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It was the 90-minute political horror show that has sparked panic among Democrats.
Joe Biden’s excruciating mauling in Thursday’s head-to-head TV debate made Donald Trump appear almost statesmanlike in comparison.
Biden had one job – to convince voters he is not too old at 81 to serve a second term in the White House – and he blew it within the first four seconds.
Wandering across the stage at an agonisingly slow pace, the doddery US President gave every impression of looking a bit lost.
He waved to a non-existent studio audience and mumbled something inaudible, before reaching the podium which he seemed to grasp for support. Moments later Trump, 78, swaggered in.
Biden sounded hoarse and looked frail, but he got off to a relatively good start on the first question and even managed to land some blows on his opponent.
Joe Biden’s excruciating mauling in Thursday’s head-to-head TV debate made Donald Trump appear almost statesmanlike in comparison
Biden had one job – to convince voters he is not too old at 81 to serve a second term in the White House – and he blew it within the first four seconds
He waved to a non-existent studio audience and mumbled something inaudible, before reaching the podium which he seemed to grasp for support. Moments later Trump, 78, swaggered in
Although he misspoke ‘position’ as ‘physician’, he quickly recovered to hammer his predecessor on the state of the economy he had inherited.
But with his penchant for apparently making up bold claims as he goes along, Trump shrugged it off with: ‘We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.’
Matters went downhill rapidly. Biden’s first serious stumble came ten minutes in when he delivered a rambling answer about national debt and taxes and proclaimed: ‘We had a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean billionaires.’
He seemed unable to remember if a tax rate was 24 or 25 per cent, saying ‘either one of those numbers’, mixed up a million and a billion – then announced confusingly: ‘With Covid, excuse me. Dealing with everything. Er. Look, if…we finally beat Medicare.’
Trump took advantage of his bumbling rival’s description of the US healthcare system, responding: ‘He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.’
The debate moved to the controversial decision by the Supreme Court to reverse the ‘Roe v. Wade’ ruling that recognised a nationwide constitutional right to abortion.
Biden, in a navy suit and blue tie, pledged to restore the law under Roe if given a second term.
But then in a rasping voice he went off on an incomprehensible story about ‘a doctor – I mean a woman’ and how ‘there was a young woman murdered…he went to the funeral…a lot of young women get raped by in-laws, spouses, brothers’.
As the weird story trailed off, alarm bells must have been clanging in the offices of Democrat party strategists. Trump looked like a big beast toying with a wounded animal as he waited to lash out.
He falsely claimed his opponent’s support for abortion rights meant he was ‘willing to rip a baby out of a woman at nine months and kill the baby’ – leaving a fuming Biden to splutter: ‘You’re lying. That’s simply not true.’
From there, the debate moved on to illegal migration as Trump spouted the sort of rhetoric that might make a Reform UK activist sound tame.
He accused Biden of failing to secure the southern US border which had caused ‘people from mental asylums, prisons, people from all over the world, to pour in – and this guy just left it open. Millions of people are pouring into the country and taking the jobs. They are taking over our schools and hospitals. Hundreds of thousands of people are killing our citizens when they come in.’
Again, it was classic bombast and bulldozing from Trump.
There is no evidence to support the claim other countries are emptying their ‘prisons and mental institutions’ to send people to the US. FBI statistics do not separate crimes by immigration status.
Yet not for the first time, Biden seemed woefully unable to recover from the punches and offer any factual response, other than his familiar refrain: ‘He’s lying.’
Then he slid into another of his cringe-inducing rambles, declaring: ‘I am going to continue to move until we get the total ban…the total…initiative…relative to what we’re going to do…with more border control and more asylum officers.’
He had squeezed his eyes shut while struggling to summon the word ‘initiative’. By now, Biden supporters must have had their own eyes shut too with their heads buried in their hands.
Trump’s own assessment was not unreasonable when he replied: ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.’
One of the most bitter exchanges was over which man was the favourite among America’s military veterans. For cocksure Trump, there was no contest because ‘they like me more’.
