Expectations were initially low. For Trump, it is a victory if he avoids setting himself on fire, wrote Hillary Clinton in The New York Times. Biden needs to just “not die,” said Megyn Kelly, who moderated an earlier debate between the two, The Wrap wrote. The 90-minute long presidential debate between US President Joe Biden and Donald Trump began at 3 Norwegian time on Friday night. The verdict is not merciful: – Tonight I think that Donald Trump came out the best because Joe Biden came out catastrophically badly, says Eirik Løkke, adviser at the liberal think tank Civita. From bad to worse Age has become a hot topic in the presidential election campaign. Biden is 81 years old. Trump 78. But even though only a few years separate the two, it is Biden’s advanced age in particular that has received the most attention. Løkke believes that the content of the debate was overshadowed by Biden’s appearance: – It almost looked as if he had one foot in the grave. I think this shocked a lot of voters who don’t pay close attention. So this was a bad night for Biden, he emphasizes. Biden sounded unclear at times during the debate. It doesn’t make him seem younger than he is, say commentators. Photo: Marco Bello / Reuters Not even USA expert Gjermund Stenberg Eriksen was impressed by the level of the night’s debate. – It was worse than expected. And I had rather low expectations, he says to news. Eriksen says that he had hoped for a “normal performance” from the president. It didn’t happen, he says. – It started badly. Then he didn’t lose his word completely, but there were too many moments that confirmed his greatest weakness, he says. Sigrid Rege Gårdsvoll, commentator in Vårt Land and Amerikanspolitikk.no, also highlights problems with how Biden presented himself. Rules for the debate The debate lasted 90 minutes, interrupted by two commercial breaks. Candidates are not allowed to talk to their advisers during the break. They were each given a lectern with paper, a pen and a water bottle. They were not allowed to take effects or notes with them. Biden chose to stand on the right, which was decided by a coin toss last week. They were given two minutes each to answer questions and one minute for rebuttal. There was no opening statement, but they were given two minutes each to summarize. Trump got the last word, which was also decided by last week’s coin toss. A red light flashes when they have five seconds left in their speaking time. It lights up red when the time is up. – He appears exactly as he doesn’t need to appear: like an old man messing around, she says to news. She adds: – To the extent that there was a winner of the debate, it was Trump. Anything but what we saw today would have been telling for Biden, but he failed to deliver what he needed, which were complete sentences and clear messages. Thinks Trump outperformed Biden Trump, for his part, was concerned that, according to himself, he has scored high on cognitive tests. – He refers to tests and says that they have never seen anyone with such good results. It is obviously a lie and an exaggeration, says Gårdsvoll. Biden did better when the topic was foreign policy, she believes. Trump’s claims that there will be peace between Ukraine and Russia if he wins the election appear far-fetched. It was difficult to follow Trump’s arguments, say experts. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP But Gårdsvoll believes that Biden was not forceful enough when it comes to the right to self-determined abortion. Gjermund Stenberg Eriksen believes that when it comes to Trump, one witnessed things one had seen before. – He uses the same techniques that he used in 2016 and 2020, which we then thought were completely hair-raising. Today, they are so normalized that we hardly react, says Eriksen. He believes it was difficult to keep up with what Trump says from sentence to sentence. His arguments are incoherent. Eriksen nevertheless believes that Trump succeeds better than Biden in one thing in particular: – He knows better that TV is about emotions and achievements that should make an impression, more than what he says should stick. His reasoning makes no more sense than Biden’s, but he delivers it better. Challenging fact-checkers Trump in particular has been accused of spreading falsehoods and lies. Stian Eisenträger is editor of the fact-checking website Faktisk.no. He says that it is demanding to check the claims that the candidates made during the debate, – You have to have a big team to do this in a proper way, he says. – It requires resources, and it is demanding to catch up with all the claims that are made. You have to know the various fields, which range from economics to immigration to abortion. And you have to know where to look to find the answers. A man in Scottsdale, Arizona watched the presidential debate. It is difficult to check whether what the candidates say is true. Photo: Ross D. Franklin / AP Major news media such as CNN have already started fact-checking the claims from Trump and Biden. The Associated Press writes, among other things, that it is not true that only a small group was involved when Congress was stormed on January 6, 2021, as Trump claimed. Biden, for his part, is said to have given a false impression of the price of insulin. Maria Amelie heads the start-up company Factiverse. They use artificial intelligence (AI) to fact-check claims. She says that last night they tested their AI model on the statements of Trump and Biden. In total, they identified 289 claims that could be fact-checked. Of these, 82 are correct, while 62 are disputed. – A good number of the contested were said by Trump. But there are actually several of Biden’s that were controversial and not quite right. Below you can hear why this year’s presidential debate is perhaps the weirdest ever: Published 28.06.2024, at 06.41 Updated 28.06.2024, at 08.37
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The debate between Trump and Biden – here is the experts’ verdict – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
