President Joe Biden struggled from the moment that CNN’s presidential debate started on Thursday evening in the first official event in the rematch of the 2024 presidential election.
CNN’s Jake Tapper opened the debate by asking Biden about voters’ top concerns: the economy and inflation.
“What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?” Tapper asked.
Biden responded by blaming the former president for the coronavirus pandemic and claimed that the economy was in a “freefall” when he took over when, in reality, the economy had already shown strong signs of bouncing back before Biden was sworn into office and later passed a massive spending package that triggered the inflation crisis.
“The pandemic was so badly handled. Many people were dying,” Biden claimed, even though more people died during the pandemic under the Biden administration than during the Trump administration.
“All he said was it’s not that serious, just inject a little bleach in your arm,” Biden claimed. “You’ll be all right.”
He blamed his poor numbers on what he claimed Trump left him and “corporate greed” before claiming he lowered the cost of an insulin shot from $400 to $15.
Trump responded to Biden’s remarks by saying that when he was president, the U.S. had “the greatest economy in the history of our country,” a statement that was largely true prior to the pandemic.
“The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID,” Trump said. “He has not done a good job. He has done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us.”
WATCH:
