Ridin' on Biden's delusions: Trump heads into GOP convention looking pretty darn good

Donald Trump couldn’t have planned this better. The former president heads into next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he’ll become the party’s official nominee, with the momentum of the clear front-runner.

And Trump has President Joe Biden to thank for much of that.

The two leading presidential candidates met for their first debate late last month – one that Biden “challenged” Trump to – and it didn’t go how Democrats thought it would.

Biden’s horrible performance has become the dominant topic of conversation in the news media and has sharply divided Democrats on whether the president should even stay in the race.

Biden, 81, thought the debate would remind the American people how terrible Trump is and why he should never be in the White House again. Instead, it revealed to voters just how feeble Biden has become – something most in the media and those close to the president had tried to deny and cover up, even though Biden’s decline had been obvious for months.

Absentee president: I don't know who's running the country, but it's definitely not Joe Biden

A defiant Biden is a gift to Trump

In the days since the pivotal debate on June 27, Biden has tried to do damage control, appearing at rallies and interviews.

It hasn’t worked.

Last week, for instance, during a radio interview in Philadelphia, Biden said, "I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first Black woman, to serve with a Black president.”

This was in an interview, as it was later revealed, that the White House fed the show's host the questions that Biden tried to field. Thankfully, none of those questions included: "Mr. President, should we launch the attack?"

It’s clearly not what he meant to say, but it’s part of a pattern of mangled verbal gymnastics the president routinely engages in when he doesn’t have a teleprompter in front of him.

Some of Biden’s defenders are trying to pretend like this doesn’t matter.

For instance, on “The View” Monday, Whoopi Goldberg said Biden would get her vote even “if he’s pooped his pants.”

“I don’t care if he can’t put a sentence together,” Goldberg said in response to those who want Biden to drop out. “Show me he can’t do the job, and then I’ll say, ‘OK, maybe it’s time to go.’”

That’s not the kind of publicity that will assure voters Biden is up to another four years.

Yet, Biden is refusing to go anywhere.

A growing number of Democrats are openly calling for him to step aside. Many more are uneasy, even if they aren’t saying it out loud. In response, Biden sent a letter to Democratic lawmakers on Monday saying, “I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”

Debate debacle: Biden has no business running for president. The debate proved it.

Post-debate, Trump has let Democrats do his work for him

Since the debate, Trump has stayed uncharacteristically quiet – for him. He returned to the campaign trail Tuesday for a rally in his state of Florida.

This is smart on Trump’s part. The division among Democrats and the dishonesty so many in the Biden administration demonstrated in regard to the president’s condition speak for themselves.

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store.

And all the turmoil makes Trump look good by default, and it takes the focus off his recent felony conviction for falsifying business records.

At 78, Trump is by no means young, but he can put sentences together and seems to have plenty of energy – basic qualities for our country’s top leader that now elude Biden.

Trump will head to Milwaukee as Democrats devolve into chaos. In Trump fashion, he’s built the suspense over whom he will anoint as his vice presidential pick like it’s an episode of “The Apprentice.”

That decision is expected to come by Monday and is now dominating the headlines about Trump.

Meanwhile, the headlines about Biden are far different.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Democrats fight over Biden as frontrunner Trump coasts ahead of RNC