Biden’s performance was beyond awful – the time has come to step aside

President Biden managed to stay upright for the 90 minutes of the debate and didn’t fall asleep – but that’s about as good as it gets, writes Jon Sopel

‘It was horrid. Beyond awful. Biden’s performance will reinforce every fear and anxiety that Americans have that he is way too old’ (AFP via Getty)

In this televised debate of firsts – the earliest presidential debate ever, the first to involve a convicted felon, the first between two former presidents, the first between two candidates so old – where to start? Let’s begin with where the bar was set.

We’ll come to Donald Trump in a moment, because in reality there was much, much more at stake for Joe Biden. The questions about his age and his cognitive abilities have been intensifying after recent events where he has seemingly become confused and mentally lost. If he wins in November and serves a full term, he would be 86 when he leaves the White House.

So let’s do the positives, first. President Biden managed to stay upright for the 90 minutes of the debate and didn’t fall asleep. As he shuffled on and off stage he didn’t trip over. He made his way to the lectern successfully.

But – honestly – that is about as good as it gets. His voice was thin and reedy – and at one point, when he was talking about billionaires paying more tax, he had a complete brain freeze and became totally incoherent and ended up talking about Medicare. It was horrid. Beyond awful. That clip will be ricocheting around the internet, getting “likes” on every social media platform – and it will reinforce every fear and anxiety that Americans have that he is way too old.

Worse still, this moment came in the first five minutes of the debate. Americans tuning in to evaluate the president’s competence got their answer early on. At one point Trump commented: “I don’t really know what he said at the end of the sentence, and I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

There was much that Trump said over the course of 90 minutes that were downright lies, braggadocious, self-serving nonsense and narcissistic – but on that assessment of Biden’s mental acuity and losing his train of thought, it was hard to argue with.

For much of the CNN debate, the two men were on a split screen, so when Trump was speaking you could see Biden’s reaction and vice versa. And sure, there were the eye rolls, the snorts of derision from both men – but at times Biden’s eyes seemed to gaze out at some far-away place, utterly disconnected from the TV studio.

A few weeks ago, the former Democrat speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was in London and I saw her at the US embassy. To my questions, she kept repeating that Biden was fine, his age was not an issue, and he will beat Trump in November. Sorry, that doesn’t wash. It is no longer a credible response to what Americans could see with their own eyes.

What the Democratic Party does about it is now an urgent question. The theory about this presidential debate happening before the two candidates had been confirmed at their party’s respective conventions was that any gaffes or missteps would be forgotten about by the time of the election. There was space for course correction. But after last night’s debate, it’s not a gentle tug on the wheel that’s needed, but that the Dems need a new skipper at the helm.

The theory that I have heard again and again from people around the Biden administration is that the only person the president would listen to is the first lady, Jill Biden. Surely, that time has come.

That is not to say everything about Biden’s performance was catastrophic. On some policy questions – the environment, the economy, abortion, America’s place in the world – he held his own. He landed the odd, good line, telling Trump that he had “the morals of an alley cat”. And repeatedly calling his predecessor out as a liar. “I have never heard so much malarkey in my whole life,” says Biden at one point in exasperation.

Trump’s performance was far from perfect. I suspect the CNN fact-checking machine exploded into a thousand different pieces before they got to the first commercial break. Trump was dishonest about 6 January, evasive about whether he’d accept the result of November’s election if he was found to have lost. He asserted that every legal scholar around the world agreed with him on the need to overturn Roe v Wade. And that polls show how much the American people love him.

There was no limit to his self-regard. He had created a great America; Biden had destroyed it. The Garden of Eden he had created was now a “rats’ nest”. You might think this is all ghastly. But it was the same Trump we saw four years ago – just as provocative as he was eight years ago. And he hammered home his talking points – on the border, the economy and how Ukraine and Gaza had only happened because of Biden’s weakness. “Putin and Hamas would never have dared while I was commander-in-chief,” he told the American people.

Perhaps the most absurd and lowest part of the debate came when 78-year-old Trump and 81-year-old Biden started squabbling over who was the better golfer and who could hit the ball furthest. It was pitiful and pitiable. Two irascible old men fighting over the TV remote control in the day room of their retirement home. They hate each other – and their contempt for one another was the one thing that shone most brightly in the ghastly full 90 minutes of the debate.

In the last prime-ministerial debate on Wednesday, there was a slightly obnoxious question from a member of the audience to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, to the effect of: “Are you the best this country has to offer?”

Honestly, after watching the CNN debate between Biden and Trump, I think we should feel blessed at the choice we have next week.