He said this was ‘based on every single bit of information’. To bolster his point, he claimed that former military personnel were ‘dying because he [Biden] doesn’t care for our veterans’.
The incumbent President responded that he was in France recently for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and had visited ‘the World War Two cemetery’, before confusingly correcting himself to ‘World War One cemetery’, which turned out to be a reference to a long-running quarrel about Trump allegedly saying six years ago that the fallen US soldiers in there were ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’.
Biden told Trump: ‘You’re a loser. You’re a sucker’, and claimed he had done more for veterans than any president in US history.
Trump said it was all lies and he had 19 witnesses who would confirm ‘losers and suckers’ was a ‘made-up’ allegation.
He went on to brand Biden’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as ‘the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country’ and boasted about Ukraine that he would ‘get that war settled’.
Brain fog descended on Biden again when they debated the Middle East, with the befuddled President referring to the United Nations’ ‘Schecuri…Schecrity…Schurecity Council’. The vocal fumbles came thick and fast, as he described how Iran had launched an ‘inner-conninen…istic…ballistic missile attack on Israel’.
Biden was so tangled up that Trump seemed to be able to get away with saying anything.
Among the unchallenged assertions he lobbed in, he claimed – referring to himself in the third person – that, ‘the secretary general of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I’ve ever seen’.
Biden’s first serious stumble came ten minutes in when he delivered a rambling answer about national debt and taxes and proclaimed: ‘We had a thousand trillionaires in America – I mean billionaires’
Trump took advantage of his bumbling rival’s description of the US healthcare system, responding: ‘He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death’
He insisted ‘almost every police group in every state is supporting Donald J. Trump’. On climate change, he said: ‘We had the best numbers ever. During my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.’
He blamed the January 6 storming of the US Capitol building by his supporters – in which a police officer died – on Democrat speaker Nancy Pelosi and said Biden should be ‘ashamed’.
There was little surprise when Biden brought up Trump’s recent criminal conviction, saying: ‘The only person on this stage who is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.’
Trump hit back by noting Biden’s son Hunter was convicted of three crimes related to a gun purchase and shamelessly claimed that Joe Biden himself ‘could be a convicted felon with all the things he has done’.
The President replied with the low blow that Trump had allegedly slept with porn star Stormy Daniels when his wife Melania was pregnant.
‘The crimes you are still charged with! Think of all the civil penalties you have – how many billions of dollars in civil penalties, for molesting a woman of public…of having sex with a porn star on the night while your wife is pregnant? You have the morals of an alley cat.’
Trump denied having sex with a porn star and claimed the case was rigged, with a ‘very terrible judge’. He left Biden open-mouthed by claiming that ‘my poll numbers went up’ as a result of the case.
An hour or so into the debate, there was a moment that must have had Democrat strategists biting their knuckles with even more intensity.
There was little surprise when Biden brought up Trump’s recent criminal conviction, saying: ‘The only person on this stage who is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.’
Trump hit back by noting Biden’s son Hunter was convicted of three crimes related to a gun purchase and shamelessly claimed that Joe Biden himself ‘could be a convicted felon with all the things he has done’.
Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visiting a Waffle House in Georgia after the debate
The microphones picked up a ‘suspicious noise’ that left viewers wondering whether one of the candidates had passed wind. It coincided with Biden appearing to lean slightly to one side.
If it hadn’t already descended into parody, it did so when the two men vying for the world’s most powerful job then began bickering about who was better at – golf.
When it was time for the closing statements, the verbal torture continued as Biden wore a vacant expression and pronounced: ‘He wants to get away with, rid of… the ability of Medicare…to, er, for the ability, to, for…the…us…to be able to negotiate drug prices with the big pharma companies.’
After the studio lights went down, First Lady Jill Biden acted as though it had been a triumph, escorting her husband to a Waffle House to celebrate and addressing him like a toddler: ‘Joe, you did such a great job answering every question. You knew all the facts.’ Joe Biden smiled wanly.
