Joe Biden Sets All the Rules in the 2024 Presidential Debate — and Still Gets Beaten by Donald Trump

It was a terrible night.

Donald Trump was an ambitious dictator, a liar, a bigot, a criminal—not to mention a fool. His presidency was an unmitigated disaster. But most people know that diving in Thursday night debate. The question of the evening was whether President Joe Biden could overcome the lingering concerns that have clouded his campaign: poor poll numbers, divisions within the party, and of course his age and health.

Unfortunately, that last part was Thursday night’s story. Biden has been in trouble. His voice was hoarse. He tried to make an impression. Trump has lied and lied and lied, spouting bullshit, bullshit and more bullshit—but Biden can’t seem to block the attacks, let alone take down any of them. who makes his own hay. Did he come closest? “You have the ethics of an alley cat,” Biden said as he ticked off some of Trump’s civil and legal affairs, including the 34 felonies for which he was recently convicted.

But by that point, the damage had already been done. Trump is as deceitful and scary as ever — and looks like he’s 78 years old, under the heavy makeup and strangely braided hair. But he came out of the gate with more energy than Biden, and that energy overwhelmed the 81-year-old president’s efforts to bring him back to reality. “I really don’t know what he said,” Trump said after an attack on Biden. “I don’t think he even knew what he said.”

Biden was able to deflect such criticism when the two met on the debate stage four years ago. “Will you shut up, man?” Biden asked in frustration. that timeis on track to win in 2020, ending four chaotic years of Trump’s presidency and bringing about substantive policy changes on a number of fronts.

But this time, the president has struggled to make a positive case for his presidency, and one imagines a variety of surrogates—from Vice President Kamala Harris top-down—can do better. Biden reported caught a cold during the hearing, which might explain the hoarseness. But plenty of Democrats would have made mincemeat of Trump if the former president had, for example, declared that “we have the best H20 ever” in a typically inane answer to a question about climate change. Biden found himself arguing about Trump’s height and being interrupted with a “by the way…” after violating the rules his own campaign had put in place.

The mic cutoff and lack of a crowd were supposed to allow Biden to focus on substance, keeping Trump from being overwhelmed, as well as the former president’s preferred debate style. But he still let Trump steer him, sidetracked by a debate about how many presidential historians rank his predecessor as the worst of all time. “Look it up and go online,” Biden said. “159, 158—I don’t know the exact number—presidential historians, they met and voted. ‘Who is the worst president in American history?’ Best to worst. They said he was the worst person in American history.”