Concern about Biden’s age, Trump’s struggle to respond to criminal conviction, and other highlights from the first debate

President Joe Biden struggled to dispel concerns about his age and fitness for a second term in a highly anticipated debate Thursday night with former President Donald Trump, who capitalized on those moments of weakness but did little to dismiss vulnerabilities of his own.

It was the first time two presidents debated, the first time Trump was asked in a debate about his felony conviction, and a historically early prime time matchup between the two oldest men to become the major parties’ nominees.

But it was Biden, 81, not Trump, 78, who struggled out of the gate with his chief goal of quieting concerns about his age. At a Biden watch party in Harrisburg, attendees groaned at an early gaffe, while the mood among a group of Republicans gathered at a bar in Center City was largely jovial.

“I’m concerned that people will mistake his stutter for old age or Alzheimer’s,” said Adrian Garcia, 27, of Mechanicsburg, at the Democrats’ party. “Even though Trump was speaking bulls— the entire time, he was speaking clearly.”

» READ MORE: Who won the first presidential debate — Joe Biden or Donald Trump?

Polls show Biden trails Trump in three critical swing states and remains tied with him in three, including in Pennsylvania.

Here are five big-picture takeaways on the high-profile debate.

From Biden’s raspy voice — which some news outlets reported could be due to a cold — to an openmouthed, wide-eyed stare while Trump spoke, the president often came across lost and unfocused.

While he’s been known for gaffes and a stutter throughout his career, several of Biden’s responses were incoherent.

“I’m going to continue to move until we get to total ban — on the total initiative relative to what we’re going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers,” Biden said in response to a question about the border.

Biden has a habit of referencing events or anecdotes without context and he did that throughout the debate, which often made his responses difficult to understand. Even some of his zingers (”you have the morals of an alley cat”) didn’t pack the same punch given his low energy and hoarse voice.

Biden did try to push back on the focus on his age. At the end of the debate, he said Trump “is three years younger than me and a lot less competent.”

While Biden created some of his own worst moments, Trump also seized on every opportunity to point out his opponent’s weaknesses.

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said after a Biden answer on immigration. “I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”

Trump, who has built a political brand on outlandish outbursts and shocking statements, has long been held to a lower standard of decorum and has even gained support for his brash style. On Thursday night he was more restrained.

Asked about his own fitness for office, Trump said he took two cognitive tests and “aced them.”

“He took none,” Trump said of Biden. “I’d like to see him take one, just one, like go through the first five questions. He couldn’t do it.”

Then the conversation devolved into a back and forth about each man’s golf skills.

Trump, the first president in history to be convicted of a crime, knew questions about that case and others would come. The topic didn’t come up until about 40 minutes into the debate, when Biden brought up the hush money trial, baiting Trump to say: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”

Biden also warned Americans of Trump’s promise to retaliate against his enemies if elected.

“The idea that you have the right to seek retribution against any American just because you’re president is wrong, simply wrong,” Biden said. “No president has ever spoken like that. No president in our history has ever spoken like that.”

Trump defended himself against the charges and touted the high number of donations that came into his campaign following his conviction, implying such support showed his conviction was viewed as a “scam.”

Trump also had no new answers on some of his other weakest issues, including his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

The former president was clearly owning the conversation as Biden stumbled, but he did so in part by being untruthful on several occasions. Those statements were largely unchallenged by CNN’s debate moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who did not fact-check either candidate in real time.

Asked about his felony conviction last month for falsifying business records, Trump blamed Biden, saying “he basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.”

But that case was brought by Manhattan prosecutors and the state of New York — not the federal government. At another point, Trump falsely suggested there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, saying, “the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”

That claim has been repeatedly debunked by experts and audits that took place across the country, as well as through hundreds of court cases overseen by both conservative and liberal judges.

And in other cases, Trump made bombastic accusations that aren’t based in evidence, such as saying Biden is a Manchurian candidate who “gets paid by China” and that Biden “could be a convicted felon.”

Neither candidate offered a significant policy proposal to slow inflation — a top issue for voters. Instead, they traded barbs about each of their records.

In response to a question about Americans who feel worse off financially under his presidency, Biden sought to blame his predecessor for inflation and high prices, saying the economy collapsed under Trump and “things were literally chaos.”

Biden framed his administration’s work on the economy as “put[ting] things back together,” saying that Trump mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and unemployment soared. But Trump defended his administration’s economic agenda, saying, “the thing we never got the credit for and we should have is getting us out of the COVID mess.”

”He inherited almost no inflation,” Trump said of Biden, “and then it blew up under his leadership, because they spent money like a bunch of people that didn’t know what they were doing.”

Biden also attacked Trump for his administration’s tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. And Trump defended his campaign’s proposal to levy a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports, saying it would not drive the price of goods higher, as some economists have predicted, saying “it’s just going to cost countries that have been ripping us off for years.”

During a series of questions on abortion, Trump seemingly acknowledged the electoral salience of the abortion issue. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban, and he said he’s in favor of abortion laws that included exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother.

”I think it’s very important. Some people don’t. Follow your heart,” he said, adding: “You got to get elected.”

The former president attempted to turn the narrative on abortion on its head, saying it’s Democrats who are “radical” and suggesting that Biden is in favor of killing infants after birth. That was a false accusation; such a procedure would be illegal. And Trump said he’s comfortable with states having their own laws on abortion.

Biden struggled to capitalize on the moment, even as his campaign has sought to make protecting reproductive rights a focal point of its platform. He said he supports codifying Roe v. Wade, but stumbled over that answer, describing it in a manner inconsistent with what Roe protected. ”I support Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters,” Biden said. “The first time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the women and the state.”

The president said the issue should not be left up to states, saying, “The idea that states are able to do this is a little bit like saying we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states.”

Staff writers Gillian McGoldrick and Aliya Schneider contributed to this article.