A Florida man was indicted Friday for allegedly threatening to kill Alina Habba in a series of online ’86’ posts against the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Fox News Digital has learned.

The ’86” has been interpreted by law enforcement officials to mean ‘get rid of.’ 

Gregory W. Kehoe, the interim U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, announced the charges Friday. 

According to the indictment reviewed by Fox News Digital, Salvatore Russotto made a threat in May to ‘injure and kill the victim in a series of online posts.’

Fox News Digital has learned that the victim referred to in the indictment is Habba, the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey who previously served as counselor to President Donald Trump. 

‘[VICTIM] is a c—,’ Russotto posted. ’86 that b—-.’

He also allegedly posted: ‘A slow painful death for [VICTIM]. 86 that c—.’

Russotto also allegedly posted: ‘Eliminate [VICTIM]. 86 Traitor. Death penalty for all traitors.’

Russotto was charged with transmission of an interstate threat to injure and retaliating against a federal law enforcement officer by threat.

‘This is yet another disturbing example of a dangerous copycat inspired by the reckless behavior of former officials, targeting those who serve our country and threatening the very people working to keep America safe,’ FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital. ‘Our FBI will not tolerate political violence in any form.

‘I’m grateful to our law enforcement partners in Florida for their swift action and steadfast commitment to justice.’ 

The indictment comes after Patel said he has been forced to divert agents to investigate ‘copycats’ of potential threats to Trump as a result of former FBI Director James Comey’s ’86 47′ social media post last month.

‘Do you know how many agents I’ve had to take offline from chasing down child sex predators, fentanyl traffickers, terrorists, because, everywhere across this country, people are popping up on social media and think that a threat to the life of the president of the United States is a joke and they can do it because he did it?’ Patel said last month. 

‘That’s what I’m having to deal with every single day, and that’s what I’m having to pull my agents and analysts off because he thought it was funny to go out there and make a political statement.’ 

An FBI official told Fox News Digital the agency cannot disclose the number of ‘copycat’ incidents due to ongoing investigations but described the number to Fox News Digital as ‘significant.’ 

Comey met with Secret Service officials in Washington this month for an interview about his ’86 47′ Instagram post, two sources briefed on the meeting told Fox News.

Comey is under investigation for the now-deleted Instagram post that showed seashells arranged on a beach to say ’86 47.’

‘Cool shell formation on my beach walk,’ he wrote along with the post. 

Comey offered an explanation for the post after he received backlash on social media. 

‘I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,’ the subsequent post from Comey said. ‘I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.’

The president, in a May interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, didn’t accept Comey’s explanation. 

‘He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,’ Trump told Baier. ‘If you’re the FBI director, and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination,’ and it says it loud and clear.’ 

Top House Republicans are warning the Senate to proceed carefully with any possible changes to President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’

‘We in the House don’t want to see this changed too much. Of course, they’re going to put their mark on it, and they’re going to shape it and hopefully make it better, But, yeah, it just can’t change materially too much for us to have to thread that needle again,’ said Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas.

He hosted House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, on an episode of the RSC’s podcast, ‘Right To The Point,’ an early copy of which was obtained by Fox News Digital.

Arrington told Pfluger, ‘The reality is, we struck a very difficult and very, very delicate balance in the House that could be disrupted on any number of policy fronts, if the Senate were to go too far.’

The RSC is a 189-strong member group in the House GOP that acts as the conference’s de facto conservative think tank.

Arrington’s committee, meanwhile, plays a central role in the budget reconciliation process – which is what Republicans are using to pass Trump’s agenda on tax, immigration, energy, defense, and the national debt in one massive bill.

It’s notable that they used the RSC’s weekly podcast to send a pointed message to their colleagues in the Senate, which comes as lawmakers there wrestle with key issues in the House’s version of the bill.

Senate Republicans still have to deal with unresolved questions on Medicaid and state and local tax (SALT) deductions, among other items. 

