The Trump-Biden debate as it happened

Joe Biden’s shambolic performance in Thursday night’s presidential debate plunged Democrats into panic as their worst fears were realised about the ability of their 81-year-old candidate to stand up to Donald Trump.

Within minutes they were arrested by the sight of a frail Biden rasping through incoherent answers in a pivotal debate for which he had supposedly spent days preparing. As the evening wore on that shock turned to discussion of how the president could be forced aside, and who might replace him with five months to go before the election.

“There’s a higher level of panic than I’ve ever seen or thought possible,” one notable party insider said.

“He confirmed our worst fears,” said another.

David Axelrod, the former senior advisor to Barack Obama, said on CNN that Biden had scored points on some policy matters but conceded: “There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue.”

Democrats have long harboured doubts about Biden’s ability to win another term.

Vice-president Kamala Harris told CNN: “Yes, it was a slow start. But it was a strong finish.”

California governor Gavin Newsom threw his support behind Joe Biden after the president was criticised for his performance.

“Our nominee is Joe Biden, I look forward to voting for him,” said Newsom, who served as a surrogate for Biden in CNN’s spin room.

Here’s how some prominent Americans reacted after Thursday’s presidential debate:

Trump has reiterated claims that the indictments against him — at state and federal level — are a political witch hunt. US attorney-general Merrick Garland has warned that “unfounded” attacks against the Department of Justice have escalated threats against the DoJ in recent weeks.

I am not exactly sure how to quantify how close we are to world war three but officials I speak with regularly say it’s hard to think of a time when so many theatres are so close to combustion. But some trace those fires back to Trump’s policies.

Trump has brought up the case of Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter who is on trial for bogus spying charges.

The Biden administration has been trying to explore prisoner swaps for his return, but there’s been no reporting to suggest that Russia is demanding money for his release.

But in general the more hostage/prisoner swaps that happen, the higher the price for the next person. That’s the peril of hostage diplomacy.

Worth noting that CNN is fact-checking Trump via a live blog on its website. But the decision to leave him largely unchecked on TV, where most people are watching this, is already inciting a lot of blowback.

Over one hour tonight, Trump’s price on PredictIt, a political prediction market, has risen from 53 cents to 61 cents, implying an 8 percentage point increase in his chance of winning the election. Biden’s chance of winning the Democratic nomination has dropped 14 cents.

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Trump’s claim that between 18mn and 20mn have illegally crossed the border under Biden’s presidency are vastly higher than federal government data on apprehensions.

The tit-for-tat on legal troubles is under way. Trump in turn calls Biden’s son a “convicted felon”. Hunter Biden earlier this month was convicted on federal gun charges, making him the first child of a US president to be tried and found guilty of a crime.

The observations on social media are starting to roll in.

From Republican Senator Tim Scott, thought to be among those Trump might be inclined to pick as his vice-presidential running mate.

And from Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group

Trump says the border has never been as bad as it is now. While apprehensions at the US-Mexico frontier reached record levels last December, there has been a steep drop in crossings since Biden cracked down on illegal immigration a few weeks ago.

The US border patrol’s seven-day average of daily encounters — or apprehensions — along the southwest border has dropped more than 40 per cent to below 2,400, the lowest level since January 2021.

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Biden and Trump have taken the debate stage in Atlanta in the most hotly anticipated event in the 2024 race for the White House.

Biden took the stage first, followed by Trump. The two men swiftly took their places behind their respective podiums and did not shake hands, barely exchanging glances.

The 90-minute debate, hosted by the cable news network CNN, comes far earlier in the election cycle than in previous years. It is seen as make or break for both candidates as they try to claim frontrunner status.

Joe Biden kicks off proceedings

Joe Biden has entered the CNN complex where the debate will take place in around 10 minutes’ time, according to a pool reporter travelling with the president.

Trump has blamed his successor’s energy policies for higher prices at the pump, vowing to unshackle producers and “drill, baby, drill” to bring down costs if re-elected. 

Petrol prices have been significantly higher during Biden’s presidency, averaging roughly $3.50 a gallon during his time in office compared to about $2.50 during Trump’s, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. 

