The stumbling silences and bizarre answers that could have destroyed Joe Biden’s re-election hopes during the car crash debate with Donald Trump

President Joe Biden opened the first debate with Donald Trump sounding hoarse.

Things quickly got worse as he lost his train of thought and wandered off into the silence.

For three and a half years, the White House has shielded the 81-year-old Biden from questions about his vulnerability, trimmed his schedule for arduous foreign travel, kept reporters at arm’s length and even traded the steps of Air Force One for the shorter, easier one. stairs.

But there is no hiding place during a 90-minute debate in front of live television cameras.

When it was his turn to speak, Biden was sometimes barely audible. As his 78-year-old opponent spoke, Biden stood open-mouthed, his eyes darting from side to side and his jaw hanging open as if another resident had taken his place at the jigsaw puzzle table in the game room.

When given the chance to answer questions about his advancing years, Biden delivered a rambunctious response that veered into computer chips.

Trump was hesitant to slam Biden for his age, considering they were born just three years apart. But he is not a man to ignore an open target.

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” he said at one point as Biden delivered a word salad about the border.

“I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

The June debate, the earliest in presidential election history, was a gamble by Team Biden.

His advisers believe that most of the population is not yet aware of the election and that many were not even aware that Trump was the Republican presidential candidate.

The idea was that the audience would wake up and remember the chaos of the Trump years if they shared the stage with the former president.

It put Trump and his advisers on the spot. After years of suggesting that Biden had dementia or was too weak to stand for 90 minutes, they hastily upped the ante in the two weeks leading up to the debate, discussing the president’s debating skills or hinting that he would be drugged to make him a ‘super soldier’.

They didn’t have to worry.

Donald Trump came across as more powerful than Biden, even though he was only three years younger

Although Biden criticized Trump for his past comments about veterans and the violence on Jan. 6, televised debates are remembered less for their content than for their style.

Especially those moments that come at the beginning and set the tone for the rest of the debate.

Biden came out swinging within minutes when he confused “trillionaire” with “billionaire” while trying to explain that fixing the tax code would allow him to rebuild the country.

“We can make sure that all of the things that we need to do, like child care, elder care, strengthening our health care system, making sure that everyone has access to what I was able to do with… COVID,” he said, closing his eyes and speaking more slowly, as if fighting the stutter he’s had since childhood.

He bowed his head and tried to continue speaking, but stopped after a few words.

“Excuse me… I have to deal with everything we have to deal with, look…” he said again hesitantly… “when we finally defeat Medicare.”

Trump looked at Biden with something akin to concern before moderator Jake Tapper stepped in to put the president out of his misery.

Biden greets the two moderators Dana Bash, left, and Jake Tapper after the debate

Biden supporters at a viewing party in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday evening

A TV screen shows the debate as the New Hanover County Democratic Party hosts a viewing party as former US President Donald Trump faces off against US President Joe Biden

‘Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare,” Trump said. “He beat him to death.”

That was the pattern for parts of the night. Biden stumbled through his words, leaving an open door for Trump.

If the purpose of the performance was to debunk the narrative that an 81-year-old was too old to lead the country, then the evening was a disaster.

“It’s not that Trump is doing well; a lot of what he says is nonsense,” said New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

“But Biden is performing very poorly in my opinion. He is not reassuring the doubters, but is actually raising new doubts about his age.”

At times he regained his energy by attacking Trump for allegedly calling dead soldiers “losers” and “suckers” when he skipped a planned visit to a World War I cemetery in France.

‘My son was not a loser. Wasn’t a loser. You’re the loser. You’re the loser,” he said, in one of the offensive lines landing.

For his part, Trump hesitated even to say he would accept the outcome of the November election.

“These are absolutely fair, legal and good elections,” he said, but only after being asked for the third time.

That won’t be remembered from his first debate in 2024.

Biden couldn’t even give a decent answer when moderator Dana Bash asked him to respond to voters’ concerns about his age.

“This man is three years younger and a lot less competent,” he said of Trump, before digressing into a convoluted answer about computer chips.

“Those factories, that’s what they’re called, pay more than $100,000 to build those chips. You don’t need a college degree to do it and there’s already billions, about $40 billion, being invested and built in the United States right now,” he said.

Before the evening began, Biden faced the same challenge as all sitting presidents: make the election a choice between two candidates rather than a referendum on his time in office.

Now it appears the race will be about nothing more than Biden’s performance and not the convicted felon who gave a half-hearted answer about whether he would accept the election results.