Raspy And Rambling, Joe Biden Fumbles Through Debate With Donald Trump
President Joe Biden fumbled his way through Thursday night’s presidential debate with Donald Trump, an alarming performance for Democrats eager to see him shut down his deeply flawed GOP challenger: a twice-impeached convicted felon known for his lies and ugly attacks.
The beginning of the 90-minute debate was particularly brutal for Biden. His voice was scratchy and weak, and sometimes hard to understand. He appeared to lose his train of thought multiple times, including in response to a question from a moderator, CNN’s Jake Tapper, about the national debt. He struggled to answer another question about how his administration would strengthen health care, mixing up trillions with billions when talking about dollar amounts.
Biden’s response became so disjointed that he ultimately pivoted and, just before his mic was cut off, he confusingly declared, “We finally beat Medicare.” He was presumably referring to his administration lowering the cost of prescription drugs under Medicare, but that victory ― something he could have touted in that moment ― was not at all articulated in what he said.
Visually, Biden didn’t come across as particularly energized, either. The side-by-side images of him and Trump on TV often showed the president looking out with a fixed gaze, his mouth slightly open. Trump, meanwhile, was more animated and spoke forcefully, even as many of the things he was saying were false or wildly distorted.
Biden’s campaign was clearly scrambling in response to what was happening. Over the course of the debate, the campaign sent out at least 11 emails attacking Trump’s lies at the lectern. While it is standard practice for a campaign to send press releases on major talking points during a debate, many of them seemed to clarify Biden stances for issues on which he had stumbled responding to questions, including abortion rights and support for Black communities.
About halfway through the debate, the campaign told reporters that the president’s voice was raspy because he has a cold. They could have shared this detail ahead of the debate as a way to lower the bar for the president’s performance, but they did not.
Seasoned political observers were struck by Biden’s performance. Amy Walter, the editor-in-chief of Cook Political Report, which forecasts election outcomes, speculated that the odds of Biden agreeing to a second debate in September “are close to zero about now.” MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace reported that conversations were happening within Biden’s inner circle during the debate that ranged from “whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning to what was wrong with him.”
Even Kate Bedingfield, who was Biden’s White House communications director from 2021 to 2023, said the debate was a disaster.
“It was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden,” Bedingfield said in a statement. “I don’t think there’s any other way to slice it. His biggest issue was to prove to the American people that he had the energy, the stamina ― and he didn’t do that.”
Democrats were certainly hopeful that Biden would outshine Trump given how strong he was in his State of the Union address in March. But Thursday’s debate is going to revive concerns that are already circulating about his age and mental acuity, something he’s faced more scrutiny over than Trump even though they’re only a few years apart. Biden is 81, Trump is 78.
The president did perk up a bit as the debate continued, particularly when Trump seemed to piss him off. When Trump claimed Biden “doesn’t care about veterans,” the president laid into him.
“Every single thing he said is a lie,” Biden fumed, citing a 2022 law he passed that expands health care to veterans. He reminded Trump of that time in 2018 that he refused to visit a World War I cemetery in France because he said it was filled with “losers” and “suckers.”
“My son was not a loser or a sucker,” Biden said, turning to Trump. “You’re the loser. You’re the sucker.”
Trump responded by suggesting he never said those things and claimed that “there’s nobody that’s taken better care of our soldiers than I have.”