Senate GOP leaders have said their changes to the bill are critical in order for it to survive their razor-thin majority of three seats – the same margin as the House holds.

The House passed its version of the bill by just one vote in late May. Now, different House GOP factions are warning that they will not accept the Senate’s proposed changes on a number of key issues.

‘If you and I had the pen, and it was just between two West Texans, I know there are deeper, deeper fiscal reforms that would bend the curve even more dramatically on our spending and debt to GDP. But we have other members that we have to negotiate with,’ Arrington said.

‘So yes, make it as good as you can make in terms of improvements, but there is a point at which you will, instead of bend, you will break the delicate balance, and you will imperil the most important and most consequential bill – with the greatest set of conservative reforms in my lifetime, if not 100 years.’

When reached for comment on Arrington’s remark, Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office pointed Fox News Digital to the South Dakota Republican’s appearance on the Hugh Hewitt show Wednesday.

‘I met with [House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.] yesterday, and we’ve talked several times today already, just checking in on various aspects of the Senate bill and, you know, what the prospects are when it gets to the House,’ Thune said. ‘So there’s been a lot of coordination from the very beginning about this and that, you know, continues to this day, which is why we continue to stay in close contact.’

Johnson, Thune and the White House have been in near-constant communication, hammering out details big and small in the bill.

Pfluger said he was still ‘hopeful,’ however, about Republicans’ self-imposed July 4 deadline.

‘The Senate is wrestling with this bill right now…to make the changes that make it better, but to send it back to us in a fiscally disciplined way, where we know we still garner the savings where we do the right things to put money back into American families pockets,’ Pfluger said.

Johnson told reporters on Friday that it was ‘possible’ that the deadline could slip, but said he ‘doesn’t want to accept that as an option right now.’

Fox News Digital’s Alex Miller contributed to this report

Justice Amy Coney Barrett had pointed words for her colleague Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, accusing Jackson of taking an ‘extreme’ position on the role of the judiciary branch.

Writing in her Supreme Court opinion on nationwide injunctions on Friday, Barrett said Jackson’s dissent contained ‘rhetoric,’ and she signaled that the liberal justice’s arguments were not worth much attention.

‘We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,’ Barrett wrote. ‘We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.’

The Supreme Court’s decision came as part of an emergency request from the Trump administration asking the high court to put an end to judges issuing universal injunctions, including those that judges have placed on President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order.

Barrett, who was appointed by Trump, wrote that when judges issue injunctions to block policies, like those the Trump administration is trying to implement, they cannot apply the injunction to more than the parties involved in the case. Barrett said that type of order, often called a ‘nationwide injunction,’ is judicial overreach.

But Barrett’s opinion left open numerous other ways that plaintiffs can seek broad forms of relief from the courts, including by bringing class action lawsuits or statewide lawsuits.

Jackson wrote that nationwide injunctions should be permissible because the courts should not allow the president to ‘violate the Constitution.’ Barrett said that was not based on any existing legal doctrine.

‘She offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush,’ Barrett wrote.

Sotomayor, meanwhile, wrote in her own dissenting opinion that the Supreme Court was being ‘complicit’ by allowing the Trump administration to extract a perceived win out of the high court over birthright citizenship.

Sotomayor said that every court that has reviewed Trump’s birthright citizenship plan thus far has blocked Trump from carrying it out. Trump played a ‘different game,’ Sotomayor said, by bringing the case before the Supreme Court without actually asking the justices to analyze the merits of his plan. Trump instead asked the justices to weigh in on the legality of nationwide injunctions in general.

Trump’s birthright citizenship order would eliminate the 150-year-old right under the 14th Amendment that allows babies born in the United States to receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ citizenship status.

The Supreme Court’s decision still allows for the high possibility that judges will continue to widely block Trump’s birthright citizenship order, but with different legal maneuvering on the part of the plaintiffs and the courts.

