The 2024 presidential election is looking to be a Trump vs. Biden rematch. Our reporter debunks six common misconceptions surrounding the two candidates on topics like policy positions and personal backgrounds.
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00:00 When it comes to picking the next president, Americans tend to think that they have their guy figured out.
00:05 But today we're going to bust some misconceptions about Trump and Biden.
00:09 I'm Walt Hickey. I cover politics at Business Insider. Let's go.
00:12 Belief. Joe Biden is too old to be the president, and Donald Trump is better equipped to take over from him.
00:19 Biden, obviously, has had a little bit more of the age issue reflected on him than Trump has.
00:25 Both of them are under a lot of scrutiny now. I mean, Biden is 81 and Trump is 77.
00:30 And so neither of these guys are spring chickens.
00:32 And so everybody is keeping a very tight eye on any possible misstep.
00:37 Biden got a black eye from that conversation that he had with a number of investigators for the Department of Justice
00:42 who were attempting to figure out what the issue with his documents were.
00:45 And he came off his impression as a man who was forgetful.
00:48 I'm an elderly man and I know what the hell I'm doing.
00:51 I've been president and I put this country back on its feet.
00:54 I don't need his recommendation. It's totally—
00:55 How bad is your memory and can you continue as president?
00:59 My memory is so bad I can let you speak.
01:02 Biden has had a couple issues where he tripped on a sandbag at the Naval Academy giving a speech.
01:08 Biden oftentimes had verbal stumbles and has kind of shot from the hip sometimes and gotten wrong.
01:13 Spacing on the ocean is the international rules of the road, our pie to pie.
01:18 For instance, within a week he mixed up Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel of Germany and Mitterrand and Macron of France.
01:26 And I believe that he said that the Egyptian president was the president of Mexico.
01:31 As you know, initially the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in.
01:41 If you are at the point where they are asking people, "Do you think that he is competent to sit for office?"
01:46 It's not really a good sign.
01:47 When it comes to the fitness argument, Trump has been keeping it kind of quiet in the past couple years.
01:51 But, you know, he's going to be in front of a lot of crowds soon.
01:54 He's often found getting himself potentially into trouble with what he says.
01:58 Trump somewhat implied that Nikki Haley was responsible for January 6th when he meant Nancy Pelosi.
02:04 Obviously, the man somewhat notoriously got COVID, had a bit of a rough case of it by all accounts, and bounced back.
02:09 But nevertheless, his physicals that he gets produced by his doctors sound like advertisements for a muscle magazine sometimes.
02:17 I think that we are not necessarily getting the most straightforward indication of the man's health.
02:22 What we don't know about Trump's health is kind of more interesting than what we do know, because he really does kind of keep it under wraps.
02:28 So, misconception, reality, kind of a mixed bag on this one.
02:32 Belief.
02:34 Republicans are hawks and like starting wars. Democrats are doves and don't like starting wars.
02:39 Yeah, that is wrong. That is not true. We can see that repeatedly.
02:42 There's actually been a bit of a shift. Typically, the pro-intervention wing of the Republican Party is not represented in Trump.
02:49 And the oftentimes anti-interventionist wing of the Democratic Party is certainly not represented in Biden.
02:54 It's interesting watching these guys work because they are slightly out of step with their parties at the same time that they are the leaders of their parties.
03:02 People forget that Biden is a foreign policy guy, that he spent years in the Senate on and chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
03:10 That this is actually his point of expertise.
03:12 Obviously, Biden did do a drawdown in Afghanistan. He took a big political punch for that, but made good on a promise to get the United States out of Afghanistan.
03:21 That being said, Biden has really been very aggressive in his support of Ukraine and has been very aggressive in his support of Israel.
03:28 And as a result, is potentially jeopardizing relationships that he has with people within his own party who do support the Palestinians.
03:35 And so that can have electoral ramifications. The state of Michigan has a very, very large and often stridently pro-Democrat Arab American population.
03:44 And this population does not support America's policy on Israel. That could cause some issues for Biden.
03:49 Losing Michigan would be disastrous for the Biden re-election bid.
03:55 It's tough to see a map that he gets to 270 that doesn't in some way involve Michigan. It really could be a problem for him.
04:03 Donald Trump's victory on abortion is going to help him in his election campaign.
04:07 In June of 2022, the Supreme Court, which Trump had appointed three justices to, overturned Roe v. Wade.
04:15 And essentially made it so that abortion was no longer de facto legal in the United States.
04:20 And many states immediately banned abortion within their borders.
04:24 And as a result, this has provoked a very, very, very, very powerful reaction.
04:29 Abortion is a human right!
04:32 From not just folks on the left, but independents and even Republican women, for whom the right to an abortion was kind of settled.
04:40 And now it's unsettled.
04:41 And so what we have seen since is fascinating.
04:45 Historically, local off-year elections or elections that are special elections, they tend to have voters that have skewed more Republican.
04:53 That advantage has been completely flipped, which tells us that the motivation to vote and get to the polls is significantly higher on the Democratic side now.
05:02 Even among the Democratic side, it's also potentially indicating that independents, who normally would have potentially chosen one of the other party and alternated perhaps or been swing voters, are now entering the Democratic coalition related to the issue of abortion.
05:14 And it's the hope of the Democrats that that kind of push will give them a little bit of an extra electoral push to defeat Trump.
05:20 And they very well could be right.
05:22 So the misconception that Trump's big victory on abortion is a victory, that's not necessarily the case.
05:27 He really could be facing some very serious consequences.
05:30 Belief. The economy is bad and it's going to hurt Joe Biden.
05:35 Is wrong on a couple counts.
05:37 Biden administration will be very forthright that their job growth over the course of their presidency has outpaced pretty much any recent president's memory.
05:45 So just for example, to give a sense of how the economy has been humming a little bit in the Trump administration in the first three years he was in office.
05:52 So setting aside the pandemic part of his term, you're looking at 176,000 jobs on average added every month.
05:58 January, for instance, of 2024, Biden added 350,000 some odd jobs.
06:03 And it was a really good report.
06:05 But Biden's not really been able to run on his jobs figure just because the inflation has just been the thing that's been on a lot of people's minds.
06:13 And so Biden has really been beguiled by inflation over the course of his run.
06:17 To his credit, that does seem to have been handled.
06:20 The price of gas has been declining.
06:22 We are exporting more gas than ever.
06:24 And that's under Biden.
06:25 And again, Democrats don't tend to have a reputation as people who are overtly concerned about making oil companies wealthy and keeping gas cheap.
06:33 But nevertheless, the man's got the guys pulling it off.
06:36 I don't have to tell you.
06:37 Gas prices were pretty stable.