Joe Biden’s Debate Performance Was Objectively Terrible—and Trump Is Still Trump

As most people with eyes and ears can agree, Joe Biden’s performance at the debate last night was a disaster of epic proportions. The president, whose critics have spent years claiming is too old for the job, looked, sounded, and acted old. His voice was hoarse. His face appeared to be frozen at many points. Most distressingly, he seemed to lose his train of thought on several occasions. When he had opportunities to nail Donald Trump—like, say, on abortion—he didn’t. Did he have a few good moments? Yes, toward the end, he recovered a bit. But overall, it was a terrible night that left people who care about the fate of the country/world/universe on the floor in a fetal position from which no one has gotten up.

And yet: Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. While Biden was floundering, Trump spent the night spewing his usual array of insane, baseless lies, including but not limited to:

• Claiming Democrats support abortion “after birth” (this is actually called murder and no one supports it)
• Claiming “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned (a majority of Americans did not want Roe overturned)
• Claiming he got us “out of that COVID mess” (hundreds of thousands of Americans died while he was president, and COVID is still very much a thing)
• Claiming that Biden is going to quadruple people’s taxes (just not true at all)
• Claiming Biden “made up” the story about him calling dead soldiers “suckers” and “losers” (this was reported by The Atlantic, and Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly confirmed his remarks)
• Claiming Biden called Black people “super predators” throughout the 1990s (he did not)
• Claiming Biden tried to remove Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016 in an effort to help his son (this claim has been false since Trump and his allies started pushing it all the way back in 2019)
• Claiming there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency (false)
• Claiming January 6 was Nancy Pelosi’s fault (come on)
• Claiming there was widespread fraud during the 2020 election (nearly four years later, there is literally no evidence of this no matter how many times he says it)

And, of course, in addition to last night’s lies, the fact remains that Trump is a convicted felon who has vowed, among other things, to use the government to go after his enemies, wage an extreme war on immigrants, take no action on gun control, encourage Russia to attack NATO allies, get rid of career civil servants and replace them with loyalists, pardon people convicted over January 6, go after transgender care, let states monitor individual pregnancies to punish people obtain abortions, and strip funding from schools with vaccine requirements. And those are just the things he’s said publicly.

Democrats, understandably beside themselves over the events that transpired last night, are talking seriously about the prospect of replacing Biden on the ticket. And maybe that should happen! But if it doesn’t, let’s be clear about what the alternative to electing Biden would be.

More of this over the next over the next 4+ months would be helpful!