President Donald Trump said he’s open to conducting additional strikes against Iran, should Tehran pick up its nuclear program again to a level that is concerning to the U.S. 

‘Sure. Without question, absolutely,’ Trump told reporters Friday when asked about the possibility of subsequent strikes. 

Trump has previously issued similar warnings to Iran, and said Wednesday at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands that if Tehran were to seek to repair its nuclear program once more the U.S. wouldn’t hesitate to move forward with additional strikes.

Trump also slammed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared victory over Israel on Thursday. Trump countered Khamenei’s claims and said that he had spared Khamenei from death. 

‘I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,’ Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Friday. ‘I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH, and he does not have to say, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!’’ 

‘I wish the leadership of Iran would realize that you often get more with HONEY than you do with VINEGAR. PEACE!!!’ Trump said. 

The U.S. launched strikes late Saturday targeting key Iranian nuclear facilities, which involved more than 125 U.S. aircraft, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters Sunday.

Following the strikes, Trump said in an address to the nation that the mission left the nuclear sites ‘completely and totally obliterated.’ But days later, a leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, published by CNN and the New York Times, cast doubt on those claims, saying that the strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by several months.

Meanwhile, the U.S., Israel and Iran’s Foreign Ministry have all said that the three nuclear sites that U.S. forces struck have encountered massive damage.

According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the FBI is conducting an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter and who shared the document with the media.

President Donald Trump celebrated after the Supreme Court moved to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions, something that had impacted his executive orders.

The president held a news conference just over an hour after the ruling was issued and said the Supreme Court had stopped a ‘colossal abuse of power.’ 

‘I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers,’ Trump said on Friday.

Trump also accused lower court judges of trying to ‘dictate the law for the entire nation’ rather than ruling on the cases before them.

On Friday, Supreme Court Justices ruled 6-3 to allow the lower courts to issue injunctions only in limited instances, though the ruling leaves open the question of how the ruling will apply to the birthright citizenship order at the heart of the case.

The Supreme Court agreed this year to take up a trio of consolidated cases involving so-called universal injunctions handed down by federal district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state. Judges in those districts had blocked Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship from taking force nationwide – which the Trump administration argued in their appeal to the Supreme Court was overly broad.

The Supreme Court’s arguments in May focused little on the merits of those universal injunctions – and on Friday, the court made clear that it is not ruling on whether the birthright citizenship orders are constitutional.

‘The applications do not raise – and thus we do not address – the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,’ Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, writing for the majority. ‘The issue before us is one of remedy: whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions.’

‘A universal injunction can be justified only as an exercise of equitable authority, yet Congress has granted federal courts no such power,’ she added.

Coney Barrett took a swipe at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, saying that her argument was ‘ at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: [Jackson] decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.’

In her dissent, Jackson warned that the ruling allowed the president to ‘violate the Constitution’ and presented ‘an existentia threat to the rule of law.’

A provision inside President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ that would have lessened regulations on certain firearms was one of many stripped policies that did not pass muster with Senate rules.

The Senate parliamentarian ruled late Thursday night that policy changes that would delist short-barrel rifles, shotguns and suppressors from the National Firearms Act (NFA) would have to be scrubbed from the Senate Finance Committee’s portion of the mammoth bill.

The provision would have allowed for those particular guns and accessories to no longer be subject to a $200 federal tax. They would also no longer have needed to be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Changes to the NFA were part of the Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today (SHORT) Act, a bill pushed by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., in the upper chamber, and Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., in the House.

‘This is a setback, but we are committed to working with the parliamentarian to protect the Second Amendment in any way we can through reconciliation,’ Marshall told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘‘Shall not be infringed’ is crystal clear and the rights of gun owners must be respected.’

Indeed, lawmakers do have the opportunity to rewrite the provision to comport with the Byrd Rule, which governs the budget reconciliation process and allows either party in power to skirt the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.

Clyde told Fox News Digital in a statement that he disagreed with the ruling, ‘as the taxation and registration of firearms under the draconian NFA are inextricably linked.’ 

