President Biden faced significant challenges during his first—and potentially only—debate against former President Donald Trump on Thursday night. His repeated hesitations and verbal missteps caused considerable concern within the Democratic Party, especially with the general election less than four months away.
In what may become the most replayed political moment of the year, the 81-year-old incumbent lost his train of thought for nearly nine seconds, staring at his lectern before finally stating, “We finally beat Medicare.”
Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term in January 2029, did not help his cause by speaking in a soft, raspy voice that aides, who wished to remain anonymous, attributed to a cold he allegedly contracted during his week of preparation for the Atlanta debate.
The president struggled as he tried to articulate his commitment to “making sure we make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with, umm dealing with everything we had to do with”—before trailing off completely.
After an agonizing pause, Biden looked up and repeated, “Look, we finally beat Medicare.”
Trump, 78, immediately seized on the blunder, saying, “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death and he’s destroying Medicare because all of these people who are coming in, they’re putting them on Medicare.”
This debate was widely viewed as a pivotal moment for Biden, especially amid increasing voter concerns about his mental acuity, which only intensified after Thursday night.
“Abysmal,” one Democratic source told The Post. “If I knew nothing about Donald Trump before that debate and judged him solely on that performance, I’d vote for him.”
Another Democratic insider suggested it was still “TBD” whether Biden would remain the party’s nominee with just seven-and-a-half weeks to go before the Democratic National Convention.
“Biden misspoke. He saved Medicare. But now someone needs to save Biden,” the source quipped.
A third Democratic source, when asked about Biden’s Medicare comment, simply said, “I don’t know what he meant.”
Biden made several other errors, stating that the US economy had created “15,000” jobs under his watch, that there were “one thousand trillionaires in America,” and that his son Beau “died in Iraq,” when in fact Beau passed away at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
In another confusing moment, Biden appeared to suggest he would implement a “total ban” on illegal immigration along the US-Mexico border, despite three years of record-breaking annual unlawful crossings following his reversal of Trump’s strict policies, such as requiring asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while awaiting decisions.
Biden, who has recently allowed most illegal border-crossers to enter the US to await asylum decisions, said he would “continue to move until we get the total ban on the — the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.”
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump responded, “and I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Biden also claimed “the Border Patrolmen endorsed me,” prompting the Border Patrol’s union to clarify on X: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”
Biden’s shaky performance was further marred by an inappropriate comment to supporters after the debate.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you — I want to go home with you,” Biden said, before speaking for less than 30 seconds at Atlanta’s Hyatt Regency hotel, handing the microphone to a DJ, and leaving the stage.
Former New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat, expressed her frustration on Twitter: “President Biden is a good, honorable man. He has much to be proud of. It is time to step aside and call off this run.”
Other Democrats spoke anonymously, with CNN reporter John King describing “a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party.”
“It started minutes into the debate — and it continues right now,” he added. “It involves party strategists. It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers, and they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was abysmal, which they think will hurt other people down the party ticket, and they’re having conversations about what they should do about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, considered Biden’s most likely replacement, played the supportive role, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that her boss had a “slow start, but it was a strong finish.”
“People can debate on style points,” she added when pressed by Cooper. “I got the point that you’re making about a one and a half hour debate tonight — I’m talking about three and a half years of performance and work that has been historic.”
Republicans responded with both pity and ridicule.
“He’s not equipped to be president,” Trump said. “You know it, and I know it.”
“As a geriatric nurse practitioner who cared for so many older adults with cognitive impairment, this is heartbreaking to watch,” tweeted Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.)
A February ABC/Ipsos poll found that an overwhelming 86% of prospective voters believe Biden, who is trailing Trump in most swing state surveys, is too old for another term. A March Siena College/New York Times poll found that 73% of registered voters thought Biden was too old.
The debate addressed issues that voters consistently rank as top concerns, including inflation and the economy, abortion rights, immigration, and the state of American democracy.
Biden attempted to blame inflation on Trump, saying the former president “caused it by his tremendous malfeasance in the way he handled the pandemic,” while Trump argued that Biden “inherited almost no inflation, and it stayed that way for 14 months. And then it blew up under his leadership because they spent money like a bunch of people that didn’t know what they were doing.”
On abortion, Trump approved of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow the sale of medication abortion nationwide and said states with restrictions should allow exceptions for rape, incest, and the lives of mothers.
But Biden criticized Trump for the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade.
“It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s nomination of three conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe. “This is a little like saying, ‘We’re going to turn civil rights back to the states, let each state have a different role.’”
Biden also attacked Trump over his May 30 conviction in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
But Trump was ready with a retort, noting Biden’s son Hunter’s conviction on federal gun crimes and pending trial in Los Angeles for $1.4 million in alleged tax fraud involving foreign relationships, which often included then-Vice President Biden.
“He could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office — Joe could be a convicted felon with all of the things that he’s done. He’s done horrible things,” Trump said, highlighting Biden’s false denial of the authenticity of files from Hunter’s laptop, which linked him to dealings in China and Ukraine.
Biden “gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian Candidate. He gets money from China,” Trump said.
In his closing statement, Trump mocked Biden as an ineffective “complainer.”
“He talks about all the stuff, but he didn’t do it for three and a half years,” Trump said. “We’re living in hell. We have the Palestinians, and we have everybody else rioting all over the place.”
“The whole country is exploding because of you, because they don’t respect you, and they have to respect their president, and they don’t respect you throughout the world,” Trump concluded. “We’re in a failing nation, but it’s not going to be failing anymore. We’re going to make it great again.”
{CB Frommer – Matzav.com}
Thank goodness Joe Biden isn’t the real president.
Bla bla bla. More fake news. The democrats are evil thru and thru. Biden is their guy, a useless idiot, and they will NEVER dump him! Get that thru your thick head. They will do all they can to steal this election.