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Joe Biden struggled through an ill-tempered 90-minute debate on Thursday, delivering halting answers to moderators’ questions and struggling to counter Donald Trump’s attacks and unsubstantiated claims.
Speaking with a raspy voice, Biden repeatedly tripped over his words and in several instances gave rambling answers or appeared to lose his train of thought, while Trump accused him of being the worst president in US history.
The Biden team had pushed for an unprecedented debate in June, more than four months before November’s election, in an attempt to reinvigorate the president’s flailing campaign and remind voters why they chose him over Trump in 2020.
But Biden’s performance on Thursday night was widely panned, as the 81-year-old president did little to reassure voters who are concerned that he is too old for another four years in the White House.
In one rambling answer early in the debate, Biden appeared to lose track of what he was saying: “Making sure that we continue to . . . strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we are able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I have been able to do with the Covid, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do . . . look, if we finally beat Medicare.”
In a later exchange on abortion rights, which has proven to be a winning electoral issue for Democrats in the past two years, Biden pivoted instead to illegal immigration, an electoral weakness for his party.
“If people were concerned about Biden’s age, I don’t think he did anything to ameliorate those concerns,” said Kyle Kondik, a non-partisan analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“I would imagine there is going to be a lot of bedwetting [among Democrats] after this debate,” Kondik added.
Trump, 78, is not much younger than Biden, but appeared comfortable on Thursday night as he tore into Biden, and in many cases repeated the false, outlandish claims that have become a hallmark of his own bid for another four years in the White House.
“He’s not equipped to be president. You know it and I know it,” Trump said at one point, in reference to Biden.
The president’s answers became steadier as the 90-minute debate wore on. Asked by CNN moderator Dana Bash whether he was too old to be president, Biden replied: “This guy is three years younger and a lot less competent . . . just look at the record. Look at what I’ve done. Look at how I’ve turned around the horrible situation he left me.”
“It was a slow start, it was obvious to everyone — I’m not going to debate that point,” Biden’s vice-president Kamala Harris told CNN in an interview after the debate.
Biden also tried to portray Trump as unfit for office, referring to his criminal convictions and myriad legal troubles. At one point, Biden called out his rival as a criminal, saying: “The only person on this stage that’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.”
Trump continues to lead Biden in most national opinion polls, despite being found guilty of 34 criminal charges by a New York jury last month. The former president is facing three additional criminal trials, including two cases relating to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump repeatedly dodged moderators’ questions on Thursday night about whether he would accept the results of this year’s election. Asked a third time, the former president replied: “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”
The debate was the first big moment in the campaign for millions of US voters to assess the two candidates in the first meeting between them in nearly four years, after Trump declined to attend Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.
While CNN, the cable news network that hosted the debate, was not expected to publish viewership numbers until Friday, a New York Times poll out this week found roughly three-quarters of registered American voters planned on watching the showdown.