‘I’m working with my Senate Republican colleagues to rewrite the language so we can retain our 2A wins and deliver the best possible outcome for the American people,’ he said. ‘We must seize this rare opportunity to restore our Second Amendment rights.’

Arguments before the parliamentarian, who many Republicans lashed out at on Thursday following rulings that stripped key, yet divisive, Medicaid tweaks from the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ are expected to continue throughout Friday and likely until the last few minutes before the final bill is revealed.

The gun provision was one of many tax-related items stripped from the package. Others included subsidies for private schools and carve-outs for religious colleges from the endowments tax, among others.

There are other provisions still under consideration, including ‘Trump Accounts,’ which would have set aside $1,000 in taxpayer money for newborns, requiring Social Securities numbers for a slew of tax credits, and making tax benefits for those who invest in opportunity zones permanent. 

President Trump exerted ‘maximum pressure’ on Israel and Iran in an effort to ‘deliver peace’ after his historic and decisive strikes decimated the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.

The president vowed throughout his 2024 campaign to reach ‘peace through strength,’ and he has taken steps in recent days to do just that, with an added pressure campaign on both Israel and Iran.

‘President Trump directing the perfect execution of the most secretive and successful military strikes in history – and then negotiating a ceasefire to the war within 48 hours – is the epitome of peace through strength,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital. ‘Nobody knows how to exert maximum pressure to deliver peace better than Donald Trump.’

Trump, this week, participated in the NATO Summit in the Netherlands, where he was praised by allies for his decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praised Trump as a ‘man of strength’ and a ‘man of peace.’

‘I just want to recognize your decisive action on Iran,’ Rutte said at the start of his joint remarks with the president. ‘You are a man of strength, but you are also a man of peace. And the fact that you are now also successful in getting this ceasefire done between Israel and Iran – I really want to commend you for that. I think this is important for the whole world.’

Rutte, on his social media, also congratulated the president for his ‘extraordinary’ action in Iran, saying it was ‘something no one else dared to do.’

‘It makes us all safer,’ Rutte said.

The president also brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, announcing Monday that the ’12-Day War’ was coming to an end – just over a week after Israel launched a preemptive strike, citing fears that Tehran was dangerously close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The two countries subsequently traded rocket fire over the following days, and over the weekend, the U.S. launched its own airstrikes on three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities.

Iran responded by shooting rockets at a U.S. air base in Qatar on Monday, but not without giving advance notice to U.S. and Qatari officials. No injuries were reported in that attack.

The ceasefire had gotten off to an uncertain start, with the president unleashing frustration with both countries.

‘I’m not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, OK, now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either, but I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning,’ Trump said on Tuesday.

He continued, ‘We basically have two countries that have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing.’ 

‘I’m gonna see if I can stop it,’ he added.

‘ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after boarding Marine One.

Minutes later, he announced that Israel was canceling its plans for an attack on Tuesday morning.

‘ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter!’ he wrote.

Israel did not attack.

From the NATO summit, the president warned that the U.S. will strike Iran again if it attempts to rebuild its nuclear program.

And Trump’s historic strikes in Iran have the Islamic Republic admitting that their nuclear facilities were decimated.

Assessments from the U.S., Israel and Iran agree the strikes were successful.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi admitted in an interview on state TV that the U.S.’s strikes caused serious damage to Tehran’s nuclear facilities, despite Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s insistence that there was minimal impact.

Araghchi said in the interview that ‘the level of damage is high, and it’s serious damage,’ according to the Associated Press.

Post-strike assessments have shown that Iran’s nuclear sites suffered damage in both U.S. and Israeli attacks. All three countries — Iran, Israel and the U.S. — have reached similar conclusions about the extent of the damage, despite what a leaked intel report indicated.

The only leader who seemingly does not agree with the assessments is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said that ‘the Americans failed to achieve anything significant in their attack on nuclear facilities,’ according to reports. 