However, the cost of petrol is largely driven by supply and demand factors in the global oil market.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped push prices to records of more than $5/g in the summer of 2022. Biden deployed America’s strategic oil stockpiles in an effort to stem the rise.

The Biden campaign says it has set a new fundraising record for the president’s re-election effort, with the hour of 6pm-7pm ET the best fundraising hour of the election cycle, said a campaign official.

The official said that beat the previous record, set the hour before, from 5pm-6pm ET.

Both campaigns will be looking to score big with small-dollar, or grassroots, donors tonight, given the expected size of the debate’s audience.

Biden has enjoyed a fundraising advantage over Trump, but that edge may be narrowing. Trump and his affiliated super Pacs have raked in increasingly large sums in recent months, including from deep-pocketed donors who can make unlimited contributions to super Pacs.

Tim Mellon, a reclusive banking heir, earlier this month cut a single $50mn cheque to Maga Inc, a Trump-affiliated super Pac, the day after the former president was found guilty on 34 criminal charges by a New York jury.

The first 2020 showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was famously combative and unruly, with Trump repeatedly interrupting and speaking over Biden, prompting the then former vice-president to sigh and say: “Will you shut up, man?”

Biden was largely seen as having a better debate performance — and he won in November.

The 2016 debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton were confrontational and hostile, with Trump doggedly pursuing Clinton, and at one point calling the former secretary of state a “nasty woman” — a phrase that became a refrain of the final stretch of his campaign.

Trump defeated Clinton at the ballot box in November.

Biden and Trump are amassing a fortune to spend this fall. Much of it has not been spent.

Democratic and Republican groups have booked more than $181mn in ads to influence voters in the presidential election, according to AdImpact data. Future Forward — the main pro-Biden super Pac — has launched a $135mn ad campaign, which will drop in September, when voters will start paying more attention to the race. Those ads will target several battleground states and Omaha, Nebraska, which holds one crucial electoral vote.

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The rest of the $181mn ad buy is from Maga Inc, a pro-Trump super Pac, which can raise unlimited funds from individuals. The group has booked more than $46mn in ads from July through November, focusing on the pivotal state of Pennsylvania and less so on Georgia.

In 2020, Biden became the first presidential candidate to raise $1bn from donors. The 2024 election will cost much more.

Donald Trump will likely claim that crime has risen during Joe Biden’s presidency — and try to tie it to a surge in migrants crossing into the US from Mexico — but crime across the country actually remains near historic lows.

Spikes in homicide rates during the pandemic, particularly in major cities including Chicago and New York, garnered a lot of attention in 2020 and 2021, but have since been declining. 

In 2022, the most recent year for which nationwide data is available, there were 6.3 homicides per 100,000 people, down from 6.8 and 6.5 in 2020 and 2021, respectively, according to the FBI. The 2022 figure was well below the 9.8 homicides per 100,000 people recorded in 1991. 

Estimates for 2023 homicides rates are lower still, probably falling at one of the fastest rates ever, according to AH Datalytics, a data analytics firm.

All violent crimes nationally fell to 380.7 per 100,000 people in 2022, just below the pre-pandemic level of 380.8. There were 387 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2021, and 398.5 in 2020.

Barring a surge in the jobless rate during the early stages of the pandemic, Biden and Trump have presided over healthy labour markets.

During Trump’s first term, unemployment fell from 4.7 per cent to a low of 3.5 per cent just before the coronavirus shuttered businesses in the US and elsewhere. After the pandemic struck, unemployment hit 14.8 per cent.

When Biden took office, it was still high at 6.4 per cent, but eventually fell to a record low of 3.4 per cent in early 2023. Since then, it has crept up a little. However, at 4 per cent, the jobless rate remains remarkably low by historical standards.

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The strong labour market has led the Biden administration to repeatedly boast that 15mn jobs have been created since he took office. Economists suspect a big chunk of those workers are originally from outside the US, with the data suggesting a massive expansion in labour supply that cannot be explained by domestic factors alone.

They also believe immigration has helped keep wage growth largely in check — something that has helped the US Federal Reserve in its fight against the worst bout of inflation for a generation, but fed into attitudes that people have become worse off under the Biden Administration.

