During the first Debate of the 2024 Presidential Election, hosted by CNN, former President Donald J. Trump’s performance could be described as “restrained,” “Presidential,” and even “generous,” but none-the-less, the evening was an unprecedented political disaster for incumbent Democrat Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
While many will debate and disagree in coming days as to what the single best moment for each candidate was and what was the most pivotal point made, few will dispute that the absolute low point for Biden and an utter body-blow for Trump came at approximately 9:21PM EST. While answering the moderators’ inquiry as to why voters should trust him to solve the immigration crisis Biden clearly and evidently lost his train of thought and clenched his eyes shut before muttering incoherently.
When asked for his reply Trump looked to the struggling Democrat and said, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence and I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
Trump highlighted his economic successes and contrasted them against the ongoing inflation crisis under Biden saying simply, “Inflation is killing our country.”
Pivoting toward illegal immigration, Trump issued a devastating condemnation of the Biden Administration.
“We are living right now in a rat's nest. They are killing our people in New York and California and every state in the union because we don't have borders anymore. Every state is now a border. And because of his ridiculous insane and very stupid policies, people are coming in and killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen. We've never, we call it migrant crime. I'd call it Biden migrant crime. They're killing our citizens at a level that we've never seen before. And you're reading it like these three incredible young girls over the last few days one of them I just spoke to the mother and they just had the funeral for this girl, 12. This is horrible. What's taken place, what's taken place in a country? Will literally an uncivilized country. Now, he doesn't want it to be, he just doesn't know. He opened the borders. Nobody's ever seen anything like we have to get a lot of these people out or we have to get them out fast because they're going to destroy our country.”
Without missing a beat, the former President jumped to Veterans affairs and blasted Biden for housing illegal immigrants “in luxury hotels,” while veterans are living in the street. He said,
“Just take a look at where they are living. They living in luxury hotels in New York city and other places our veterans are on the street. They're dying because he doesn't care about our veterans. He doesn’t like the military at all, and he doesn't care about our veterans. Nobody’s been worse. I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the VA.
He has the worst he's gotten rid of all the things that I approved choice that I got through Congress are all of the different things I approve they abandoned. We had by far the highest and now it's down in less than half because he's done all these great things that we did. And I think he did it just because I approved it, which is crazy but he has killed so many people at our border by a all of these people to come in very sad day in America.”
A second moment that saw Biden stumble hard and lose track of the conversation came while discussing Medicare when he made the troubling claim to have “beat Medicare” saying, “I should say, in a ten-year period. We'd be able to write wipe out his debt. 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 health care system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to deal with. The covid excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with what if we finally beat Medicare.”
It was an awkward and confusing moment that Trump seized upon quipping, “Well he is right. He did beat Medicaid, beat it to death and he's destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in. They're putting them on Medicare, they're putting them on social security, they're going to destroy social security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy social security these millions and millions of people coming in, they're trying to put them on social security. He will wipe out social security. He will wipe out Medicare. So he was right in the way he finished that sentence. And it’s a shame.”
Responding to a call to address the war in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump’s broadside attack on Biden was multifaceted pivoting from Veterans displeasure with Biden to the botched Afghanistan withdrawal to Trump’s assertion that neither conflict in Ukraine nor Israel would have occurred were he in office.
He told the American people,
“First of all, our veterans and our soldiers can't stand this guy they can't stand him. They think is the worst commander in chief, if that's what you call him, that we've ever had. They can't stand him. So let's get that straight and they liked me more than just about any of them. And that's based on every single bit of information.
As far as Russia and Ukraine, if we had a real president, a president that knew, that was respected by Putin… People know they talk about numbers. You can double those numbers may be tripled. Those numbers he did nothing to stop it. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from growing in a tell you what happened. He was so bad with Afghanistan. It was such a horrible embarrassment, most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.
That when Putin watch that and he saw the incompetence that he should, he should have fired those Generals like I fired the one that you mentioned. And so he's got no love lost.
But he should have fired those Generals. No General got fired for the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country Afghanistan, where we left billions of dollars of equipment behind, we lost 13 beautiful soldiers and 38 soldiers were obliterated and by the way we left people behind too, we left American citizens behind. When Putin saw that, he said, ‘you know what, I think we're gonna go in and maybe take my…’ This was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.
The difference is he never would have invaded Ukraine, never. Just like Israel would have never been invaded it 1 million years by Hamas. You know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn't let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke, they had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything, no money for terror. That's why you had no terror at all during my administration. This place, the whole world is blowing up under him.”
Former President Trump’s conclusion was concise, information rich and well delivered while Biden, clearly fatigued, appearing pale and wan, struggled in a manner evident to all who viewed it. Closing Trump reiterated the shortcomings of the Biden presidency and the promise of a second Trump White House to the voters,
“Like so many politicians I’ve met, he’s just a complainer. He said, ‘We want to do this. We want to do that. We want to get rid of this tax, that tax…’ But he doesn't do anything. He doesn't do… All he does this make our country unsafe by allowing millions and millions of people to pour in.
Our military doesn't respect him. We looked like fools and Afghanistan we didn't stop Israel.
It was such a horrible thing that would have never happened. It should have never happened. Iran was broke. Anybody that didn't know money whatsoever. Again, Ukraine should have never happened. He talks about all this stuff, but he didn't do it for three-and-a-half years. We're living in hell we have the Palestinians and we have everybody else rioting all over the place. You talk about Charlottesville. This is 100 times Charlottesville, 1,000 times. I thought our whole country is exploding because, uh, you. Because they don't respect you and they have to respect the President today and they don't respect you throughout the world.
What we did was incredible.
We rebuilt the military, we got the largest tax cut in history, the largest regulation cuts in history, the reason he's got jobs is because I cut the regulations that gave jobs, but he's putting a lot of those regulations back on all of the things that we've done, nobody's ever I’ve never seen anything like even from a medical standpoint, right to try. Well, we can try space-age materials instead of going to Asia or going to Europe and trying to get when you're terminally ill. Now, you can go and you can get something you sign a document they'd been tried to get it for 42 years. But you know what we did for the military was incredible choice for our soldiers where our soldiers instead of waiting for three months to see a doctor, can go out and get themselves fixed and readied up, and take care of themselves. And they're living and that's why had the highest approval rating of the history of the VA. So all of these things … We’re in a failing nation but it's not going to be failing anymore. We're going to make it great again thank you.”
Matthew Holloway is a contributor for Conservative HQ. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@theconservativefreelancer.com.
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