The political expectations game is never simple to play, but Thursday night’s first-in-the-presidential-cycle CNN presidential debate shattered all semblances of predictability and could possibly have lasting consequences no one in the world could’ve foreseen ahead of time.
Yes, folks, it was that ugly. For president senile Joe Biden, that is.
You can usually gather the importance of an event by the tension leading up to it, and if that’s the case, then the debate was about as consequential as it gets in American politics these days.
The gravity of the evening couldn’t necessarily be ascertained – or measured – from first glances of the candidates themselves, as both former president (#45) Donald Trump and Biden didn’t show outward signs of potential weaknesses. Both Biden and Trump are old pros at this, and having faced each other under similar circumstances a couple times four years ago, they had to have realized what was to come in terms of contentiousness and, for lack of a better way to put it, ugliness.
When the candidates began talking, however, all bets were off for enjoying something worthwhile from Biden. To my eye, Trump looked about as nervous at the outset as he ever had, which means hardly at all. More surprisingly, Biden burst out of the starting gate without his lifelong gift of gab and firm control of the Democrat playbook, delivering rambling answers that not only didn’t make sense, they were barely comprehensible to the hundreds of millions watching at home.
Never before had Biden confronted a situation where he was behind in his political race. The momentum was in Trump’s favor to an extent that even liberal numbers cruncher Nate Silver (of New York Times fame) declared earlier this week that Trump was winning the two-man contest. A Democrat be behind? It’s just a place they’re not used to being.
So, in essence, the tension was high. The lack of an audience in the auditorium – or studio, or arena, whatever it was – added to the anxious atmosphere. To this observer, the virtual “silence” and lack of buzz gave the program very much of a COVID-like eerie strangeness to it, almost like the presidential debate itself was locked down and sequestered from the people. Who thought that up?
Who knows, perhaps “live” onlookers would’ve awoken Biden from whatever self-imposed stupor spell he was under. It wasn’t just one thing or one answer that held Biden down. It was the totality of circumstances. Not even CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash could save him. Despite having spent the better part of a week prepping at Camp David for the 90 minutes, the incumbent couldn’t put sentences together. He couldn’t finish thoughts. He couldn’t rouse Trump, either and defied pal Hillary Clinton’s best verbal jousting tips.
The normally easily perturbed Trump refused to take Biden’s bait despite numerous prods and direct challenges. Rather than constantly interrupting and interjecting at Biden’s mumbling prompts, Trump kept cool, delivering what could’ve been the finest debate performance of his still less than a decade-old political career.
As for Biden? If the post-forum spin-room talking head commentary was any indication, he may have just sealed the fate of his reelection effort.
Was that Donald Trump? I barely recognized him.
Many close American politics watchers cautioned Donald Trump against repeating his debate mistakes from the past, and at least on Thursday night, he avoided replicating them.
Trump was as poised as I’ve ever seen him, repeatedly sidestepping “gotcha” type questions Bash and Tapper fed him while hitting Biden hard on the economy and illegal immigration in particular. Everyone knows Trump keeps his own counsel, but if there was anyone who’d advised him to stay disciplined and stick close to the winning issue guardrail, he definitely heeded their counsel.
Trump even managed to get around the stickier subjects without much hindrance. I noted that it was about 45 minutes into the discussion before Biden hit him with the “convicted felon” charge, but even the false label elicited only head shaking and facial expressions of pity from the former White House dweller in Biden’s direction.
By the same token, despite no prepared notes for the candidates, Biden sounded as though he were reading from a memorized script, rushing through his answers with barely a pause between sentences and clauses. Could it really be this bad? I found myself repeating to the air in the room.
My fellow living room onlookers sat similarly stupefied that their Democrat president could be this ill prepared, having gotten used to the teleprompter-reading Biden bellowing and grimacing, but usually with some degree of proficiency. All the while, Trump remained silent with nary a retort. Needless to say, Trump may have found his debate strategy from here on out.
If it’s wise to “never interfere while your enemy is destroying himself”, Trump showed Thursday that he’d mastered the Napoleonic concept.
Trump had one mission, and one mission only: Be presidential. Mission accomplished.
As the race challenger who’s ahead in nearly all the polls, Donald Trump may have gone into the evening with the thought that he can’t necessarily win (or seal) the 2024 victory last night, but he sure as heck could lose it through behavioral excesses that have cost him in the past.