A steep drop in US-Mexico border crossings has been recorded since Biden cracked down on illegal immigration a few weeks ago, a statistic the president will likely use tonight to hit back at Trump’s relentless attacks over the issue.

The US border patrol’s seven-day average of daily encounters — or apprehensions — along the southwest border has dropped more than 40 per cent to below 2,400, the lowest level since January 2021. The Department of Homeland Security conveniently released the figure two days before the debate.

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DHS has also deported 20,000 people to more than 20 countries since Biden tightened rules for asylum seekers on June 4. The restrictions limit migrants’ ability to seek asylum if they have crossed the border illegally and enable their rapid deportation.

Migrants who cross illegally will continue to be ineligible for asylum until daily encounters fall below 1,500, a threshold that has not been reached.

The Business Roundtable has called on presidential candidates to support what the Washington lobby group calls “pro-growth policies”, including not raising taxes, halting the expansion of tariffs and “eliminating burdensome regulation”.

In a statement issued a few hours before Thursday night’s presidential debate, the industry group, whose members are top US chief executives, lauded the 2017 Trump-era tax reforms for lowering “the federal corporate tax rate to a more globally competitive 21 per cent”.

The Business Roundtable said: “At a time when American families and businesses are grappling with higher prices and input costs, the last thing we can afford to do is go backward by raising taxes ... ”

The business leaders added that “expanding or increasing tariffs on imports would only exacerbate inflationary pressures and undermine the ability of US businesses, farmers, ranchers and workers to compete in the global economy.”

A defining moment in the 1992 presidential election came with a town-hall style debate in Virginia, when President George HW Bush visibly checked his watch as he stood up to take a question from a voter on the US economy.

Voters saw the gesture as a sign that the incumbent president was impatient and disinterested.

That November, he lost to Democratic challenger Bill Clinton.

Inflation has been far higher under Biden than Trump, with the surge in the cost of essentials such as food and fuel weighing on the Administration’s popularity. 

Since the current US president took office, prices — as measured by the Personal Consumption Index that the Federal Reserve uses as the basis for its 2 per cent inflation goal — have risen by 16 per cent, marking the worst bout of inflation in America in decades. Over the duration of Trump’s first term, they rose by just 6.7 per cent.

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Polls consistently show that voters view the US president’s economic track record poorly, largely due to rising prices. 

Research by KPMG Economics also showed that the areas hit hardest by Consumer Price Index inflation have been Republican strongholds in Southeastern states, while northeastern Democrats have seen prices rise at a less dramatic pace. 

Biden and Trump have launched new advertising blitzes to coincide with tonight's debate — including new television spots to run while the debate airs on CNN and affiliated networks. The investment could pay off for both camps: tens of millions of American voters are expected to be tuning in.

Earlier today, we reported that the Trump campaign would air two new ads, including one attacking Biden over his handling of the economy, and another focused on the president's age.

Now, the Biden campaign has rolled out its three ads of its own to air during the debate, including one attacking Trump over his support for abortion restrictions, another going after the former president for his role in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, and a third hitting him as a convicted felon. All of the ads give a preview of the messages both candidates will be trying to hammer home on the debate stage tonight — and on the stump this summer.

The issue that matters most to US voters is the economy. For Biden, that’s a problem.

While he has improved his standing this year, the president has consistently underperformed Trump in the Financial Times-University of Michigan poll. The latest survey, from early June, showed registered voters favouring Trump over Biden 41 per cent to 37 per cent on who would best handle the economy. That is an improvement from February, but still a troubling sign for the president.

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Other polls are even worse for Biden. Many Americans have dismissed the low unemployment figures, stock market highs and corporate profits records under the Biden administration.

In May, 62 per cent of Americans said inflation was “a very big problem”, in the country — more than every other issue, according to Pew. Only 23 per cent said that the economy was excellent or good.

A Washington Post poll of battleground state voters in April and May found Trump held a substantial lead on the top three issues — the economy, threats to democracy and crime — while Biden led on lesser priorities: racism, abortion and climate change. Again, close to three-quarters of Americans viewed the economy negatively.

Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden by less than 1 per cent in national polling, according to RealClearPolitics, suggesting another extremely close US presidential election.

