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No, President Biden Didn’t Bring Pre-Written Notes to the Debate
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No, President Biden Didn’t Bring Pre-Written Notes to the Debate

A claim circulating online is false.

Joe Biden participates in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections with former Donald Trump in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

A recent tweet claims that, during the June 27 CNN debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Biden violated the rules because “pre-written notes were expressly not allowed.”

While it is true that the candidates were forbidden from bringing pre-written notes, the claim that President Biden brought any of his own notes is false.

The debate was the first presidential debate since 1988 not hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a bipartisan commission that typically coordinates and executes both the presidential and vice presidential debates in an election year.

The Republican Party announced in 2022 that it was withdrawing from the CPD. In May, both candidates said they had received and accepted invitations to debate twice, once on CNN and again on ABC in September. In June, CNN announced the rules for the first debate, which both parties agreed to. Among the changes was that there would be no live audience, the first debate without one since the first televised 1960 presidential debate between then-Vice President Richard Nixon and then-Sen. John F. Kennedy, and that candidates’ microphones would be muted unless it was their turn to speak.

In keeping with the past rules used by the CPD, CNN did not allow the candidates to bring their own pre-written notes to the debate. However, CNN stated that the candidates “will be given a pen, a pad of paper, and a water bottle.”

A CNN official told The Dispatch Fact Check via email that the pad of paper Biden was seen handling “was the [same] legal pad of paper given to each candidate.”

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

Max Whalen is an intern at The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. A rising junior at Cornell University, he serves as the editor-in-chief of the Cornell Review. When Max is not keeping up with the headlines, you can probably find him listening to the Rolling Stones or rooting for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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