The Republican candidate again insists that “we should not be spending this money on this war,” in reference to Ukraine
Joe Biden, With a blue tie and a dark suit, he entered first, as planned.. Donald Trump, With his characteristic Trojan tie and dark suit, he followed him. Thus began the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections which, contrary to tradition, is held without an audience, without advisors, without intermissions, and with a strict measurement of the time in which each candidate has the floor.
It is a format proposed by Joe Biden’s campaign that, theoretically, favored him. And which Donald Trump accepted.
But, when the debate began, Trump ate Biden. The president appeared hesitant, his voice hoarse. His first answer, to the question about inflation in the United States, was recited as if he had memorized it. Biden, who has always been a poor speaker, partly due to the stutter he had to overcome as a child, he ate the words. Even from a visual point of view, the difference was in Trump’s favour. The Democratic candidate’s usual orange skin tone, with his yellow hair with fluorescent highlights, stood out spectacularly against the deathly white of Biden, who, with his characteristic mouth open as he listened, seemed to have emerged from ‘the night of the living dead’.
With such a start, and considering the traditional tendency towards political cannibalism of the Democratic Party, it would not be surprising if today there were voices in that party demanding the impossible: Biden’s replacement.
If you focus on the message (if anyone cares about the message in these types of events), The two candidates repeated, one by one, the campaign slogans. Biden hadn’t even been speaking for a minute when he recalled that he is “from Scranton, Pennsylvania.” Trump used his first speech to once again spout the madness that the world is emptying its mental hospitals and prisons to send the inmates to the U.S. border.
The current president cleverly tried to bring up Trump’s presidency, which could have been a winning strategy if even half of what he was saying was understood. Trump repeated his usual rant while looking at the camera, unlike Biden, who had a blank look on his face. The Republican candidate repeated his usual lies, such as that the assault on Congress carried out by his supporters on January 6, 2021 was the fault of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser (if that is the case, why does he start his rallies with a recording of the United States national anthem for those sentenced to prison for that act?); He declared that the border between the US and Mexico is “the most dangerous place in the world”, said the 2017 Charlottesville riots, in which neo-Nazis murdered a left-wing protester, did not happen, and promised tariffs against “countries that are stealing from us.” Biden was slowly gaining his bearings. But, However, he had lost – and by a landslide – the first rounds.