Four years ago, Biden won thanks to just 43,000 swing-state votes, out of 155mn total cast across the country.

Now, Trump appears to have the upper hand. In three battleground states Biden won — Nevada, Georgia and Arizona — Trump leads by a few points, according to FiveThirtyEight averages.

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If Trump wins those, Biden would need to win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to keep the White House.

Michigan and Wisconsin are essentially tied, while Trump leads in Pennsylvania by a point — within the margin of error — according to FiveThirtyEight.

The two candidates are historically unlikeable. At this point in the campaign, 25 per cent of US adults have unfavourable views of both candidates — a higher percentage than in the past 10 elections, according to Pew Research.

Biden’s approval rating — about 40% — is similar to Trump’s approval rating after a pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol on January 6 2021.

The Financial Times’ Washington reporter Steff Chávez took a look at what would happen if either candidate was no longer running in the campaign.

Both candidates easily won their party’s primary vote earlier this year. If they died, it would be up to delegates at the forthcoming Republican and Democratic conventions to find replacements.

That would make July’s Republican convention in Milwaukee or the Democratic convention in Chicago in August akin to conventions decades ago, when candidates canvassed each state’s delegation for floor votes.

State delegates would be “uncommitted” — no longer beholden to their state’s primary result — and able to vote for any candidate they liked, said Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution think-tank.

“Presumably, for Democrats, they would pick [vice-president] Kamala Harris,” said Derek Muller, professor at the University of Notre Dame’s law school.

Will President Joe Biden weaponise Donald Trump’s ongoing legal woes against him in tonight’s debate? The former president was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, and faces sentencing next month and trials for three further alleged offences.

It seems an obvious target, but the Biden campaign has its own legal challenges to contend with, since Hunter Biden became the first child of a US president to be tried and found guilty of a crime earlier in June.

But will it matter? Polling since Trump’s conviction shows about 90 per cent of Republicans still view him favourably, according to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, while 68 per cent of registered voters said it made no difference to them.

When he ran for the White House again in 1984 at the age of 72, Ronald Reagan was plagued by persistent questions about his age.

But he sought to make light of the issue on the debate stage against Walter Mondale, joking that he would not “exploit” his opponent’s “youth and inexperience”. (For those keeping track at home, Joe Biden is 81, and Donald Trump is 78.) Reagan won re-election handily.

US President Joe Biden “likes to fight”, the White House has said ahead of the first presidential debate on Thursday night.

“You know this president — he likes to fight,” White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden travelled to Atlanta for his first duel with Republican rival Donald Trump in four years. “He likes to fight for the American people.”

Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the president’s mindset heading into the debate, but said Biden takes speaking directly to the US public seriously.

“In this instance, there will be millions of Americans watching,” Jean-Pierre said. “He takes that opportunity very seriously, and he understands that Americans are going to be watching, wanting to hear from their president.”

She also said Biden’s fiery State of the Union address in March showed how he is “able to take extreme Republicans in the room on”.

Biden and Trump are both expected to meet and greet supporters after tonight’s debate, before flying out of Georgia for rallies tomorrow in battleground states.

The president and his wife, Jill Biden, are expected to stop by a campaign watch party in Atlanta later tonight. Trump is expected to appear at a similar event in Atlanta hosted by former Republican US Senator Kelly Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, the chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange and chair of the New York Stock Exchange.

Several of Trump’s potential running mates — including Ohio senator JD Vance, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and Florida senator Marco Rubio — will also be in attendance.

Then, tomorrow, Trump is heading to a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, while Biden will hold his own rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

There has been no shortage of news in the election cycle this year, but here are several developments and issues the Financial Times has covered in the week leading up to tonight’s debate:

Trump and Biden launch advertising blitzes ahead of debate: The Biden campaign said it was launching a “seven-figure” ad campaign, while the Trump campaign said it was rolling out two new television ads to air during the debate.

Donald Trump’s gag order partly lifted before debate: Trump is free to talk about witnesses and jurors from last month’s “hush money” trial, offering a chance to hear if the former president tonight mentions Stormy Daniels or Michael Cohen.

