"The debate
format allowed Trump to present a nonstop stream of nonsense and lies. Biden
was compelled to play whack-a-mole. It is humanly impossible to bat them all
down in a situation such as this, but Biden did a workmanlike job, gaining
ground as the 90 minutes ticked by (e.g., pointing out the economy was “flat on
its back” when Biden took over).- Jennifer Rubin, ‘Biden’s
Facts No Match For Trump’s Lies’, Washington Post
"Joe had a horrible night, cementing concerns about his age, his greatest electoral weakness. Our odds of Trumpocalypse II just materially increased. It’s tragic, since we could have chosen to let Trump and the nation marinate over him being a convicted felon.”- Dem donor Reid Hoffmann in email to WaPo
"Though Biden struggled to communicate, the substance of some of his answers indicated his mind is still sharp. That suggests he is, for the time being, still fit to govern. The problem is that in the performative world of US politics, conducted via media clips that can be mercilessly edited, he does not appear fit to campaign." .- Financial Times editorial, 6/28
“The biggest lie Trump told Thursday was his portrait of the
country as a ruined mess. The economy is strong, the United States is working
seamlessly with an ever-closer set of allies in Europe and Asia, and our global
financial, military and intelligence dominance has rarely been clearer. Biden
has been effective despite the obvious signs of stress. He has also remained a
decent man.” - David Ignatius, Washington Post
Trump, by contrast, barked bodaciously in blustering responses, ninety five percent of which contained zero accurate content and were tangential to the moderators' questions. The lies themselves flew out of his mouth like a firehose. I told Janice I estimated two hundred in two minutes but it may have only seemed that way since so many were put together in single word salads. The result? Trump created the illusion of having more energy, more youth and more mental acuity - but of course that degraded as the debate wore on.
However, Trump's 'fire hose' method of lie delivery (what I call "flooding the zone") was often more than Biden could handle, hence the inability to be more coherent and on point for the first half hour. It was as if in the time allowed for rebuttal (1 minute) Biden's brain locked up and couldn't decide which lie (or lies) to deal with of the dozens spewed. Part of this could also have been from over-preparation by the Biden team. Somehow forgetting that 'less is more' when you're teeing up an 81-year-old to debate a psychopathic narcissist blowhard.
Result? As Nicole Wallace summed it up in the MSNBC analysis:
"Joe's offensive against January 6 lies - nil, offensive against Trump abortion lies - nil, offensive against Trump economic lies, nil" and so on. In other words, Dems in default 'bed-wetting' mode and in a state of panic and near hysteria.
As Joy Reid put it in the analysis: "Biden had but one job to do tonight- Calm his own party's qualms and nervousness about his candidacy. He failed."
Meanwhile, Lawrence O'Donnell tried his best to put his own positive spin on it by noting when one processes the transcript he will see the sum of the best responses and the presidential decisions made were won by Biden. The trouble, of course, is few would have processed or heard them in the midst of the raspy, reedy, weak voice in which they were delivered. (Only learning afterward that Biden had been nursing a cold the past few days and didn't wish to take cold medicine which can dull the brain.)
But let's not mince words: Biden struggled with some answers and clearly missed 'blasting holes' in Trump's lies - according to former Obama strategist David Plouffe. He also appeared to search for words and misspoke in some instances, saying at one point his administration “finally beat Medicare.” Again, I attribute most of this to his shock at Trump's fire hose lie delivery. Camera shots capturing Joe's sometime gaping mouth and wide (shocked) eyes reinforced this.
Question here: Why didn't Bob Bauer - the Trump stand in for the mock debates at Camp David - prepare Joe better by imitating this fire hose lie tactic? Was it too much to think of all the lies the orange fiend could blast out? Did Biden fob off such mock debate attempts asserting he knew he could handle them? Well, clearly - as Bob Woodward noted (on Ari Melber's MSNBC show)- he couldn't and "he lost in terms of perceived competency."