Trump knew he enjoys a commanding polling advantage on most of the issues that matter to the American public – illegal immigration, the economy, handling inflation, being presidential, energy exploration, foreign policy, overseeing the military, etc. The only major issue where Trump trailed Biden was on abortion, and even there, it’s not a huge deficit.
Joe Biden had a much larger task, to try and convince or persuade voters that he was doing a good job as president and that he’d made progress on his 2020 announced goal to bring the country together and “restore the soul of the nation”. Senile Joe also had to defy reality by making Americans swallow the lie that his economic ideas didn’t cause the inflation and massive cost of living hit that the middle and working classes are suffering through right now.
And somehow, Biden had to steer attention away from the gaping hole in the nation’s borders and the crime that has resulted from it. Would Americans be willing to forget that several headline grabbing recent murders have been perpetrated by illegal aliens who shouldn’t even be in the country?
You may recall that Georgia nursing student Laken Riley had just been murdered in March when Biden delivered his SOTU address, whereby senile Joe butchered her name when trying to say it. He called her “Lincoln.”
Could Trump lay off? Thankfully for conservatives, a more restrained version of Trump showed up for the Atlanta CNN debate.
By contrast, I think Biden would’ve gained back some of what he’d lost in terms of support by demonstrating, somehow, that he could be the type of conciliator that he’s always promised he’d been. Whatever happened to his assurances during his inaugural address to bridge the partisan divide? He’s not going to get the two sides to cooperate by constantly branding people as “MAGA Fascists” and “Insurrectionists”.
Maybe Biden forgot all his prior nonsense. Confused senile Joe couldn’t even get his points in about abortion or January 6 in Atlanta. Trump’s explanation for his position on the abortion/Supreme Court subject probably didn’t please Pro-life social conservatives, but his middle ground “Let the states decide” position may have appeased enough single-issue abortion lovers to at least give his greater message another shot.
At least Trump sounded as though he understood the issue. All Biden could do throughout the evening was accuse “this guy” of being a liar. Who believed him?
Cut his microphone! Cut his microphone! Couldn’t they cut Biden’s too – when he’s still talking?
Everyone knows, Trump is his own worst enemy sometimes. CNN helped him out by cutting his microphone whenever he finished speaking so Biden could then blather about the typical Obama/Clinton era stupidities. It’s no secret that the Obama-ites, including a much “fresher” but still a gigantic liar Joe Biden, came to power in 2009 bent on making fundamental changes to the role that the United States government played in American society. A much more activist role.
The newly Obama-emboldened activist left took root under Obama and was convinced it would prosper under the certain-to-win Crooked Hillary in 2016. When Trump won in that year, the takeover forces regrouped, fundraised, recruited and organized around new movement leaders at the national level. Then, like oxygen feeding a starved flame, the leftist inferno exploded under Biden’s election, helped along by changes in election law and an establishment media that perpetuated the “Biden legitimately won the election” ruse.
On Thursday, Biden tried being an activist. Instead, he came across as a very old radical who couldn’t justify the enormous changes he’d foisted on the American people.
As has been his practice since he began his political career, Trump’s first instinct is to punch back and simultaneously challenge falsities and untruths whenever they happen, resulting in a shocking lack of discipline in the first debate four years ago (in September), where “fighter” Trump wouldn’t slip into the background to allow the more reasonable, presidential version take over.
With CNN’s decision to mute the other participant’s microphone when it wasn’t their turn to talk, the anti-Trump network unwittingly solved Trump’s biggest debate weakness. In Atlanta, Trump still got in plenty of “jabs” at Biden’s expense, they just didn’t come when the senile incumbent was trying to babble his way out of explaining why one of his policies didn’t work.
“Hang himself” came to mind a number of times in Atlanta, particularly when Biden tried to explain how his economic policies were really working to everyone’s benefit when conditions on the ground didn’t match his boasts. Trump lectured on how Biden’s bloat dumped money into the economy, but there’s never enough free cash to fill everyone’s bank accounts and the productive people can only cover so much.
Trump looked frustrated a couple times, but generally seemed to accept the “mute” button after a while and work with it. Censorship is never a good thing, particularly where Trump is concerned, but the rules forced Trump to focus on the present seconds and not let his mind wander, which he’s been known to do.
Just because Trump’s mic wasn’t “live” at all times didn’t take away from his signature facial expressions and piercing glare, both of which were working on all proverbial cylinders on Thursday. One could almost watch the debate without sound and still garner plenty from Trump’s mannerisms and faces. Worth the price of admission!
