Welker moderated the final debate of the 2020 presidential cycle. Getty Images
“All of the emails, the emails, the horrible emails of the kind of money you were raking in, you and your family… I think you owe an explanation to the American people,” Trump told Biden in the debate.
“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life,” Biden insisted.
‘C’mon man’
One of Biden’s go-to-phrases during his final tussle against Trump in 2020 was some iteration of the phrase “C’mon man.”
“Here on stage here, he said, ‘I’d tell them to stand down and stand ready,'” Biden said of Trump’s admonition to the Proud Boys from the first debate. “C’mon, this guy has a dog whistle as big as a foghorn.”
“Learning to live with it, c’mon, we’re dying with it,” Biden said at another point, referencing the COVID-19 virus.
A different kind of debate
After the 2020 debates, Trump and the Republican National Committee lashed out at the Commission on Presidential Debates, accusing it of unfairness.
The RNC specifically laid out a list of grievances, including the “incomprehensible” vetting of debate moderators, and ultimately quit the organization.
CNN is kicking off the first presidential debate of the 2024 cycle in Atlanta. REUTERS
This time around, the schedule has been negotiated by both campaigns rather than laid out by the CPD, which had organized every general election debate since 1988.
In addition to Thursday’s CNN debate, Trump and Biden will square off at least once more, on Sept. 10 at a debate hosted by ABC News.