by Daniel J. Flynn
It started with a “Hello, Cleveland” moment. Joe Biden gingerly shuffling to the podium and saying in a husky whisper “Great to be here, thank you” to an empty room foreshadowed.
The 90 minutes that followed showcased a candidate struggling to articulate coherent thoughts in complete sentences and occasionally suffering brain freezes.
The key moment came early, when, for many uncomfortable seconds, Biden lost not only his train of thought but muttered words seemingly untethered from his brain. The profoundly awkward moment ended with the non sequitur: “Look, if we finally beat Medicare.”
Come again?
The split-screen when Trump answered questions damaged Biden nearly as much. As Trump spoke, Biden stared blankly, almost catatonically, at the floor.
Did they coach him in that airplane hangar to look as spaced out as though he were in the midst of an LSD trip?
Later, when Biden trailed off in answering a question on immigration, Trump deadpanned: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
Everyone thought, including Biden supporters, what Trump said before he said it.
President Biden flunked math, history, and biology in boasting of the creation of “15,000” new jobs, claiming to talk to the World War II dead on his recent visit to Europe, and speaking of women and girls needing abortions because of rapes “by their brothers and sisters.” He strangely pivoted from the topic of abortion, the issue on which he polls best, to illegal immigration, the issue that dogs him most. Another unforced error occurred when he invoked Afghanistan, a disaster from which his approval ratings never recovered, and allowed his opponent a natural opening to remind viewers of that horrible day.
His frequent use of “damn” and “hell” in the transcript indicated the angry man viewers saw on their televisions. Biden called his opponent a “whiner,” a “convicted felon,” a “child,” a “sucker,” and a “loser.” He raised the discredited story of Trump praising Nazis at Charlottesville and resorted to the reductio ad Hitlerum.
Donald Trump offered memorable lines: “We’re paying everyone’s bills,” “We’ve become like a Third World nation,” “Russia would have never attacked if I were president.” But his behavior trumped his words. His laid-back, relaxed demeanor undermined the caricature pushed by the media and sometimes reinforced by the former president. Biden exuded negative energy; Trump, positivity. Biden exuded not merely weakness but unwellness. Trump looked the picture of a man in command.
Four years ago, when these two men first in such a forum, Donald Trump, through his boorish interruptions, put in the worst performance in the history of presidential debates. On Thursday night, Joe Biden eclipsed it in his disqualifying performance.
The loud, lingering question: can his candidacy survive this?
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Daniel J. Flynn, a senior editor of The American Spectator, is the author of Cult City: Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco (ISI Books, 2018), The War on Football (Regnery, 2013), Blue Collar Intellectuals (ISI Books, 2011), A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). His articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, New York Post, City Journal, National Review, and his own website, www.flynnfiles.com.
