“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
With those words, Donald Trump effectively ended the first presidential debate — and the entirety of the debate regarding President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, really — with a TKO, literally before the 90-minute contest hit the half-hour mark.
Trump: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence; I don’t think he knows what he said either.” pic.twitter.com/afW9TkIuUV
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 28, 2024
The only question that remained, for those of us who kept watching like NASCAR viewers who don’t like auto racing but want to see if there are going to be any serious wrecks involved, is how bad things got.
Trending:
The answer: So bad that people were literally wondering whether or not the president of these United States of America was hallucinating a studio audience.
The answer to that: Probably not. But, if you were watching all 90 minutes of that disaster for democracy, could you really be so sure?
The most glaring moment came as President Biden delivered his final remarks, which were a rambling farrago of talking points not assembled into any particular sensical order. It wasn’t a summation so much as an ejection of unconnected thoughts that presumably had focus-grouped well among Democratic voters.
It began with talk of former President Donald Trump’s tax policies: “We find ourselves in a situation where, number one, we have to make sure that we have a fair tax system,” he said, according to a transcript. “I ask anyone out there in the audience, or anyone out watching this debate, do you think the tax system is fair?
Is Joe Biden mentally fit?
“The fact is that I said, nobody even making under $400,000 had a single penny increasing their taxes, and it will not. And if I’m re-elected, that’ll be the case again.”
Now, let’s leave aside the fact-checking on that one, because that’s not the issue. The important part: The only audience was on TV, and Biden had looked bad enough that people actually wondered whether our president was speaking to a studio audience that existed only in the fragile eggshell mind of Joseph Robinette Biden.
BIDEN: “I ask anyone out there in the audience…”
(There is no audience, Joe) pic.twitter.com/dcujRjIyWJ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 28, 2024
Dementia Joe Biden: “I ask anyone in the audience…”
😆😆😆 There is no audience — his campaign wouldn’t allow one!pic.twitter.com/eLvN90yNua
— AJ Huber (@Huberton) June 28, 2024
Now, to be fair, a television audience is an audience, and that’s certainly a more charitable interpretation. In fact, it’s one we’d give by default to literally anyone else who’d said the same thing.
But this guy? Not so much. And nor was it the only moment of the night when the question of whether or not he thought there was an audience came up among those on social media.
Take his entrance, where he waved and said, “Hi folks, how are ya?” My impression was that he was doing this to the moderators and crew that were present, although others had doubts. By the end of the evening, I did, too:
Joe Biden waves and says “Hi folks, how are ya?”
There is no audience. pic.twitter.com/fbHBWNSAUH
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 28, 2024
Joe Biden starts off with a strong wave to *no one* pic.twitter.com/nGqgctIHJa
— Raj Aryal (@rajaryal07) June 28, 2024
Now, mind you, this was the first presidential debate since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 not to have a live, in-person audience — and that was at the behest of the Biden campaign, The New York Times noted, which was “seeking to avoid any cheering or booing that could derail the conversation.”
Yes. Because clearly, the issue was the MAGA rabblement derailing the rhetorical machine that is our 46th president:
YIKES: Joe Biden starts to freeze pic.twitter.com/AQ7irpCrDf
— Wendell Husebø (@WendellHusebo) June 28, 2024
However, my assumption is that Biden’s brain, such is what is left of it, was not playing tricks on him Thursday night and making him think there was a live debate audience. That’s an assumption.
In any other cycle — heck, in any other debate — I’d unfailingly think these individuals were being misleading by saying that the president was hallucinating people in the “audience.” On the other hand, nobody who watched Thursday’s trainwreck could pass a lie detector test and say they were absolutely sure about that.
No more talk about “cheap fakes” and misleading clips. No more talk about this president being sharp as a tack behind doors. No more “childhood stutter.” We didn’t know what Biden was saying most of the time, and he likely didn’t know, either.
This is a man in deep, visible, organic mental decline that is only going to get worse, and he wants four more years as the most powerful man in the free world. Any sane “audience,” real or imaginary, should deny him it.
