If their strategy was to expose Joe Biden as unable to stand for reelection and make a move to replace him, the Democrats succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, given the president’s stunningly poor performance in his debate with Donald Trump.
By most accounts, Americans were horrified by Biden’s condition: eyes bugging out, mouth agape, slurring his words, losing his train of thought, a display that led to the quote of the night by Trump: “I don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, l don’t think he knows what he said either.” Biden was responding to a question about why voters should trust him to resolve the border crisis.
The issue took center stage at the debate, with Trump denouncing Biden for allowing millions of illegal aliens to invade the United States. He referenced the rape and murder of several young women at the hands of migrants let in by his opponent and called it “Biden Migrant Crime.”
Biden’s stumbling and incoherent answers to the questions posed by the CNN moderators have set up a knotty political conundrum. If Biden is on the ballot, he’ll most likely lose, but who can they run instead? One popular name in the race, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wasn’t invited to the debate and is definitely not on the shortlist to head the November ticket. He staged a debate of his own, doing a much better job answering the questions raised by CNN than his Democrat counterpart.
Hillary Clinton, defeated by Trump in 2016, is lurking in the wings and is said to be itching for a rematch. Michelle Obama, a former First Lady as well, is also on the lips of many, as are governors Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. If the Democrats choose anyone other than Vice President Kamala Harris, they’ll have to explain why Biden’s unpopular equity choice is not considered worthy enough to step into his shoes.
Biden’s debate debacle upended the mainstream media with commentators who would usually have his back turning against him. Prominent Democrats are starting to call for his resignation, leading Biden to declare in a followup interview that he’s not going anywhere.
The earliest presidential debate in recent history came with a set of rules that, at first, were seen to benefit Biden, but in the final analysis, turned in Trump’s favor. Cutting off the microphones to prevent cross-talk allowed the challenger to come off more calm than in his 2020 debate with Biden. A split screen showed Biden staring off into space while Trump was seen rolling his eyes and casting doubtful glances to demonstrate his disapproval.
It what may be a first for a presidential debate, Biden got called out on X by the National Border Patrol Council when he said they supported him. Minutes after he made the claim, the union issued a statement stating, “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.” The president apparently didn’t see a post issued by the council hours before the debate debunking his claim that Congressional Republicans have blocked the hiring of new border patrol agents. “In reality, Republicans have actually funded more agents in recent appropriations bills in spite of Biden—not because of him,” they said. “We wish Donald Trump luck tonight in the debate and hope he has enough time to point out all of the ways Biden's border policies have failed.”
Questioned on abortion, Trump stood by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow each state to decide on the issue, while Biden called for the reinstatement of Roe vs. Wade to make it a federal matter. The two clashed over Trump’s contention that the Democrats are in favor of abortion up to the moment of birth, and even afterward. Speaking about health care, Biden went off on a tangent about the pandemic, muttering, “We finally beat Medicare,” to which Trump responded: “He's right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.” The 45th president charged throughout the clash that the millions of migrants Biden let into the U.S. will bankrupt both Medicare and Medicaid.
Boasting about their fitness for office, the two candidates jousted over their respective golf games. Biden, 81, claims he had a handicap of six, a contention that rankled Trump. “That’s the biggest lie of all that he’s a six handicap,” Trump, who’s 78, retorted. “Never,” he turned to Biden. “I’ve seen your swing; l know your swing.” Trump was on the golf course the following day and, after a long drive off the tee, turned to the cameras and said, “Do you think Biden can do that? I don’t think so.”
After the debate, Trump sprung off the platform while Biden was assisted by his wife, Jill, gingerly taking each step one at a time. The performance put an exclamation point on the months of video showing the president’s decrepit state, clips the White House called “cheap fakes.”
“Last night was a defeat not only for Biden but for the entire Radical Left Democrat Party and the Fake News Media who have been lying to the American People as our country was being destroyed,” the Trump campaign posted. “If the media had been doing their job instead of being a branch of the Democrat Party, we would have understood his mental condition four years ago.”
“I actually felt sad that our commander in chief didn’t have anyone in his corner looking out for him to say you better not go out there,” said viewer Amy Weinhauer of Selden. “It was hard to watch.”
After months of his administration’s maneuvers to get a conviction on Trump in any number of courts, Biden played the felon card and rattled off the criminal and civil suits lodged against the former president, leading Trump to declare that he “never had sex with a porn star,” and report that his poll numbers go up and his fundraising gets a boost at each turn of Democrat lawfare against him. In the days following his conviction in a Manhattan trial run by the third-highest ranking official in the Biden Justice Department, Trump raked in an unprecedented $400 million in campaign contributions.
Biden also made hay of the January 6 assault on the Capitol, charging that Trump is a threat to Democracy. Trump responded that he urged his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically,” and the Select Committee investigating the incident hid evidence showing that his offer of National Guard troops was rejected by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The two also clashed over the state of the economy with Biden saying Trump left him a mess that he is still trying to clean up. Trump contended that it was Biden’s policies, especially on energy, that drove up costs for Americans.
In the debate’s aftermath, Americans expressed concern over the prospect of seven more months of Biden and Trump’s charge that he’s going to start World War III. Trump said Biden is compromised by his family taking money from China, calling him a “Manchurian Candidate,” and will not stand up to them if they invade Taiwan. He argued that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine on his watch, and Hamas would not have attacked Israel. The former president claimed Iran was broke when he was in charge and could not have funded terrorist organizations until Biden gave them billions of dollars in funds he had previously frozen.
Trump hammered the president for his hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan and for stating that no soldiers died under his watch. Trump stressed that soldiers did die as Biden pulled U.S. troops from the war-torn country and left the Bagram airbase and billions in military equipment to China. The botched exercise “emboldened” America’s adversaries, Trump said, and caused world leaders to lose respect for Biden and America.