President Joe Biden suffered repeated senior moments in Thursday night’s debate, struggling to find his words as he talked on various policy issues – and giving Donald Trump an opening to go straight on the attack.
In a debate that sparked concerns among the Democrats about whether he was fit to run for office, Biden’s first mistake came after just 12 minutes.
It was a terrible start for a President who needed to overcome voters’ concerns that he is too old for a second term; instead it was a car crash for Joe Biden.
The 81-year-old sounded hoarse and repeatedly clearing his throat as he jumbled his words, stammered and repeatedly excused himself as he struggled to make himself understood at multiple points. He is reported to also have a cold.
In response to a Medicare question, Biden produced a faltering, bumbling moment that’s likely to be repeated throughout the campaign: ‘We’ve been making sure we are able to make every single person eligible what I’ve been able to do with the Covid, excuse me, everything we have to do with…look… I finally beat Medicare…’ he trailed off.
Moderator Jake Tapper stepped in, telling him ‘thank you’ and turning to Donald Trump to let him speak.
Trump hit back immediately: ‘That’s right, he did beat Medicare, he beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare.’
Another serious fumble came when he talking about the number of billionaires in America and the situation on the border.
Trump repeatedly managed to hit back hard at the 81-year-old on the repeated fumbles.
‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,’ the former president said at one point.
Biden struggled to make up ground from his shocking start.
He tried to hit Trump on the report the former president called dead American soldiers ‘suckers and losers’ and on his felony conviction in New York.
But Biden has been using those attack lines for months, and Trump again was ready for them, barely blinking as he hoped straight into Hunter Biden’s felony conviction and repeated that he was only the victim of a highly politicized persecution.
At times the attacks got jaw-dropping.
Biden told Trump he had the ‘morals of an alley cat’ as Trump noted: ‘I did not have sex with a porn star.’
Glitches and fumbles
But it was Biden’s struggle to find answers that will leave a lasting impression on voters, who have repeatedly questioned the 81-year-old’s staminia and mental capacities.
At multiple times in the night, in several answers on different topics, Biden fumbled.
Democrats were reportedly in meltdown as it happened across tens of millions of American television screens.
The mistakes continued to pile up.
Trump addressed Biden’s policy arguments rather than hammer him on the vocal fumbles as he has done in the past.
The former president has repeatedly called Biden ‘Sleepy Joe’ and mocked him as feeble and mentally addled.
Biden kept fumbling in his next answers as he spoke about abortion rights and women’s health.
‘There was a young woman murdered … he went to the funeral.
‘The idea she was murdered by an immigrant, they talk about that. A lot of young women get raped by in-laws, spouses, brothers. It’s ridiculous and they do nothing about it.’
And he fumbled in his claims about the wealthy in America. ‘We have a thousand trillionaires in America’ and then corrected himself to ‘billionaires.’
Biden also rambled as he touted his efforts to secure a bipartisan border deal that fell apart in Congress when asked about his attempts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
‘We had significant increase in number of asylum officers significantly. By the way the Border Patrol been endorsed me, endorsed my position. In addition to that we find ourselves in a situation where when he was president he was taking separating babies from their mothers put him in cages,’ Biden said.
Trump finally chose to highlight the faltering President, answering: ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,’ the former president noted.
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