The first general election debate of the 2024 season has kicked off. U.S. President Joe Biden and his Republican rival, Donald Trump, are squaring off as the candidates attempt to lure currently undecided voters.

Both candidates will talk up their own records in office and their plans for the next term, and both candidates are likely to try to spin their records and their plans in the best possible light.

ABC News is fact-checking both Biden and Trump’s claims in real time.

Inflation and the economy

TRUMP CLAIM: “He also said he inherited 9% inflation — no. He inherited almost no inflation and it stayed.. stayed that way for 14 months and it blew up under his leadership because they spent money like a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were…”

FACT CHECK: This is mostly true. In January 2021, when Biden was inaugurated, year-over-year inflation was about 1.4%. Under Biden, year-over-year inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022. But it is now down to 3.3 percent. Under Trump, inflation rose by 7.76 percent from January 2017 to January 2021, and year-over-year inflation peaked at 2.9 percent in July 2018.

Abortion

TRUMP CLAIM: Democrats “support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month,” and contended that some Democratic states have had such a stance.

FACT CHECK: Democrats have never advocated for killing a baby after it is born as this would be murder, which is illegal in every state. Nine states have no abortion restrictions in place; however, it should be noted that late-term abortions are exceedingly rare, representing 1%, according to KFF.

Immigration

TRUMP CLAIM: “We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world, considered the most dangerous place anywhere in the world, and he opened it up, and these killers are coming into our country, and they are raping and killing women.”

FACT CHECK: False. The reality is that there is no evidence that points to a major surge in crime caused by recent arrivals. The former President’s claims ignore the fact that overall, crime is down across the country. According to the latest FBI statistics, which are released quarterly, violent crimes were down 6% Quarter 4 2023 (through Dec 2023) compared to the same time frame last year. There was a 13% decline in murders, and a 4% drop in property crimes across the country. That declining trend followed unprecedented spikes in 2019 and 2020, Trump’s last two years in office.

Military and foreign policy

TRUMP CLAIM: “We got…a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.”

FACT CHECK: Needs context. While it’s true that Trump did not formally declare war against a foreign power while in the White House, he significantly scaled up military action in Syria and Iraq in the fight against ISIS and also authorized the air strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani-putting the country on the brink of a direct conflict with Iran. Pentagon records also show that at least 65 American troops were killed in action during Trump’s term.

Hunter Biden’s laptop

TRUMP CLAIM: “It’s the same thing — 51 intelligence agents said that the laptop was Russian disinformation. It wasn’t that – it came from his son, Hunter. it wasn’t Russia”

FACT CHECK: At the final presidential debate of the 2020 cycle, Joe Biden suggested the contents of his son’s laptop’s hard-drive – which by then had been dubbed the “laptop from hell” in the New York Post and other conservative outlets – were “garbage” and a “Russian plant.”

Biden’s claim that the laptop hard-drive was a “Russian plant” was an apparent reference to a letter signed by 51 retired intelligence officials who wrote that the timing of its emergence “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Several of those signees have since said that Biden mischaracterized the language in their letter.

Furthermore, earlier this month, prosecutors at Hunter Biden’s criminal trial in Delaware introduced the laptop into evidence — and in one of the more theatrical moments of the trial showed jurors the physical MacBook Pro 13 that Hunter Biden purportedly abandoned at a Wilmington computer repair shop in April 2019.

“Ultimately, in examining that laptop, were investigators able to confirm that it was Hunter Biden’s laptop?” prosecutor Derek Hines asked an FBI agent who testified as an expert witness.

This story is being updated as the debate continues

The Associated Press and ABC OTV stations contributed to this report