POTUS Debate TV Review: Biden Shows His Age While Trump Tosses Out One Whopper After Another With No Fact Checking From CNN Moderators
28.06.2024 - 03:07
/ deadline.com
If there was any winner in tonight’s first presidential debate, it was CNN. If there was a loser, it was absolutely Joe Biden.
Throwing the already tight race into a tailspin for the faltering incumbent almost from the very beginning, the most memorable line maybe Biden’s inability to finish some of his own sentences. Otherwise, Donald Trump’s declaration that “I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” and his rival’s badly delivered line that “you have the morals of an alley cat” could be what history remembers.
What anyone who saw or heard the Jake Tapper and Dana Bash moderated clash between the 45th and the 46th POTUS’ can’t deny is that the 78-year-old Trump was energized and relatively succinct. On the other hand, as Trump ramped it up, the 81-year-old Biden was rambling and halting over the course of the night even with his command of issues foreign and domestic.
Finally coming alive in the last minutes and calling Trump a “whinner,” but it was way too little, too late for Biden.
Long story short: It was not a good night for the President of the United States. In fact, it was such a bad night, the unthinkable may now be being discussed – should Joe Biden drop out of the race.
“It was a game changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party,” said CNN’s John King right after the debate ended. Former White House Communications Director and Biden loyalist Kate Bedingfield called her ex-boss’ performance “disappointing.”
Jumping into the fray fast and furious, Vice President Kamala Harris made a sudden appearance on MSNBC after the debate to seek a reframing of what we all saw.
In the Biden fallout, there was a lot of history on the map