Donald Trump delivered 90 minutes of lies on Thursday, spreading crazy conspiracy theories about babies being aborted after birth, lies about his felony conviction, and brazen falsehoods about drug costs, taxes, and Social Security. 

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump took part in the first presidential debate on Thursday, a night that saw Trump unleash an absolute firehose of unchecked lies and Biden struggle with a raspy voice and verbal miscues. 

While the two men’s performances are certain to draw the most attention, the debate moderators’ failure to do their jobs is also drawing scrutiny, as CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash provided zero real-time fact checking on what was 90 minutes of lies, mischaracterizations, and at some points, conspiracy theories.

While Biden had his share of slip-ups, Trump’s lies were so egregious they prompted one reporter to describe the night the following way: “Trump is just machine gun farting lies like a lunatic, the moderators are letting it all go, and Biden is unable to make an appropriate response.”

To help make up for that lack of fact checking, we took a look at five of Trump’s most egregious lies from Thursday’s debate: 

Trump’s crazy lies about abortion

Trump, who appointed the justices that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, spent much of Thursday’s debate dodging, weaving, and outright lying about abortion: 

• Trump claimed that “everybody,” including “every legal scholar,” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. In reality, a majority of Americans opposed the decision overturning Roe.
• He said that in some states, babies are being aborted after birth. This is a favorite lie of his, but it’s complete nonsense. Infanticide is illegal everywhere in the US.
• Trump also argued that the country was coming together on the issue of abortion, even as the nation is a patchwork of bans, restrictions, and rights. 

On Thursday, the former president tried to paint himself as more moderate on the issue, but Trump—whose allies are plotting ways to restrict abortion access if he wins in November—has previously said he would allow individual states to enforce abortion restrictions, no matter how extreme. 

Under a second Trump term, he told Time Magazine in April, Republican-led states with strict abortion regulations would be free to track pregnancies and even criminally prosecute providers or even patients.

Trump’s lies about his felony conviction and investigations into him

Much like he’s done for months, Trump spent Thursday night lying about the investigations into him, claiming that Biden and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) were involved in the state-level cases against him in New York and Georgia.

“He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me,” Trump said during the debate. 

“We have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong,” he continued. 

In May, Trump became the first-ever American president to be found guilty of a crime when a jury of 12 of his New York peers found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records tied to hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. 

Still, Trump has repeatedly argued—without presenting any evidence—that the investigation, the trial, and the jury’s verdict is all part of a conspiracy directed by Biden. 

In reality, Biden and the DOJ had nothing to do with the case, which was brought by New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg.

Trump also faces dozens of charges across the three other cases he’s been indicted in. He faces both a federal and state-level inquiry into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as well as charges over his mishandling of classified documents that he kept after leaving office.

Here’s what is true: A DOJ-appointed special counsel is overseeing the two federal investigations into Trump—into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as well as charges over his mishandling of classified documents that he kept after leaving office. But there is no evidence that Biden has any involvement whatsoever in the cases and he has repeatedly emphasized the independence of the Justice Department.

Trump tries to take credit for $35 insulin price cap

Trump on Thursday once again took credit for lowering insulin costs, repeating a lie from earlier this month.

“I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors — I took care of the seniors,” Trump said.

In reality, Trump’s time in the White House saw no changes to the staggering cost of insulin for patients, and it was two laws signed by Biden that helped lower insulin costs for millions of Americans.

Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act implemented a $35 monthly cap on insulin for Medicare recipients. His American Rescue Plan also played a major role in lowering insulin costs for diabetics. The 2021 law reformed the rules guiding the Medicaid health insurance program to remove a cap on the penalty drug companies pay for raising list prices above the rate of inflation.

This prompted the nation’s three major insulin makers to drop their prices for the life-saving drug. Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk—which make up roughly 90% of the market—all began offering price caps and savings programs in January to lower the cost of some of their most widely-used insulin products to only $35 per month.

Trump’s lies about immigrants and Social Security

Like he often does, Trump lied about undocumented immigrants on Thursday, claiming they are getting Social Security benefits because of Biden.  

“But Social Security, he’s destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security,” Trump said. 

In reality, only people who pay into the Social Security system can receive benefits, which actually means that undocumented workers actually often pay taxes that help fund Social Security. 

Trump’s lies about Biden’s tax plan

Trump—who passed a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations in 2017 and is promising more if they donate to his campaign this year—claimed on Thursday that Biden “wants to raise your taxes by four times.” 

That is not the case. Biden has actually promised not to raise taxes on anyone earning under $400,000 per year and in fact proposed a budget this year including tax cuts for those making under that amount. Biden does want to raise taxes on corporations and billionaires to offer universal pre-kindergarten, provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, and create a new tax break for first-time home buyers. 

