President Joe Biden started the first debate with Donald Trump sounding hoarse.
It quickly got worse as he lost his train of thought and meandered into silence.
For three and a half years the White House has protected Biden, 81, from questions about his frailty, reducing his schedule ahead of arduous foreign trips, keeping reporters at bay, and even swapping out the steps on Air Force One for the shorter, easier stairs.
But there is no hiding place during a 90-minute debate in front of the live television cameras.
When it was his turn to talk, Biden was barely audible at times. When his 78-year-old opponent was speaking, Biden stood mouth open, his eyes darting from side to side and his jaw slack as if another resident had taken his spot at the jigsaw puzzle table in the games room.
President Joe Biden, 81, gave a disastrous performance in the first presidential debate
When Biden was offered a chance to address questions about his advanced years he offered a rambling answer that veered off into computer chips.
Trump has been reluctant to hit Biden for his age, given that they were born only three years apart. But he is not a man to ignore an open goal.
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‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,’ he said at one point when Biden delivered a word salad about the border.
‘I don’t think he knows what he said either.’
The June debate—the earliest in presidential history—was a gamble pushed by Team Biden.
His advisers believe most of the population has not yet tuned into the election, and that many had not even realized that Trump was the Republican nominee.
Sharing the stage with the former president, went the reasoning, would make the viewing public wake up and remember the chaos of the Trump years.
It put Trump and his advisers on the spot. After years suggesting Biden had dementia or was too frail to stand for 90 minutes, they hurriedly raised the bar during the two weeks before the debate, talking up the president’s debate skills or hinting he would be drugged to make him a ‘super soldier.’
They need not have bothered.
Donald Trump came off as more vigorous than Biden, even though only three years younger
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Although Biden landed blows on Trump for his past comments on veterans and the January 6 violence, television debates are remembered less for substance than for style.
Particularly those moments that come at the start, setting the tone for the rest of the debate.
Biden came unstuck within minutes when he muddled ‘trillionaire’ for ‘billionaire’ as he tried to explain that fixing the tax system would allow him to rebuild the country.
‘We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with … the COVID,’ he said, closing his eyes, his words slowing as if he was battling the stammer he has had since childhood.
He put his head down and tried to continue but tailed off after a few more words.
‘Excuse me … with dealing with everything we have to do with look…’ he said halting again… ‘if we finally beat Medicare.’
Trump looked across at Biden with something resembling concern before moderator Jake Tapper stepped in to put the president out of his misery.
Biden greets the two moderators Dana Bash, on the left, and Jake Tapper after the debate
Supporters of Biden at a watch party in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday night
A TV screen shows the debate as The New Hanover County Democratic party hosts a watch party as former U.S. President Donald Trump faces off against U.S. President Joe Biden
‘Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare,’ said Trump. ‘He beat it to death.’
That was the pattern for chunks of the night. Biden stumbled through his words and left an open door for Trump.
If the aim of the appearance was to fight back against a narrative that an 81-year-old was too aged to lead the country, then the night was a disaster.
‘It’s not that Trump is doing well; much of what he says is nonsense,’ is how New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
‘But Biden seems to me to be doing very poorly, not reassuring doubters but rather raising new doubts about his age.’
At times he found his energy, attacking Trump for reportedly calling dead soldiers ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’ when he skipped a planned visit to a World War One cemetery in France.
‘My son was not a loser. Was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,’ he said, in one of the attack lines that landed.
For his part, Trump was reluctant even to say that he would accept the results of the election in November.
‘It’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,’ he said, but only after being asked for the third time.
That is not will be remembered from his first 2024 debate.
Biden could not even manage a decent response when moderator Dana Bash asked him to respond to voter worries about his age.
‘This guy’s three years younger and a lot less competent,’ he said about Trump, before wandering off into a convoluted answer about computer chips.
‘Those fabs, they call them, to build these chips, those fabs pay over $100,000 … you don’t need a college degree for them, and there’s billions, about $40 billion already being invested and being built right now in the United States,’ he said.
Before the night began, Biden faced the same challenge as all incumbents: Make the election into a choice between two candidates rather than a referendum on your time in office.
Now, it seems as if the race will be about nothing other than Biden’s performance and not about the convicted felon who gave a half-hearted answer about whether he would accept the outcome of the election.