Did Bias rule the evening?
Needless to say, there was much apprehension among conservatives going into the debate about having Trump positioned not only opposite senile Joe Biden, but also pitted against CNN’s moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Both Tapper and Bash had made past comments about Trump revealing their personal bias against the former president and shedding doubt on whether they could be impartial in Thursday’s all-important forum.
Once the program started, however, it looked to me as though Tapper and Bash were trying very hard to keep their leanings in check, even if they weren’t. Frankly, Republicans are conditioned to having “moderators” who don’t like them, with Tapper and Bash just being the latest. Did it hurt Trump?
No. If anything, having the “moderators” tipping the scales for Biden played into Trump’s similar plea that the Biden administration, establishment, swamp elites and congressional leadership have always been against him. As has been noted many times, Trump has never shied away from tough questions and didn’t do so on Thursday night, though he didn’t always give the moderators what they were seeking in terms of yes or no answers.
As perhaps the most targeted (by the media) president in modern American history, Trump is quite used to shabby and prejudicial treatment by interviewers. Even the Fox News lineup is renowned for being suspicious of Trump, so he understands that agreeing to appear with them carries with it a certain degree of “risk” of bias. But Trump enjoys being in situations where he’s pitted against his enemies.
Tapper’s and Bash’s restraint may have been due to sympathy/pity they felt for Biden. Again, Biden was that bad. Who could help but want to prod the old coot to try and make a “game” of the one-sided “bloodbath”? Biden couldn’t even elaborate on why black voters should give him another term.
There were only two moments where I felt Trump appeared weak or dodging the issue, and that was when Trump seemingly ignored Bash’s question about what he would do on childcare (really a federal issue?) and then Tapper’s query on how Trump would help treat drug addicts, a softball question I thought Trump could bat out of the park by talking about illegal drug importation over the southern border.
Trump did talk about fentanyl, somewhat, but that would’ve been the chance to do it.
Trump’s best moment? When he pointed out to Biden, the CNN people and the world that Biden had never fired anyone for anything that’s gone wrong during his administration. Want a better synopsis of what is wrong in the executive branch today? It’s because no one is accountable. No one ever suffers for poor decisions. Joe Biden should fire himself, and every Democrat.
Game, set and match, Trump.
Winners? Losers? What does it all mean?
There’s little doubt, to this observer, that Donald Trump “won” Thursday night’s debate going away. His demeanor was much improved from his first performance in 2020 – it was more like how he “behaved” in the second 2020 forum – and, after practically four years of “campaigning” for president, his command of the issues was first-rate.
Donald Trump is a much more polished performer than he was eight years ago, and certainly better than in 2020, when he was constantly on the defensive rather than feeling confident advocating for the MAGA agenda. Not so on Thursday night. This was about as fine a showing for Trump in a formal setting as he’s ever given.
Trump’s showing should dispel much of the chatter about his not being “presidential” enough for the office. But I still think the establishment media will work overtime to salvage some modicum of respect for Biden, even if his was perhaps the worse debate performance in history. Why? One, the liberal media wants Biden to win a second term. Two, the talkers want a horserace more than anything, and recent trends showing Biden slipping in the polls cannot be allowed to continue, or it might be a whitewash come November.
Lastly, many speculated that Biden would “win” just by surviving, but it’s arguable that he didn’t even do that. Senile Joe spent the last week boning up at Camp David, no doubt being tutored by the best debate coaches that big leftist donor money could buy. Biden’s never been the sharpest stick in the stack, but he’s professional at lying and his little anecdotes can be effective to the right audiences.
Instead, all Biden offered was a nonsensical, jumbled mess of accusations and references to “torch bearers” from Charlottesville while misquoting Trump on the incident from nearly seven years ago now.
Did Biden win back any of the voters he’d lost to this point? Or get Trump’s MAGA backers to reject Trump as a threat to democracy or whatever it’s supposed to be? Doubtful. Most voters usually forget debates within a week or so. They won’t this one. It was a “bloodbath”.
Assuming Biden makes it to the September debate – and Trump manages to stay out of Democrat-induced jail -- the stakes will be much higher for that one. But will Democrats stand by and let Biden continue to flail?
It’s anyone’s guess now. So much for the Biden people scheduling a debate before the nominating conventions. It makes for a very uncertain future, indeed.
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