These efforts would be funded by increasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Biden has also called for a Billionaire Minimum Tax of 25% on America’s wealthiest individuals and increasing the tax on stock buybacks from 1% to 4%.

Democratic President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday’s debate was marked by fluctuations, sharply contrasting with his Republican rival Donald Trump’s barrage of attacks, which included several falsehoods.

This clash between the two oldest presidential candidates in history was a pivotal moment ahead of November’s U.S. election.

They sparred over abortion, immigration, conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and their respective economic policies, aiming to sway a race that polls indicate has remained neck-and-neck for months.

In the debate’s early stages, Biden, sounding hoarse at times, stumbled over his words. However, he regained his stride midway through by leveling sharp criticism at Trump, highlighting his legal troubles over hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and branding him a “felon.”

In response, Trump brought up the recent conviction of Biden’s son, Hunter, for lying about his drug use to buy a gun.

Moments later, Biden noted that almost all of Trump’s former cabinet members, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have not endorsed his campaign.

“They know him well, they served with him,” he said. “Why are they not endorsing him?”

Two White House officials said Biden had a cold. But his up-and-down evening could deepen voter concerns that the 81-year-old is too old to serve another four-year term.

Trump, meanwhile, unleashed a barrage of criticisms, some of which were well-worn falsehoods he has repeated on the campaign trail, including claims that migrants have carried out a crime wave and that Democrats support infanticide.

Biden and Trump, 78, were under pressure to display their command of issues and avoid verbal gaffes as they sought a breakout moment in a race that opinion polls show has been deadlocked for months. Biden, in particular, has been dogged by questions about his age and sharpness, while Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and sprawling legal woes remain vulnerabilities.

Asked about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, the former president refused to accept any responsibility and claimed that many of those arrested were innocent.

“This guy has no sense of American democracy,” Biden scoffed in response.

Biden also blamed Trump for enabling the elimination of a nationwide right to abortion by appointing conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court, an issue that has bedeviled Republicans since 2022. Trump countered that Biden would not support any limits on abortions and said that returning the issue to the states was the right course of action.

Trump said Biden had failed to secure the southern U.S. border, ushering in scores of criminals.

“I call it Biden migrant crime,” he said.

Biden replied, “Once again, he’s exaggerating, he’s lying.”

Studies show immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans. The televised clash on CNN was taking place far earlier than any modern presidential debate, more than four months before the Nov. 5 Election Day.

The two candidates appeared with no live audience, and their microphones automatically cut off when it was not their turn to speak – both atypical rules imposed to avoid the chaos that derailed their first debate in 2020 when Trump interrupted Biden repeatedly.

As the debate began, the two men – who have made little secret of their mutual dislike – did not shake hands or acknowledge one another.

But there were plenty more moments in which their bad blood was evident. Each called the other the worst president in history; Biden referred to Trump as a “loser” and a “whiner,” while Trump called Biden a “disaster.”

At one point, the rivals bickered over their golf games, with Trump bragging about hitting the ball farther than Biden and Biden retorting that Trump would struggle to carry his own bag.

Polarized nation

The first questions focused on the economy, as polls show Americans are dissatisfied with Biden’s performance despite wage growth and low unemployment.

Biden acknowledged that inflation had driven prices substantially higher than at the start of his term but said he deserves credit for putting “things back together again” following the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump asserted that he had overseen “the greatest economy in the history of our country” before the pandemic struck and said he took action to prevent the economic freefall from deepening even further.

The debate took place at a time of profound polarization and deep-seated anxiety among voters about the state of American politics. Two-thirds of voters said in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll that they were concerned violence could follow the election, nearly four years after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Trump took the stage as a felon who still faces a trio of criminal cases, including efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The former president, who persists in falsely claiming his defeat was the result of fraud, has suggested he will punish his political enemies if returned to power, but he will need to convince undecided voters that he does not pose a mortal threat to democracy, as Biden asserts.

Biden’s challenge was to deliver a forceful performance after months of Republican assertions that his faculties have dulled with age. While national polls show a tied race, Biden has trailed Trump in polls of most battleground states that traditionally decide presidential elections. Just this month, he lost his financial edge over Trump, whose fundraising surged after he was criminally convicted of trying to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Neither Biden nor Trump is popular, and many Americans remain deeply ambivalent about their choices. About a fifth of voters say they have not picked a candidate, are leaning toward a third-party candidate, or may sit out the election, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Trump’s niece Mary Trump, who has been critical of her uncle, will join Biden’s campaign in its media spin room following the debate, a campaign official said.

Several contenders to be Trump’s vice presidential pick – North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and U.S. Senators J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio – traveled to Atlanta and were expected to make Trump’s case in the post-debate spin room.

The second and final debate in this year’s campaign is scheduled for September. See a Reuters photo slideshow of previous debates.