Khamenei appears to be more focused on projecting strength than reflecting reality. He described Iran’s attack on Al-Udeid, the American airbase in Qatar, as a ‘heavy slap to the U.S.’s face.’ While President Donald Trump dismissed it as a ‘very weak response’ and thanked Iran for giving the U.S. ‘early notice.’

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said in a statement on Tuesday that the agency had ‘seen extensive damage at several nuclear sites in Iran, including its uranium conversion and enrichment facilities.’

In addition to discussing the damage done to Iran’s nuclear sites, Araghchi also addressed the possibility of resuming talks with the U.S. He said that the American strikes ‘made it more complicated and more difficult’ for Iran to come to the table, but did not rule out the possibility that negotiations could resume.

Nuclear talks with the U.S. might not be entirely off the table for Iran after last week’s strikes—even if Tehran is not interested in reentering negotiations right away.

The possibility of negotiations was already in question prior to Operation Midnight Hammer, as Tehran viewed the U.S. as being ‘complicit’ in Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, according to Reuters, citing Iranian U.N. Ambassador Ali Bahreini.

Trump on Wednesday expressed optimism in the U.S.’s ability to resume nuclear talks with Iran.

‘We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement, I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary. I mean, they had a war. They fought. Now they’re going back to their world. I don’t care if I have an agreement or not. The only thing we would be asking for is what we’re asking for before about, we want no nuclear [program]. But we destroyed the nuclear,’ Trump said. 

Despite Trump’s statement, there is still no clear indication that the countries have plans to meet in the near future.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate with now-President Donald Trump one year ago Friday changed the course of the 2024 election.

The octogenarian Delawarean appeared on-stage tired and with a raspy voice, while some of his responses were at times unintelligible, leading to Trump landing several wisecracks in response.

While giving a response about wealthy Americans paying sufficient taxes, Biden said there are at least 1,000 billionaires – first muttering ‘1,000 trillionaires’ – in the U.S. and that they purportedly pay only 8.2% in taxes.

‘If they just paid 24%; 25%, either one of those numbers, they’d raise $500 million – billion I should say in a 10-year period. We’d be able to wipe out the debt,’ and ‘all those things we need to do [with] child care, elder care.’

His response went on for several more seconds, transitioning into a sidewinder about making every person eligible for ‘what I’ve been able to do with COVID,’ before mumbling for several seconds and declaring, ‘We finally beat Medicare.’

When moderator Jake Tapper turned to Trump for a response, he said:

‘Well, he’s right, he did beat Medicare, he beat it to death.’

Biden also claimed to have reduced illegal immigration at the southern border by 40% over the course of his term.

‘It’s better than when [Trump] left office. And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,’ Biden said.

‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,’ Trump replied.

Trump also sharply criticized Biden for ‘destroy[ing] our country,’ and that he came out with a ‘nothing’ border plan to score a few political points.

The current president also labeled Biden ‘a Palestinian’ – a title he also bestowed on Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is Jewish – in relation to how they have responded to the Israel-Gaza conflict, after Biden accused him of disrespecting the military.

Biden said his late son, former Delaware Attorney General Joseph Beau Biden III, contracted glioblastoma from being stationed near burn pits in Iraq. He went on to accuse Trump of the widely-debunked ‘suckers and losers’ line about World War I casualties buried in a French cemetery.

‘My son was not a loser, he was not a sucker – you’re the sucker, you’re the loser,’ Biden fumed, speaking sternly through gritted teeth.

‘First of all, that was a made-up quote – suckers and losers – they made it up; it was in a third-rate magazine,’ Trump replied. 

The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg cited multiple anonymous sources in publishing the bombshell allegations in September 2020.

Fox News Digital’s Kiera McDonald, Emma Woodhead and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

A year ago Friday, President Joe Biden took the debate stage against then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and drove one of the final nails in his reelection campaign’s coffin as traditional allies turned their backs on the 46th president and subsequently rallied to replace him as the frontrunner against Trump. 

