By any official clock, the Biden versus Trump debate stretched just over 90 minutes. Yet, why does it feel like I've aged five years just watching it?
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| President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump at the CNN Presidential Debate on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES |
Perhaps because Joe Biden appeared to age that much too. Leading up to the event, the consensus was that President Biden needed to demonstrate enough energy and assertiveness to dispel doubts about his ability to handle another four years. It was also widely accepted that Trump needed to exhibit restraint and avoid his usual erratic behavior.
Well, one of them managed to meet those expectations.
Much to the Democrats' dismay, it wasn’t Biden who succeeded. Despite being holed up at Camp David for a week of intense preparation, his performance was anything but polished. From the start, Biden spoke too quickly, struggled to form coherent sentences, and frequently lost his train of thought. And why did no one think to give him a lozenge? He didn’t just have a frog in his throat — it seemed like the entire amphibian kingdom.
Trump, on the other hand, appeared calm, cool, and collected. He stared straight ahead during Biden’s answers, miraculously suppressing his usual impulse for chaos. His advisers must have hooked him up to a machine that delivered electric shocks if he interrupted. It didn’t matter that nearly everything he said was a lie. If you watched with the sound off, he looked composed and sometimes even amused during Biden’s answers. Biden, in contrast, alternated between looking horrified and confused, as if desperately searching for the TV remote.
Saying that Trump engages in revisionist history is like saying the South won the Civil War (okay, probably a bad example). According to him, his presidency was a time of moonbeams and puppy dogs, where everyone lived in prosperity and harmony, singing campfire songs together. “Everything was rocking good,” he nostalgically claimed about his time in office, sounding like late-period Elvis.
When asked about January 6, Trump bypassed the violent insurrection and instead portrayed it as a pinnacle of human history. At another point, he proclaimed, “I have the biggest heart on this stage,” which is accurate in the sense that it’s likely enlarged.
In Trump’s vision, the world will be restored to order the moment he returns to the presidency. The war between Israel and Hamas will cease, Putin will pull all his troops out of Ukraine, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich will be immediately freed from prison, and liquid bacon will flow from public fountains.
It’s puzzling that despite presumably being coached, Biden took 43 minutes to mention that he was debating a convicted felon. (One might have thought he’d lead with that fact.) Eventually, he found his footing, although his insults resembled the classic old man shouting, "Get off my lawn!" He accused Trump of having “the morals of an alley cat,” which is unfair to alley cats. He also labeled the former president as a “loser” and a “whiner.”
At least Biden’s jabs made sense. Trump, on the other hand, indulged in bizarre free association, calling Biden everything from a “Manchurian candidate” to “a very bad Palestinian... he’s a weak one,” whatever that means. When Biden mentioned that a poll of historians had rated Trump as the worst president ever, Trump countered by claiming his own team of historians rated him the best. At another point, he proclaimed, “I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” for those checking off their bingo cards.
By the time the two were squabbling about their respective golf handicaps, it was clear that the event, despite the carefully planned rules, had gone off the rails. Biden, with one of the most substantive records of any presidential term, ended up fitting the Republican portrayal of him as a doddering old man. Trump’s presidency was a disaster on every moral and rational level, and threatens to be an even bigger one if he’s reelected. Yet somehow, he managed to come across as a relatively normal politician, rather than an emissary from Satan.
CNN, which had hyped the event nonstop for what felt like an eternity, didn't exactly shine in their ambitious attempt to set a new standard for presidential debates. Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash resembled game show hosts, barely attempting any fact-checking and allowing Trump’s stream of falsehoods to pass unchallenged.
It's no surprise that by the end of the evening, Trump looked like the Cheshire Cat, grinning over the looming demise of democracy as we know it.
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