Debate Debacle

I have watched and been involved in numerous presidential debates. I even participated in six presidential primary debates. In all that time, I have never seen anything close to Joe Biden’s failure last night.

Biden went into this debate with the American people deeply concerned about his age and his physical and mental acuity. Far from reassuring anyone, he confirmed everyone’s fears about his condition.

Even with the enormous benefit of very low expectations, Biden left his party, the nation, and the world shocked and stunned.

No one will talk again about Richard Nixon’s five o’clock shadow, Rick Perry’s “oops” moment, or Gerald Ford’s suggestion that Poland was not under Soviet domination in the 1970s.

The debate had just started when Biden was mumbling his way through a question about the economy. Suddenly, he seemed to lose his train of thought, froze for several seconds, and then declared, “We finally beat Medicare.”

At another point in the debate, Biden bizarrely said that women were being raped by their sisters.

And that’s just a very small sample.

Not surprisingly, Biden’s surrogates quickly retreated from the post-debate press room in order to avoid having to defend Biden’s performance or explain his incoherent remarks.

Even liberal CNN viewers overwhelmingly said that Donald Trump won the debate – 67% to 33%.

Who’s Really In Charge?

After watching Biden last night, many people are asking, “Who’s really in charge at the White House?” It’s impossible to imagine that the man we saw on stage last night is actually working in the Oval Office.

As one debate watcher put it, “I wouldn’t trust this man to run my dishwasher, much less the country!”

Biden spent a week with 16 briefers preparing for this debate. And that’s the best he could do? No amount of spin from Karine Jean-Pierre will convince anyone that what we saw last night was a “cheap fake.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson this afternoon urged members of the Biden cabinet to “search their hearts” and begin discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment.

Biden’s Malarkey

Joe Biden did have one talking point that he tried really hard to stick to: Donald Trump is a liar, and you can’t believe him. Well, there was a lot of “malarkey” from Joe Biden last night.

• Biden claimed no American soldiers were killed on his watch. Wrong! Or he’s completely forgotten about his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

• Biden said Donald Trump didn’t respond to Iran’s aggression. Wrong again. Trump imposed severe sanctions on Iran and took out the ayatollah’s terrorist mastermind.

• Biden suggested that the 2017 tax cuts only benefited the wealthy. That’s false. More than 80% of middle-class Americans saw their taxes go down, and they also benefited from a doubling of the child tax credit and the standard deduction.

• Biden repeated the Charlottesville hoax that Donald Trump praised neo-Nazis. That disgusting lie has been repeatedly debunked, including by debate moderator Jake Tapper.

• Biden repeated the absurd claim that Trump called our dead servicemembers “suckers” and “losers.” Not true. Even people who don’t like Trump say that never happened.

• Biden suggested unemployment was 15% when he took office. Nope. It was less than half that.

• Biden said high inflation was Trump’s fault. Again, wrong. Inflation was 1.4% when Joe Biden took office. His out-of-control spending caused inflation to skyrocket to more than 9%.

• Biden said the Border Patrol union endorsed him. Really? The Border Patrol union cleared that up last night, posting on X, “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”

Abortion

As expected, abortion was a big topic of discussion last night. Unlike previous Republican nominees, Donald Trump did not try to run away from the issue.

He praised his Supreme Court appointees for overturning Roe v. Wade, stated his support for the three exceptions – rape, incest, and life of the mother – that Ronald Reagan believed in, and used the opportunity to point out that the left’s pro-abortion extremism.

CNN moderator Dana Bash challenged Joe Biden on that point, asking, “Do you support any legal limits on how late a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy?”

Biden replied that he supports Roe v. Wade and added, “We are not for late-term abortion, period.” Trump responded, “Under Roe v. Wade, you have late-term abortion. You can do whatever you want, depending on the state.”

So-called “progressive” politicians have consistently opposed efforts to protect innocent preborn babies from late-term abortions. They even opposed legislation that required doctors to treat babies that survived abortions and were born alive. That’s infanticide!

The left is making a lot of noise about conservatives and pro-life activists supporting a “national ban.” It’s the pro-abortion left that supports a national ban -- on any and every pro-life law.

Progressives have introduced legislation called the Women’s Health Protection Act, and Joe Biden has promised to sign it. This radical bill would repeal every pro-life law and ban states from passing any law that tries to prevent even one abortion.

That’s pro-abortion. That’s extreme.

Other Issues

Of course, other issues were also discussed at last night’s debate. Virtually every time he could, Donald Trump hammered Joe Biden for his open border policies.

Biden tried to defend the Senate’s horrible immigration deal, which he claimed was necessary for him to do anything about the border. Then, he defended his executive actions, which he said he couldn’t do but then did after waiting three and a half years.

On foreign policy, the candidates sparred over the wars in Israel and Ukraine. Trump reminded viewers that Vladimir Putin only took land from Ukraine when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in office, and he said Israel should be allowed to finish the job of eliminating Hamas.

Biden tried several times to raise the specter of a wider war in Europe if Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine, twice mentioning America’s obligations under NATO’s Article Five -- an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on all NATO nations.

I understand the need to keep dictators in check. But I am having a hard time figuring out how Putin goes after Europe and NATO if he can’t handle Ukraine.

On taxes, Biden repeatedly attacked the 2017 Trump tax cuts, and Trump proudly defended them. If those tax cuts are allowed to expire next year, individual tax rates go up, the standard deduction gets cut in half, and the child tax credit gets cut in half, resulting in the biggest tax hike in history. Just something to think about.

The Fallout

It’s almost impossible to put into words the panic and despair sweeping the Swamp today. Here are just a few examples:

“I watched the Biden-Trump debate . . . and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime -- precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden . . . has no business running for re-election.”

--New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

“I hope he [Biden] reviews his debate performance . . . and withdraws from the race.”

-- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote.

“I think it was a f***ing disaster. I think it was maybe the worst debate I’ve ever seen in my entire life. . .  Joe Biden, in every single way, failed at that debate.”

--Obama speechwriter Jon Faverau

“That was painful. . . He didn’t do well at all. . . He had a test to meet tonight to restore confidence of the country . . . and he failed. . . There is time for this party to figure out a different way forward.”

-- CNN commentator Van Jones

A Good Day

Today was a good day at the Supreme Court. The justices issued decisions restoring common sense and limiting government power.

In two combined cases, a 6-to-3 majority overturned what’s known as the “Chevron deference.” It’s a legal doctrine requiring judges to defer to the decisions of agency bureaucrats whenever a law is ambiguous.

Conservatives have wanted to get rid of the Chevron deference in order to rein in the administrative state and the power of unelected bureaucrats.

The justices also ruled 6-to-3 that the government abused an evidence tampering law specifically related to financial crimes in order to impose harsh sentences on hundreds of January 6th defendants. Those convictions must now be reconsidered.

Special Council Jack Smith is attempting to use this distorted charge to prosecute Donald Trump in a Washington, D.C., federal court.

It took decades for the country to get into this mess, and we won’t get out of it overnight. But with victories like these, we are slowly beginning to undo some of the damage.