Biden entered the reelection cycle already racked by claims and concerns that his mental acuity had slipped and he was not mentally fit to continue serving as president, which was underscored by special counsel Robert Hur’s report in February 2024 that rejected criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials, citing he was ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ 

The then-president spent days preparing for the debate from Camp David in Maryland, as videos of his recent public gaffes and missteps haunted the campaign in the days leading up to the debate. Trump, meanwhile, led the charge in demanding Biden take a drug test to prove he was not taking performance-enhancing supplements ahead of the highly anticipated event. 

Biden brushed off accusations he was using any performance-enhancing supplements, including mocking Trump’s challenge that he take a drug test in an X post showing him drinking a can of water. 

‘I don’t know what they’ve got in these performance enhancers, but I’m feeling pretty jacked up. Try it yourselves, folks. See you in a bit,’ the X post read, accompanied by a photo of Biden drinking a can of water that read ‘Get real, Jack. It’s just water.’

Just minutes later, Biden would deliver a failing debate performance that unleashed panic among the Democratic Party, as some rushed to defend Biden, and others broke with the man who had served in public office for more than 50 years to demand fresh leadership at the 11th hour of the campaign cycle. 

‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he knows what he said either,’ Trump shot at Biden at one point during the debate.

The viral moment followed Biden attempting to tout Congress’ bipartisan border package that lawmakers had bucked earlier in 2023. 

Biden said, ‘We find ourselves in a situation where when he was president, he was separating babies from their mothers put them in cages, making sure that the families were separated.’

‘That’s not the right way to go. What I’ve done since I’ve changed the law, what’s happened? I’ve changed it in a way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally, that’s better than when he left office. And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers,’ Biden said, appearing to trail off. 

Overall, Biden’s 90-minute performance was riddled with him tripping over his words, speaking in a far more subdued tenor than during his vice presidency, having a raspy and unsure voice, and losing his train of thought at times. 

Biden and Trump also were both confronted over their ages during the debate, with the moderator saying Biden would be 86 by the end of a potential second term, and Trump 82. 

Biden defended his age, saying he ‘spent half my career being criticized about being the youngest person in politics. I was the second-youngest person ever elected to the United States Senate, and now I’m the oldest. This guy is three years younger and a lot less competent.’ 

Trump, meanwhile, said he had taken cognitive tests and ‘aced them.’ 

The debate unleashed panic among Democrat allies of the president and members of the media, as they remarked his performance was a failure that added fuel to the fire surrounding concerns over his mental acuity and age. 

‘My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout. And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic,’ then-MSNBC host Joy Reid, for example, said.

‘My job now is to be really honest,’ former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, said during an appearance on MSNBC after the debate. ‘Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn’t do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.’ 

‘I think the emotions of the night were basically disappointment, anger, and then, by the end, it was panic,’ one House Democrat who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told Fox News Digital following the debate.

Legacy media outlets such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune called on Biden to map out an exit plan – with the Times describing Biden as a ‘shadow of a great public servant’ – while Biden allies such as former President Barack Obama and first lady Jill Biden reiterated their support for the 46th president’s re-election. 

‘Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,’ Obama said the day after the debate. ‘But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight – and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit.’ 

Soon after the debate, however, reports spread that Obama was working behind the scenes to rally that Biden drop out of the race, so a new generation of Democrats could take the reins of the party. 

The White House, meanwhile, forcefully defended the president following the debate. 

‘Absolutely not,’ then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared in a media briefing July 3, 2024, when asked if Biden had any plans to exit the 2024 race. 

Biden ultimately did drop out of the race on July 21, 2024, less than a month following the debate, as pressure from traditional allies grew. The president announced his departure in a Sunday afternoon message posted to his X account. 

The announcement was soon followed by him endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take up the mantle, leaving her with just more than 100 days to launch her own presidential campaign against Trump.