President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive presidential nominees, shared a debate stage June 27 for the first time since 2020, in a feisty confrontation that — thanks to debate rules — managed to avoid the near-constant interruptions that marred their previous meetings.
Biden, who spoke in a raspy voice at the debate’s start, struggled at times, at one point saying that his administration “finally beat Medicare.” Trump, meanwhile, repeated numerous falsehoods, including that Democrats want doctors to be able to abort babies after birth.
Trump attacked Biden’s record, blaming inflation and other issues on Biden’s “insane and stupid policies.” Biden questioned Trump’s conduct, noting that Trump is a convicted felon and saying he has the “morals of an alley cat.”
CNN hosted the debate, which had no audience, at its Atlanta studio. CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash moderated. The debate format allowed CNN to mute candidates’ microphones when it wasn’t their turn to speak.
Biden and Trump clashed on the economy, immigration and abortion, and revisited discussion of their ages.
Immigration
Trump says Biden “allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions.”
Pants on Fire! Immigration officials arrested about 103,700 noncitizens with criminal convictions (whether in the U.S. or abroad) from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal data shows. That accounts for people stopped at and between ports of entry.
Not everyone was let in. The term “noncitizens” includes people who may have had legal immigration status in the U.S. but were not U.S. citizens.
The data reflects the people that the federal government knows about, but it’s inexhaustive. However, immigration experts said despite the data’s limitations, there is no evidence to support Trump’s statement.
Biden: “I’ve changed (the law) in the way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally.”
Mostly True. The Department of Homeland Security announced that illegal immigration encounters dropped by 40%, to fewer than 2,400 each day, in the weeks after Biden announced a policy largely barring asylum access for people entering the U.S. at the southern border. The policy was announced June 4.
But immigration experts caution that it’s difficult to pinpoint a single reason for any change in border crossings. For example, other factors, such as hot weather, can affect migration patterns.
Since the policy was announced only a few weeks ago, it’s unclear whether the drop in illegal immigration will continue.
Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told PolitiFact the policy could have a short-term deterrent effect. But Adam Isacson, defense oversight director at the Washington Office on Latin America told PolitiFact that no past crackdowns have had a lasting effect.
Inflation and economy
Trump: “He caused this inflation. I gave him a country with … essentially no inflation. It was perfect.”
Mostly False. When Biden was inaugurated, year-over-year inflation was about 1.4%. However, that was shaped by the still-weak economy during the coronavirus pandemic, which was still a serious threat when Biden was inaugurated.
As the pandemic conditions improved, the economy accelerated. Consumers were ready to buy products, but the pandemic had prompted supply chain shortages. This, combined with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which raised gasoline prices, led to inflation, peaking at 9% about a year and a half into Biden’s presidency. That was the highest in about four decades.
Economists generally say Biden’s coronavirus relief plan, the American Rescue Plan, did exacerbate inflation by putting more money into consumers’ hands at a time when supplies were running short. But they do not believe that Biden caused high inflation single-handedly.
Trump: “You look at the cost of food, where it’s double, triple and quadruple.”
False. Food costs have risen faster under President Joe Biden than under any of his five most recent predecessors. However, the 21% increase in food prices on Biden’s watch is well below what Trump claimed. Quadrupling food costs would be an increase of 300%, or more than 10 times larger than what Trump said.
Specific categories of food have spiked more than food prices overall. For instance, egg prices are 84% higher today than when Biden took office. But for every food category that has outrun overall food inflation, there’s another category that has risen more slowly than average.
Also, this increase was spread over three and a half years, making the annual increase about 6%, part of which has been offset by rising wages.
Biden: “Economists say (Trump’s proposed tariffs are) going to cost the average American $2,500 a year or more.”
Mostly True. Most economists expect that Trump’s proposed 10% across-the-board tariff on foreign products will force consumers to pay more. The specific size of that hit is open to debate, though Biden offered a figure somewhat higher than current estimates.