Future of democracy at stake: A programme created by former president Jimmy Carter to support elections in fragile democracies is increasing election monitoring in the US as political polarisation and voter distrust grow ahead of November’s presidential contest.

Trump claimed Christianity under threat: The former president claimed Christianity in America would be left in “tatters” if Biden were reelected.

Majority of US millionaires support Biden’s tax plan: Biden may tout his progressive plan to make the super-wealthy pay more tax.

One person not on the stage tonight in Atlanta: Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The independent candidate is commanding the support of roughly 9 per cent of the electorate, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight average of nationwide polls, and threatens to be a spoiler for Trump or Biden in several key swing states.

Kennedy has railed against CNN for not including him in Thursday’s debate, claiming the Democratic and Republican parties and the cable news channel have “colluded” to exclude him from the national stage.

Kennedy on Thursday announced he would stream his own event, titled “The Real Debate”, on X that evening. His event will be a moderated conversation in a Los Angeles theatre, where he will be interviewed by former ABC News and Fox News presenter and self-described libertarian, John Stossel.

The 1980 presidential debates were an opportunity for Ronald Reagan, then the former Republican governor of California, to gain the edge over Jimmy Carter, the Democratic incumbent.

Reagan’s retort to Carter of, “There you go again,” in that year’s second debate became a defining phrase of the election.

Reagan defeated Carter that November in a landslide.

Watch from 1:14:49 to catch the famous quip.

Thursday’s debate is a critical test for CNN, the television network that pioneered America’s cable news industry in the 1980s but has suffered sharp audience declines and fallen far behind its competitors in recent years.

Just 468,000 people were watching CNN on an average day in May, compared to 1.3mn for Fox News and 816,000 for MSNBC.

CNN, which is owned by media conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery, in May scored the coveted debate — a big coup over rivals such as Fox News and broadcasters including NBC. Former chief executive Jeff Zucker predicted it would be the “most-watched event, day, night, in the history of CNN”.

This will be the first time in three decades that a US presidential debate will not be run by a non-partisan commission, after Biden said he would only participate in debates sponsored by individual news organisations.

Instead, CNN has had full control over the style and substance of the debate, and is requiring all other platforms — dozens of which will simultaneously broadcast the programme — to display its watermarked logo on their screens.

The Biden campaign has released a list of campaign “surrogates” who will flood the spin room after the debate to vouch for the president. They include California governor Gavin Newsom — widely seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2028 — and Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece and a prominent critic of the former president.

Former mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms, former South Carolina congressman Cedric Richmond and US Senator Raphael Warnock will also make the case for Biden. Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and California congressman Robert Garcia are also on the list.

This is the FT’s seat from the ‘spin room’ in Atlanta, where surrogates for the Biden and Trump campaign will flood the floor of a sports arena after tonight’s debate to make their case to the assembled national and international media.

The arena is on the campus of Georgia Tech, a top public research university, and is normally home to men’s and women’s collegiate basketball games. Tonight’s competition will be political, and reporters will be watching the debate in the venue.

Biden and Trump will duel on a debate stage in a closed studio just up the road at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters. But following a request from the Biden campaign, and under rules agreed to by both teams and the cable network, there will be no live audience and no reporters in the room — just the candidates and the CNN moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

That has ruffled feathers in the mainstream media, and on Thursday afternoon, Kelly O’Donnell, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, issued a statement saying the group was “deeply concerned” that CNN had denied its request for at least one “pool” reporter to be in the debate room for the duration of the 90-minute event. As it stands, CNN has allowed a pool reporter to enter the room only during one of the commercial breaks.

The 1960 debates between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon were the first televised presidential debates in US history.

The television cameras were unforgiving for Nixon, who declined to wear make-up for the first debate and began to sweat under the studio lights.

Kennedy won the election.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden previously faced off on a debate stage in the autumn of 2020, when they participated in two televised debates organised by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The first showdown was in Cleveland, Ohio, and moderated by Chris Wallace, then a presenter with Fox News. Wallace struggled to contain Trump, who repeatedly flouted the rules of the debate, interrupting and speaking over Biden, who at one point became exasperated, replying: “Will you shut up, man?”

