Beware of getting what you wish for. The president’s aides asked that a candidate’s microphone be muted when not answering a question.
They took the concession happily, forgetting that the debate Joe Biden “won” in 2020 was the one Donald Trump lost because he was unhinged and impulsive—shouting at his opponents, overtalking the moderators, running amok like a kindergartner overdue for his juice box.
Here, with the mics off, Trump colored within the lines. He spoke in simple declarative sentences filled with even simpler superlatives about himself as the best the world has ever seen, the most revered, the smartest person anywhere who can win any war overnight. Just ask his White House physician, who said he aced his first Alzheimer’s test, something he predicted the current president could never do.
Who is this stranger, and where did he come from? That unmasked man dwelling on what to do in shark-infested waters on a boat running low on power, low-force showers that don’t wash out whatever he puts in his hair, spreading his own rumor that Biden was so afraid of debating that he was taking performance-enhancing shots?
The stranger is Trump, hinged. It’s the one we rarely see. He controlled his emotions, not the other way around, and neutralized all of Biden’s cramming for finals. There was no starting handshake (remember Sarah Palin 2008 walking across the stage to shake then-Senator Biden’s hand with a “Hey, can I call you Joe?”)
If there’s such a thing as knowing too much, Biden did. He’s proof that it’s possible to study too hard and lose the forest for the trees. Last night, trying to cram it all in, he talked so fast he couldn’t keep up with all he knew. He paused, mumbled, and trailed off in his ineffective answer on Medicare, and Trump picked up his dangling verb. “He did ‘beat’ Medicare,” Trump repeated. “He is going to single-handedly break Social Security.” Trump grew more dominant with every answer despite no MAGA devotees cheering him on.
That doesn’t mean he was truthful, logical, or substantive. Fact-checkers found one falsehood per answer. The best of them, CNN’s own Daniel Dale, tweeted corrections. Those should have been on the chyron. Trump’s power came from simple sentences and speaking in superlatives: He was the best the world had ever seen, Biden the worst, He’s never seen anything like it, the “it” being him. A third of the way through the 90-minute debate, the internet was on fire with calls for Biden to drop out.
Biden had Trump by rights on Charlottesville–as with the January 6 insurrection, there are incriminating tapes–but the 45th president kept denying he ever said there were fine people, presumably the Nazis, “on both sides.’ Or earlier that, he called those who died serving their country “losers” and “suckers.” It was as if Biden never mentioned that there was a bipartisan bill that Trump torpedoed to keep the immigration issue for the campaign. The crime rate going down, as statistically it is? He’s never seen it at such levels, much of it committed by those rapist immigrants. When Biden could sputter out the facts, he was good, but when he sputtered out that no troops died on his watch, Trump was ready with the 13 who died at the airport gate in the U.S.’s bungled evacuation from Afghanistan.
Even when Biden had his facts in hand, he didn’t have a better presentation. About 45 minutes in, his throat was thoroughly phlegmy, his mouth agape. He touched his temple, itched his nose, and was dying to clear his throat. As the night wore on, he improved. At one point, he gave in to a decent, throat-clearing cough, but he never got good.
Just because Trump wasn’t unhinged doesn’t mean he wasn’t a blustering bully speaking in absolute certainty about inflation, his record, his instant peacemaking that could end the Ukraine war, doing more to lower insulin’s cost than Biden (he did nothing) and the wisdom of his tax cuts. On abortion, Trump got away with looking like everyone wanted the states to control it, and he was the one who made their dreams come true. By the way, Democrats are for killing full-term babies. When Trump’s promise of “retribution” came up, he wriggled out, saying that his retribution “would be saving his country.” But he never said he would save his country by accepting the election results. In so many words, we’re on notice he won’t.
The Democratic Party elders and those who love Joe Biden who let this happen are guilty of political malpractice and elder abuse. But lots of candidates have done poorly in their first debate. Most recently, silver-tongued Barack Obama caved to Mitt Romney in their first 2012 debate. Coming in June, the earliest presidential debate ever gives Biden time to recover. He can miraculously emerge from a very deep hole, or, more likely, he doesn’t, and in August, party leaders hold an open convention in Chicago where delegates vote their consciences.
What we saw last night wasn’t a debate as much as a testy Thanksgiving dinner, where Uncle Joe barely made it through to the pumpkin pie. Biden didn’t shoot drugs up his you-know-what, as Trump predicted, but no one would be surprised if the 45th president’s pal, the White House doctor who pronounces him a genius and has a loose prescription-writing hand, sedated his patient. The day after the Atlanta debate, the unhinged Trump was back.
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