From the minute President Joe Biden opened his mouth during his debate with GOP opponent and former President Donald Trump, everyone, including his biggest supporters, knew it would be a long night.
The verdict was in before the debate was even over. Democrat phones everywhere pinged and dinged with worried calls and text messages. Americans were watching a “disaster.” And when it was over, everyone admitted the truth: Biden blew it.
It wasn’t even close.
Upshot is, Americans saw a feeble, elderly man on the one hand, and a prepared, vigorous presidential candidate on the other. No wonder some Democrats want Biden to go back home to Delaware.
Biden’s Lies
The candidates first debated inflation and Biden’s disastrous economy, then went to abortion, immigration, and the other standard issues. But no matter what the subject, Trump was on top of it and Biden wasn’t.
He shuffled onto the stage and resembled, as comedian-commentator Bill Maher has said, a cadaver. His voice was raspy, and for much of the debate he looked out of it. He stood stiffly, oftentimes not blinking, a blank look on his face with an open mouth. At times, he didn’t seem to know where he was.
He mumbled and stuttered and became confused multiple times. Speaking of the China Virus panic, he said “we beat Medicare.”
Replied Trump, “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death” with the “migrants” whom Biden invited to invade the nation at taxpayer expense.
Bragging that he had secured the border, Biden said “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the — the total initiative relative to what we’re going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.”
Trump zinged him: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Biden stumbled again during the back-and-forth on abortion when he tried to answer Trump’s entirely correct observation that Biden “migrants” were raping and murdering Americans.
Look, there’s so many young women who have been – including a young woman who just was murdered and he — he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by a — by — by an immigrant coming in, and they talk about that. But here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their — by their in-laws, by their — by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by — just — it’s just — it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it.
Then CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked about the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and whether Trump would accept the result of November’s election if he loses. Yes, Trump said, if the election is fair.
Biden was ready with a big lie.
“And now he says if he loses again, such a whiner that he is, that there could be a bloodbath,” Biden said, implying that riots would ensue if Trump loses.
But that isn’t what Trump said. Trump predicted an economic bloodbath if he loses.
Biden delivered another whopper that the leftist Snopes website debunked just days ago, and insulted about half the nation when he did it.
“President Biden, you have said, quote, “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Tapper said. “Do you believe that the tens of millions of Americans who are likely to vote for President Trump will be voting against American democracy?”
Said Biden, “The more they know about what he’s done, yes.”
Rambling on, Biden then offered another Big Lie: that Trump said the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who clashed with leftists at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017 were “very fine people.”
“What got me involved to run in the first place after my son had died, I decided — in Iraq — because of Iraq. I said, I wasn’t going to run again, until I saw what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia,” he began:
People coming out of the woods carrying swastikas on torches and singing the same anti-Semitic bile they sang back in Germany.
And what did — and the young woman got killed, they spoke to the mother. And she — they asked him, they said, what — well, what do you think of those people? The people who wanted to get killed, the ones who tried to stop it, and the ones who said, I think they’re fine people on both sides.
What American president would ever say, Nazis coming out of fields, carrying torches, singing the same anti-Semitic bile, carrying swastikas, were fine people?
Except that Trump said no such thing and in fact denounced them — repeatedly.
In the end, it was Trump’s night. A CNN flash poll revealed that 67 percent of viewers said he won.
Dems in a Panic
Biden’s lies and loss aside, Democrats ran screaming into the night before the debate ended.
Noting that Biden “stammered” and “stumbled,” Politico reported that “the alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice.”
“‘Biden is toast — calling it now,’ said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state,” the website reported:
In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”
“Not good,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) wrote.…
“Time for an open convention,” one prominent operative texted.
Reported CNN, “If Joe Biden loses November’s election, history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency”:
It was clear a political disaster was about to unfold as soon as the 81-year-old commander in chief stiffly shuffled on stage in Atlanta to stand eight feet from ex-President Donald Trump at what may turn into the most fateful presidential debate in history.…
Minutes into the showdown, hosted by CNN, a full-blown Democratic panic was underway at the idea of heading into the election with such a diminished figure at the top of the ticket.
A Democrat operative told CNN the performance was “horrific.”
Biden’s age, as The New York Times reported, is the problem. He’s too old and frail to be president.
“Over the course of 90 minutes, a raspy-voiced Mr. Biden struggled to deliver his lines and counter a sharp though deeply dishonest former President Donald J. Trump, raising doubts about the incumbent president’s ability to wage a vigorous and competitive campaign four months before the election,” the newspaper reported. “Rather than dispel concerns about his age, Mr. Biden, 81, made it the central issue.”
The newspaper reported that Democrats “traded frenzied phone calls and messages” about the performance.
“Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” a Democrat told the Times. “Joe had a deep well of affection among Democrats. It has run dry”:
“Parties exist to win,” this Democrat continued. “The man on the stage with Trump cannot win. The fear of Trump stifled criticism of Biden. Now that same fear is going to fuel calls for him to step down.”
A group of House Democrats said they were watching the debate together, and one, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that it was a “disaster” for Mr. Biden. The person said the group was discussing the need for a new presidential nominee.
Another top Democrat, the Times reported, asked whether the party had “time to put somebody else in there?”
On hate-Trump MSNBC, Senator Clare McCaskill of Missouri delivered this verdict: “My job right now is to be really honest. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight. And he didn’t do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish. And that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.”
Implicitly admitting that Biden simply isn’t up to the job, when the debate ended, First Lady “Dr.” Jill quickly rushed in to escort him off the stage.