Trump, bloated rat that he is, seized on one Biden misstep related to border issues:
“I really don’t know what he said at the
end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
That set off delirium at MAGA watch parties, where Rump’s allies quickly seized on what they viewed as further evidence that Biden has declined significantly as he has aged. Rubbing it in, one MAGA War Room account posted on social media (according to the WaPo) quoted a remark from Joe earlier that all he needed to get through the debate was a can of water. The MAGA Mutt blurting:
“Sounds like Biden could use this right about now,”
Trump, who aggressively interrupted Biden in previous debates, was more restrained in the first half-hour of Thursday’s debate. But he still displayed some combativeness and tried at least once to speak while his microphone was muted. But what viewer should take away is the exponential decrease in his mental coherence in the last half hour or so. As David Plouffe commented:
“Biden and Trump are three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight. That is going to be the thing that voters really wrestle with."
Though he later did note:
"Swing voters will have seen and heard the Trump lies and come away with increased negatives on Trump."
But ...will they overpower the negatives on Biden? Well, I certainly hope so! But the truth is too many viewers will have had their first impressions sealed in the first five or ten minutes of this debate. Which means Trump will likely come out as the 'winner' in subsequent polls. How do the Dems patch up this fiasco? I don't know. What I do know (and Janice too) is that if Biden had the power voice he displayed when he greeted the Watch party afterward, it could have been hasta la vista, Dotard, or nearly so.
As for a second debate in September, don't hold your breath. If Trump tops Biden in post-debate polls as I suspect, there is no way he will come back for a second one. He will be convinced he's done enough in one debate to 'seal the deal'. Especially with the swing voters in the battleground states. In the end, as Atlantic columnist David Frum notes,
"The job of saving democracy from Trump will done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those of us who care that their democracy be saved. Biden's evident frailties have aggravated that job, but they have also clarified whose job it is. Not his, YOURS."
Some of the post -debate comments in The Washington Post:
There's no sugarcoating it: The best you can say about that debate last night is that it was a missed opportunity for Joe Biden to put to rest the questions about his age and focus on Donald Trump's extremist agenda and his criminality. The worst you can say is that he gave a disastrous performance that should lead to his resignation and an open convention in August to choose a successor. There are plenty of Democrats pushing for that right now and it's always possible they'll succeed in getting Biden to drop out and turn the Chicago gathering into a disaster not seen since 1968. Maybe that's the kind of spectacle that will finally bring the Democratic Party down to the level of the Trump Show. Maybe that's what the American people really want.
I don't know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It's hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We've seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas. If this goes as these things often do, the public may have a very different take than the insiders today. Still, the media narrative could change public consensus over the course of the next few days.
— from the Philadelphia Inquirer
So this is how liberty dies—in the void of an Atlanta TV sound stage plastered with more CNN logos than a NASCAR Camaro, where the relentless march on Washington by an American Mussolini, fueled by lies about everything from national greatness to his sleazy sex life, could not be stopped either by the muzzled moderators or the coughing and occasionally confused 81-year-old who was the last thing standing between the United States and dictatorship.
Everything you need to know about the critical, on-a-ventilator condition of American democracy can be explained by this:
The candidate whose most memorable line was, “I did not have sex with a porn star”—an all-but-certain lie on top of roughly 30 fact-checked falsehoods about important things from NATO to abortion law—and who walked onto the Atlanta stage with 34 felony convictions and civil verdicts of an adjudicated rape and massive financial fraud, and who urged on an attempted coup against the U.S. government, is NOT the guy that pundits are begging to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
During this election cycle's first presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden Thursday in Atlanta, the president noted that his opponent once blatantly disrespected military service members by calling them "suckers" and "losers."
In his response, Trump shot back claiming that "was a made-up quote" reported by "a third-rate magazine."
The MAGA hopeful then said that Biden should apologize to him for asserting that he ever called military members names.
"A four-star general who was on your staff said you said it, that's number one," Biden shot back. "And number two, the idea that I have to apologize to you for anything along the line — we've done more for veterans than any president has an American history."
NBC News reported in October:
In a statement to CNN published Monday, [former Trump White House chief of staff John] Kelly delivered a scathing criticism of former President Donald Trump while confirming reporting in The Atlantic in 2020 that detailed the comments he made during his presidency.
'A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,' Kelly said of Trump. 'A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.'
Former Human Rights Campaign press secretary Charlotte Clymer — who is also a veteran — offered commentary via X (formerly Twitter) following the MAGA hopeful's comments, writing, "Trump literally called American service members who died in war 'losers' and 'suckers.' As a veteran, I can tell you: President Biden has been extraordinary for veterans.
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