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WASHINGTON.- In a tough, rough and, at times, surreal presidential debate, Donald Trump appeared much more energetic and confident by exchanging attacks –many of them personal– with an erratic, hoarse, lacking reflexes Bidenwhose performance during the expected duel put in alert the democrats deepening doubts about his stamina and mental health as the fight for the White House begins.
Biden and Trump entered the stage set up at the studios separately. CNN For the first presidential debate, they did not look at each other or greet each other, and for the next 90 minutes They exchanged attack after attack and called each other “the worst president” in history. Trump said Biden is “a Manchurian candidate, taking money from China,” that he is “not ready to be president,” that he destroyed the country and caused inflation, and that “the whole world is exploding under his watch.” Biden called him a “loser,” a “crybaby,” and told him that he has “the morals of an alley cat.”
“He is not prepared to be president. You know it, and I know it. It’s just ridiculous. “We have a debate. We are trying to justify his presidency. His presidency is, without a doubt, the worst presidency in the history of our country,” Trump said in one of the attacks on Biden. “We should not have a debate about it. There is nothing to debate,” he insisted.
“I have never heard so much nonsense in my entire life”said a visibly frustrated Biden, never managing to fully settle behind the lectern. “You have the morals of an alley cat,” he later said.
Far from clearing up the doubts that he brought to the debate, Biden entrenched them. Biden seemed at times disoriented, without reflexes, with his gaze downcast or lost, and showed difficulty providing articulate, coherent, or forceful responses even on topics where you had the advantagesuch as access to abortion. Trump offered his usual script of lies, false or exaggerated statementshyperbole, and also hilarious, but it was much sharper, more precise and forceful, and left an image of solidity that Biden never managed to conjure, despite the fact that it was his main mission.
In a confrontation in tune with the political reality of the United States, Biden brought up Trump’s criminal record, and mentioned the trial in New York in which Trump was convicted of conspiring to conceal a payment to the porn actress Stormy Danielsbuying her silence and hiding an affair to avoid a political blow in the final stretch of the 2016 presidential elections that brought him to the White House.
“I didn’t have sex with a porn star”Trump responded.
The debate marked a break with political tradition. It was hosted by CNN, not the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was sidelined this year. Unlike recent clashes, the debate had stricter rules, negotiated and agreed upon by both campaigns. Each candidate had two minutes to speak and one minute each to respond, there was no audience – the White House Correspondents Association, which brings together journalists who cover the president, presented a formal written complaint because the journalists could not access into the studio, only photographers were allowed to enter – the microphones were silenced to avoid interruptions, and none of the candidates were able to speak with their advisors or take notes. The result was a more organized, if less spontaneous, clash, without the chaotic interruptions that characterized the 2020 debates.
In addition to a more polished organization, the debate offered other additives. Never has a president debated with a former presidentThere has never been a rematch of the duel from the previous election. There have never been two candidates so old on the scene. And never have two presidential candidates faced each other so early, in June, before the campaign formally begins, and not at the end, as the traditional calendar dictates. Biden and Trump also arrived virtually tied in the polls, and everything suggests that the election will be decided by a narrow margin in a vote-by-vote fight. For all that, there was a lot at stake.
The debate offered unique challenges for each of the opponents. Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, are the oldest presidential candidates in history. But Age has been a much heavier burden on Biden’s shoulders for months now., who often projects an image of fragility in his public appearances. At least three videos from his recent visit to Europe for the G7 summit, which were cropped or taken out of context, revived questions about his mental health. Biden arrived with the imperative challenge on his hands to show acuity, reflexes, political waist, and, above all, stamina to sustain the hour and a half duel – standing behind the lectern – with Trump. She never got it.
“This guy is three years younger and much less competent. Look at the file, look what I’ve done. I have turned around a horrible situation”Biden said when answering a question about his age.
Trump arrived at the meeting with the label “convicted criminal” on his back, the first former president and the first presidential candidate in history to be convicted of a crime by a jury in a United States court. And Trump also arrived accompanied by the question of whether he would be more disciplined and moderate than usual – as some of his allies asked him to do and his advisors recommended – or if he would be the usual Trump, instinctive, aggressive, and on the offensive. The debate showed him with the usual energy, but with an atypical dose of discipline and restraint.
Beyond what happened during the 90 minutes of the debate, The campaigns of both candidates unleashed a brutal battle over the subsequent narrative of the duel. Democrats faced an uphill battle and a Herculean task of trying to contain and turn around what many called a Biden catastrophe in front of millions of television viewers. The messages began to arrive on phones even before the debate ended. Halfway through the duel, Biden’s team began circulating among reporters that the president had a cold. An attempt to do “damage control” while his candidate was still standing behind the lectern. By the end of the night, The doubts ended up rekindling the discussion about whether Biden would step aside or maintain his candidacy.