Just days before the debate, the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, projected additional costs per household of $1,700 to $2,350 annually.
The Peterson Institute of International Economics, another Washington, D.C.-based think tank, projected that such tariffs would cost a middle-income household about $1,700 extra each year.
Jobs
Biden: Semiconductor jobs “to build these chips … pay over $100,000. You don’t need a college degree for them.”
Mostly False. The average semiconductor industry salary is around $170,000, figures from Oxford Economics and Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group, show. But this figure includes all jobs within the industry and doesn’t single out jobs requiring no college degree.
To earn a salary of $110,000 or higher, employees in the semiconductor industry need undergraduate or graduate-level degrees, the groups say.
The most a person would make without a four-year degree is about $70,000, according to a 2021 report from the Semiconductor Industry Association and Oxford Economics.
Biden: “Black unemployment is the lowest level it’s been in a long, long time.”
Mostly True. The record for low Black unemployment rate was set under Biden in April 2023, at 4.8%. It has risen modestly since then to 6.1% in May 2024, but that’s still lower than it was for much of the first two years under Trump.
Overall, Trump had success on this statistic, too. When Biden set the record, the record he was breaking was Trump’s: 5.3% in August and September 2019.
Trump: “The only jobs (Biden) created are for illegal immigrants and bounceback jobs, bounce back from the COVID.”
False. Since Biden took office in early 2021, the number of foreign-born Americans who are employed has risen by about 5.6 million. But over the same time period, the number of native-born Americans employed has increased by almost 7.4 million. (There are many more native-born Americans than foreign-born Americans, so on a percentage basis, the increase for foreign-born Americans is about 22%, compared with 6% for native-born Americans.)
It’s also wrong to say that all the foreign-born employment gains (much less all the employment gains, period) stem from migrants here illegally. The data for foreign-born Americans includes anyone born outside the U.S., including immigrants who have been in the United States legally for decades.
Employment on Biden’s watch passed its prepandemic level by June 2022, about a year-and-a-half into his term. Since then, the U.S. economy has created an additional 6.2 million jobs.
Trump legal cases
Trump: Biden “indicted me because I was his opponent.”
False. The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump’s business records began before Biden was president, but Biden was president by the time Trump was charged in 2023.
After Michael Cohen, who had been an attorney for Trump, pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. opened an investigation into the payments, Politico reported. That was before Biden was president. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hired a former Justice Department prosecutor in 2022. But experts told us that doesn’t prove Biden was involved.
Trump has also been indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury and two federal grand juries. Biden is not responsible for decisions by state or federal prosecutors to present cases to grand juries.
Social Security, Medicare and taxes
Trump: “Social Security, he’s destroying it, because millions of people are pouring into our country, and they’re putting them onto Social Security. They’re putting them onto Medicare, Medicaid.”
False. It’s wrong to say that immigration will destroy Social Security. Social Security’s fiscal challenges stem from a shortage of workers compared with beneficiaries.
Immigration is far from a fiscal fix-all for Social Security’s challenges. But having more immigrants in the United States would increase the worker-to-beneficiary ratio, potentially for decades, thus extending the program’s solvency, experts say.
Most immigrants in the U.S. illegally are also ineligible for Social Security. However, people who entered the U.S. illegally and were granted humanitarian parole — a temporary permission to stay in the country — for more than one year, are eligible for Social Security.
Immigrants in the U.S. illegally also are generally ineligible to enroll in federally funded health care coverage such as Medicare and Medicaid. (Some states provide Medicaid coverage under state-funded programs regardless of immigration status. Immigrants are eligible for emergency Medicaid regardless of status.)
Trump: “He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times.”
False. Biden proposed a tax increase of about 7% over the next decade, which is far lower than the 300% increase that former President Donald Trump claimed. (Doubling would be a 100% increase and tripling would be a 200% increase.)
About 83% of the proposed Biden tax increase would be borne by the top 1% of taxpayers, a level that starts at just under $1 million a year in income.
