President Biden repeatedly stuttered during his first (and likely only) debate with former President Donald Trump on Thursday night, causing anguish and anxiety within the Democratic Party with less than four months to go until the general election.
In what will likely be the most replayed political moment of tonight, this week, this month and perhaps this year, the 81-year-old sitting president lost his train of thought for about nine seconds, looked down at the podium, then rose again and said, “We finally defeated Medicare.”
Biden, who will be 86 when his second term ends in January 2029, spoke in a soft, raspy voice, exacerbating the situation by what anonymous aides speculated was a cold he had caught during seven days away from public view in preparation for the forum in Atlanta.
“I’m going to make sure that every single one of you gets what I’ve been doing as we’ve dealt with COVID-19, as we’ve dealt with everything that has to be done,” the president said, but then he began to trail off and eventually choked up.
“Look, we finally defeated Medicare,” Biden concluded, looking up again after the agonizing wait.
Trump, 78, was quick to address the gaffe, and not for the last time, saying of his rival, “Yeah, he’s right. He’s defeated Medicare. He’s defeated it like crazy, and he’s destroying Medicare, because they’re putting everybody who comes in on Medicare.”
The debate was widely seen as a make-or-break moment for Biden amid widespread voter concerns about his mental health, which intensified Thursday night.
“It’s horrible,” one Democratic source told The Post. “If I didn’t know anything about Donald Trump before the debate and was judging him based on that performance alone, I would have voted for him.”
Another senior Democratic source said it was “undecided” whether Biden would still be the party’s nominee with seven and a half weeks to go until the Democratic National Convention.
“Biden screwed up. He saved Medicare, but now someone has to save Biden,” the source quipped.
A third Democratic official offered no defense when asked to comment on Biden’s Medicare remarks, saying only that “I don’t know what he’s trying to say.”
Biden repeatedly stammered as he continued to say that the US economy had created “15,000” jobs during his term, that the US has “1,000 trillionaires” and that his son Beau “died in Iraq” rather than actually dying in his hospital bed at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
In another example of Biden appearing to be out of his mind, the president appeared to suggest there would be a “total ban” on illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, despite three years of record annual illegal border crossings since repealing Trump’s hardline policies that forced asylum seekers to remain in Mexico and await decisions.
Biden has released most illegal border crossers back into the U.S. in recent months to await the results of a backlog of asylum cases, but he said he will continue to take action “in terms of what we can do with additional Border Patrol agents and additional asylum officers until we have a total ban.”
“I have no idea what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump replied, “and I don’t think he knows what he said.”
At another point, Biden claimed that “the Border Patrol agents endorsed me,” and that the Border Patrol union Snap back to X“To be clear, we have never endorsed Biden and will never endorse him.”
Biden further exacerbated his shaky performance by making explicit sexual jokes at a post-debate rally.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. I want to go home with you all,” Biden said in less than 30 seconds at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Atlanta, before handing the microphone to the DJ and leaving the stage.
Follow the latest updates from the Trump vs Biden 2024 debate.
For former New York State Senator Alessandra Biaggi (Democrat), it was too much to bear. He tweeted after the debate ended. “President Biden is a good and honorable man. He has much to be proud of. It’s time to step aside and end this campaign.”
Other Democrats chose to report anonymously, and CNN reporter John King said at the start of the network’s post-debate coverage that “there is a deep, widespread and very aggressive panic within the Democratic Party.”
“It started a few minutes into the debate and it’s still ongoing,” he added. “It involves party strategists, elected officials, fundraisers. They’re debating the president’s performance, they think it was terrible, they think it reflects negatively on other candidates in the party, and they’re debating what to do about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the leading Democratic candidate to succeed Biden, played the good soldier, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that her boss “started slow but finished strong.”
“We can debate style,” she added, when pressed by Cooper. “I understand what you’re talking about in the hour and a half we’ve had tonight, but I’m talking about three and a half years of historic performance and work.”
Republicans have responded to Biden with both sympathy and derision.
“He doesn’t have what it takes to be president,” Trump said. “You and I know that.”
“As a geriatric care worker who has cared for many older adults with cognitive impairments, this is heartbreaking to see.” Tweeted Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA)
A February ABC/Ipsos poll found that 86% of voters believe Biden, who is trailing Trump in most battleground states, is too old for another term. A March Siena College/New York Times poll found 73% 70% of registered voters thought Biden was too old.
The debate also touched on issues that voters consistently rank as their top concerns, including inflation and the economy, abortion rights, immigration and the state of American democracy.
Biden tried to place the blame for inflation on former President Trump, saying it was caused by his “enormous misconduct in responding to the pandemic.” In response, Trump said, “Biden barely inherited inflation, and it stayed that way for 14 months. And the reason inflation exploded under his leadership is because people spent money like people who didn’t know what they were doing.”
On the issue of abortion, President Trump said he supports the recent Supreme Court decision to allow the sale of abortion pills nationwide, but argued that states that have restrictions should allow exceptions in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.
But when Trump claimed it would be a “great thing” for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, Biden was infuriated.
“What you’ve done is terrible,” Biden said of Trump’s nomination of the three conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe. “This is basically saying, ‘We’re giving civil rights back to the states and giving the states different roles.'”
Biden also attacked Trump, pointing out that Trump was convicted in New York on May 30 on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
But when the president called his predecessor a “convicted felon,” Trump fired back by pointing out that Biden’s son, Hunter, 54, was convicted of federal gun crimes on June 11 and is awaiting a second trial in Los Angeles. Hunter was arrested on suspicion of $1.4 million in tax evasion linked to foreign ties that frequently embroiled Biden, who was then vice president.
“He could be convicted immediately after he leaves office. Joe could be convicted for everything he’s done. He’s done terrible things,” the former president said, pointing out that Biden had falsely denied the authenticity of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop exposed by the Washington Post that related to dealings with China and Ukraine.
“Biden is being paid by China. He’s a Manchu candidate. He’s being paid by China,” Trump said.
In his closing statements, the challenger touted his advantage and mocked Biden as an incompetent “complainer.”
“He talks a lot of stuff, but for three and a half years he’s done nothing,” Trump said. “We’re living in hell, we’ve got Palestinians and the rest of us rioting everywhere.”
“Your whole country is exploding because they don’t respect you. They’re supposed to respect the president, but they don’t respect you around the world,” the former president concluded. “We’re in a failing country, but it’s not going to get any more failed. We’re going to make our country great again.”
