Simply put, the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was an absolute blowout for the challenger.
Biden: Weak. Trump: Strength.
Words cannot describe just how horrible things went for the current president. Simply put, his voice was raspy. Slack-jawed. Glassy-eyed. Looked down most of the night when Trump was speaking. He stared at Trump like he had no idea what his opponent was talking about, as if he was hearing it for the first time.
Biden’s command was non-existent. And his record, impossible to defend. There’s a reason why Biden is polling lower than any president at this stage of his first term in polling history.
Trump, to his credit, was completely in command. He never lost his cool. He clearly understood that he needed to be disciplined. He was.
More important, he presented a clear contrast between his record as president and Joe Biden’s, and it wasn’t even competitive regarding the result.
Trump hammered Biden on illegal immigration. On inflation. On the economy. On Ukraine. On the war on terror. On being soft of China. Biden had no counter.
The White House, in its desperation, claimed during the event that Biden is suffering from a cold. Funny how it was never shared that information prior to the debate.
“I wish Biden would reflect on this debate performance and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race, throwing the choice of Democratic nominee to the convention,” opined The New York Times’ Nicolas Kristof, which is telling considering Kristof ran for governor of Oregon as a Democrat recently.
“It was the biggest trainwreck of any presidential candidate ever,” observed Fox’s Sean Hannity in the post-debate coverage on the network. “When he wasn’t speaking, he was staring out like an empty vessel.”
But this sentiment extended even further into the media ecosystem almost immediately.
Joy Reid on MSNBC, perhaps the most pro-Biden, anti-Trump person on cable news, said this: “My phone never really stopped buzzing throughout. The universal reaction was . . . approaching panic!”
Van Jones on CNN: “He didn’t do well at all . . . there’s time for this party to figure out a different way forward.”
The Drudge Report, which has become vehemently anti-Trump, even had this as its siren headlines:
OPERATION: REPLACE BIDEN
DEMS SCRAMBLE WITH 130 DAYS TO GO!
DEBATE CATASTROPHE
Politico: “Biden Is Toast.”
The irony here, of course, is that this is a debate that Joe Biden asked for and wanted. He and his camp demanded it. And Trump, being Trump, immediately accepted the challenge and even agreed to allow CNN, the Trump-resistance channel, to host it.
Some called this an ego-driven mistake by the former president, but one can’t deny the confidence Trump exuded in taking it. In retrospect, Biden was boxed into a corner, because he and his handlers could not believe that Trump said yes without conditions. Turns out, it didn’t matter.
So how bad was it? Here’s a quote on Biden on a question on Medicare.
“Making sure we make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with covid, excuse me, with umm dealing with everything we had to deal with. Look, we finally beat Medicare.”
Does that remotely make sense?
Follow the latest on Trump and Biden’s 2024 debate:
Trump’s response: “Well he’s right. He did beat Medicaid. Beat it to death.”
It was so abundantly clear that Biden was programmed like the presidential version of Max Headroom. Before the debate, Biden prepped for a full week without being seen in public, even failing to appear to verbally condemn the attack of a Los Angeles synagogue during that time.
And his prep team didn’t go three or four advisors deep but consisted of SIXTEEN coaches. Why, any reasonable person would ask, would a sitting president need that much time and so many chefs in the room after 3½ years in the Oval and more than 50 years in government?
Biden was lost without scripted remarks written for him. He couldn’t be programmed. His memory failed him. And he looked and sounded so damn old.
Democrats will now attempt to replace the current president. The problem is they have no bench. And Donald Trump is a freight train, heading back to the White House, regardless of who the opponent is.
Everything changed Thursday night in Atlanta. And as things stand now, Donald Trump will be the 47th president.
