Biden campaign celebrates record fundraising haul while mocking Trump’s ‘tired and angry’ debate performance

Democratic nominee’s presidential campaign raises nearly $4m during final hour of contentious debate

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has announced a record-breaking fundraising haul during the final hour of the debate between the former vice president and Donald Trump on Tuesday night, announcing it raised $3.8 million in just 60 minutes.

Kate Bedingfield, Mr Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said the former vice president “demonstrated the leadership and temperament that Americans around the country are looking for” while Mr Trump appeared “desperate and weak and angry”.

Speaking on a press call with reporters following the first debate between the two nominees of the campaign season, Ms Bedingfield added: “There was one president on the debate stage tonight and it was not the person who flew in on Air Force One.”

The former vice president’s campaign sought to highlight what they said were obvious differences between the Democratic nominee and Mr Trump, who they called “tired and angry” at the debate night in Ohio. Mr Biden, on the other hand, was “confidently smiling” throughout the event and displayed the characteristics of a commander-in-chief, his campaign argued.

“There was one leader on stage tonight and one liar”, Ms Bedingfield continued.

Symone Sanders, senior campaign adviser to Mr Biden, also slammed the president’s performance during the phone call, Fox News reported, saying: “Donald Trump tonight was angry, he was weak, he was erratic. It was chaos.”

She said Mr Biden “spoke to the American people at home” on several occasions, noting how the former vice president looked directly into the camera while ignoring Mr Trump’s frequent interruptions.

The Biden campaign said in a statement following the debate that it broke its own one-hour fundraising record, as well as that of the pro-Democratic fundraising site Act Blue. The fundraising organisation confirmed the one-hour haul was the largest of any campaign featured on its site.

Tuesday night’s debate was undoubtedly one of the most contentious presidential showoffs in US history, with Mr Biden slamming Mr Trump as “the worst president America has ever had” and Mr Trump refusing at many points to allow the former vice president — or even the debate moderator — to get a word in edgewise.

The former vice president has consistently broken fundraising records since securing the Democratic Party’s nomination to face off against Mr Trump in the general election. Last month, the Biden campaign raised roughly $365 million, shattering records following the announcement of California Senator Kamala Harris as Mr Biden’s running mate and the weeklong Democratic National Convention.

Experts have previously told The Independent the 2020 race was shaping up to be the most expensive in American history, with Center for Responsive Politics executive director Sheila Krumholz saying in an interview earlier this month: “This will be an election like no other.”

“We are soon going to be completely enveloped by political advertising online, on our computers, our TVs, even our mailboxes,” she said. “This is fundraising on steroids.”