Shortly after the first debate, Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19, and was hospitalised for several days, leading to the cancellation of a second planned debate in Miami, Florida.

The final debate was in Nashville, Tennessee, with NBC’s Kristen Welker moderating. The candidates’ microphones were muted when it was not their turn to answer, which eliminated most of the interruptions that plagued the first face off.

The first debate in 2020 was watched by more than 70mn people, and the second was watched by roughly 63mn Americans.

The FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief Lauren Fedor has identified these five important issues to watch for when Biden and Trump lock horns tonight:

• Are these men fit enough for another four years? Tonight’s debate will give millions of Americans the chance to assess the stamina of both Biden, 81, and Trump, 78.

• Will Biden target Trump over his felony convictions? Biden has been reluctant to attack Trump over his myriad legal problems, although Democrats have recently stepped up their references to Trump as a “convicted felon”.

• Can Biden turn the debate to the fate of US democracy? Biden has stressed that the upcoming election poses an existential threat to US democracy and is likely to cite Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in the 2020 election and the subsequent January 6 2021 attack on the Capitol.

• Who will win on the economy? Trump will probably take a jab at Biden for his handling of the US economy, a persistent weak spot for the president in opinion polls.

• How will immigration, abortion and war feature? Trump has relentlessly attacked Biden over the surge in immigration across the US-Mexico border and will probably criticise Biden for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Biden will target Trump on abortion.

As the debate draws near, FiveThirtyEight’s polling average puts Trump ahead of incumbent Biden by just 0.2 percentage points, at 41 per cent.

Trump’s polling margin was greater in the Republican primaries, where a crowded candidate field populated by entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, among others, quickly thinned out. An FT-Michigan Ross poll from a week before primary season kicked off found two-thirds of Republican voters trust Trump more than any other GOP candidate when it comes to handling the US economy.

Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to convince voters that they could trust him on the economy. In February, an FT-Michigan Ross Survey poll found only 31 per cent of Americans felt the president would be the best steward of the US economy, while 42 per cent of them chose Trump. This month’s poll suggests Biden’s ratings on the matter are catching up to those of his rival, at 37 per cent to Trump’s 41.

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In a break from tradition, this year’s first presidential debate is being hosted by CNN, the cable news channel, rather than the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

CNN has set out its own rules and format for the 90-minute showdown, which will air with just two commercial breaks.

The candidates, whose microphones will be muted when they are not speaking, will be given two minutes for answers and one minute for rebuttals. 

Both candidates will appear behind a podium, and their positions on stage were determined by a coin flip — Joe Biden’s campaign won the coin toss and elected for the incumbent president to stand on the right-hand side of viewers’ screens.

Microphones will also be muted throughout the debate unless it is a candidate’s turn to speak — a move intended to clamp down on candidates interrupting or speaking over one another, something that happened frequently both in 2020, when Biden and Trump previously faced off on a debate stage.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump will go head to head at 9pm ET in Atlanta, Georgia, in the first televised debate of the 2024 US presidential election.

CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate the 90-minute showdown, which will include two commercial breaks, according to the network.

The candidates, whose microphones will be muted when they are not speaking, will be given two minutes for answers and one minute for rebuttals.

In a departure from tradition, there will be no live audience when the pair go head to head. In a mid-May letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Biden campaign argued debates “should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters . . . not as entertainment for an in-person audience . . . who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering”.

The next confirmed debate, which will be hosted by ABC, is scheduled to take place on September 10.

Welcome to the Financial Times’ coverage of the first US presidential debate of the 2024 election campaign.

This is not the first time Joe Biden and Donald Trump have squared off on stage. They went head to head in heated debates in 2020 too, before Biden went on to win the election in November.

Big rematches in sport tend to capture the imagination of spectators — and tonight’s debate could be one of the most watched live political events in US history. In some ways it marks the start of the election race in earnest. Both sides agree the stakes are nothing but high: the outcome of the debate will set the tone for the campaign in the next few weeks, at least.

Follow our live blog through the afternoon to gear up for the main event, at which point star FT commentators Rana Foroohar, Edward Luce and Peter Spiegel, as well as our team of correspondents across the US, will weigh in on what they are seeing and hearing from the two candidates.