Taxpayers earning up to $60,400 would see their yearly taxes decline on average, and taxpayers earning $60,400 to $107,300 would see an annual increase of $20 on average.
Trump: “I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”
False. When it was passed in 2017, Trump’s tax cut was, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a percentage of gross domestic product, it ranked seventh in history, according to figures published by the Treasury Department.
Crime
Trump: “What he’s done to the Black population is horrible, including the fact that for 10 years, he called them super predators … in the 1990s.”
False. In a 1993 Senate floor speech, Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, spoke about doing something for young people who lacked supervision, structure or opportunities. He said the country needed to focus on them, because otherwise, a portion of them would “become the predators 15 years from now.”
Biden did not single out any racial or ethnic group. In a 1998 speech at an attorneys general conference, Biden also used the term “predators.” He didn’t say he was talking about Black youth.
Health care
Biden: “We brought down the price (of) prescription drug(s), which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400.”
Half True. Biden touted his efforts to reduce prescription drug costs by referring to the $35 insulin price cap his administration put in place as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But he flubbed the number during the debate, saying it was lowered to $15. In his closing statement, Biden corrected the number to $35.
The price of insulin for Medicare enrollees starting in 2023 dropped to $35 a month, not $15. Drug pricing experts told PolitFact when we rated a similar claim that most Medicare enrollees were likely not paying a monthly average of $400 before the changes, although because costs vary depending on coverage phases and dosages, some might have paid that much in a given month.
Foreign policy and terrorism
Trump: “We had no terror (attacks) under my administration.”
False. During Trump’s presidency, there were several major terror attacks, some linked to extreme global jihadist ideology.
In 2017, there were two separate attacks in New York City, which Trump himself acknowledged as “terrorist attacks” during his 2018 State of the Union address.
There was also a December 2019 mass shooting by a member of Saudi Arabia’s air force who was studying at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and eight were wounded by the gunman, who had expressed anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments on social media. Trump’s Attorney General William Barr described the shooting as “an act of terrorism.”
Trump’s Justice Department also prosecuted several cases of domestic terrorism.
Excluding unsuccessful attacks and those where officials doubt motive, there were 220 terror incidents in the United States of varying severity during Trump’s presidency between 2017 and 2020, according to the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland, which tracks incidents of terrorism.
Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol
Trump: Pelosi said “I take full responsibility for Jan. 6.”
False. That’s not what former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said.
In a 41-second video taken on Jan. 6, 2021, Pelosi said, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,” referring to U.S. Capitol security. She did not say she took responsibility for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Records show that Pelosi approved a Jan. 6, 2021, request to seek support from the National Guard and pushed to get National Guard troops to the U.S. Capitol when their deployment was delayed by hours that day.
The golf moment
Somehow the presidential debate turned into a fight over who’s the better golfer. Biden said he would have a driving competition with Trump and claimed he was a 6 handicap while serving as vice president.
Trump scoffed. “He can hit a ball 50 yards.”
Joe Biden is currently listed with the United States Golf Association as holding a 6.7 handicap playing out of Fieldstone Golf Club in Delaware. Biden hasn’t logged a score in the system since 2018. Scores are typically self-reported, and a handicap comes from an average of the lowest 8 of the most recent 20 posted scores.
The lower the handicap you have, the better golfer you are. Ivanka Trump, for instance, is a 20.9 handicap and Eric Trump is listed as a 13.6 (without a round since 2015). Donald Trump is in the system as a member of the prestigious Winged Foot Golf Club in New York. He lists a handicap of 2.5 but hasn’t posted a score since 2021.
This story will be updated. Refresh to see our latest updates.
PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman, Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Staff Writers Grace Abels, Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu, Maria Briceño, Jeff Cercone, Madison Czopek, Marta Campabadal Graus, Ranjan Jindal, Mia Penner, Samantha Putterman, Sara Swann, Maria Ramirez Uribe, Researcher Caryn Baird and KFF Health News Senior Correspondent Julie Appleby contributed to this story.