What’s Next for Biden after a Disastrous Debate?

To put it mildly, President Joe Biden didn’t get quite the reboot he was hoping for from his showdown in Atlanta with former President Donald Trump. The electorate was horrified by Biden’s frail physical condition, his incoherence, and his vacant, slack-jawed stares during last week’s debate. And Democratic politicians and pundits, the same ones who have assured voters for years that Biden is “sharp as a tack,” were finally forced to admit the truth: the president is not fit to serve. 

But Biden’s candidacy wasn’t the only casualty of the debate. Among the wounded are First Lady Jill Biden, every member of the president’s inner circle, Democratic members of Congress (except for Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips who challenged Biden in the Democratic primary because of his age), Biden’s personal physician, and the legacy media, which have become the party’s Praetorian Guard. Each one of these individuals were willing to vouch for Biden’s mental competence and physical stamina knowing full well that he is a senile man in physical decline. They are all complicit in a massive fraud against the American electorate. 

Only two weeks ago, for example, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stood at her podium and declared that accurate videos showing Biden in a very feeble light were “cheap fakes” made in “bad faith” by the Republicans. The Biden campaign even set up a task force to fight “cheap fakes.” And rather than practicing real journalism, the legacy media blithely promoted this canard.

It’s understandable, then, that so many voters were shocked by Biden’s humiliating spectacle. Unless they’ve been watching Fox News or getting their news from other conservative media sources, the extent of his deterioration has been intentionally and meticulously hidden from them.

But on Thursday night, the electorate witnessed firsthand the hard truths that special counsel Robert Hur had exposed in his February report, in which he recommended against charging Biden for mishandling classified documents because he was “an elderly man with a poor memory.” 

Voters also understood that the unflattering portrayals of Biden’s behavior his colleagues had shared with the Wall Street Journal last month were accurate. It’s important to note that, despite knowing the article was truthful, the White House and many liberal media figures bitterly condemned it and called for its retraction. 

To be clear, the Left’s collective post-debate freakout came not because they were surprised by the president’s obvious deterioration, but because their big lie had been exposed too soon. They had hoped to keep it alive at least until Election Day.

Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld summed it up best in a Saturday post on X: “[R]emember: the media democrat complex is reacting in horror over Joe’s condition not because they saw it – it’s because you saw it.”

As breathtaking as it sounds, there are signs that Democrats have regrouped and may be pivoting to a revised version of their pre-debate narrative. They just might continue “ridin’ with Biden.”

On Friday, former President Barack Obama set the stage in an X post. He minimized Biden’s disastrous performance as a “bad debate night.” Although this was tantamount to describing Hurricane Katrina as a squall, it signaled to the party that he was willing to support his former vice president — at least for now. 

A massive fraud was exposed on Thursday night that should concern every American. The Democrats foisted a president on us who was showing early signs of cognitive decline on the day he launched his campaign in April 2019. Five years later, his condition has become glaring. And still, they have tried mightily to conceal it from the public.

Moreover, a strong performance from Biden at a Raleigh, North Carolina, rally on Friday prompted enthusiastic headlines such as “Biden bounces back from bad debate with energetic Raleigh rally,” from NPR. Needless to say, the article failed to mention that Biden was reading a prepared speech from an oversized teleprompter.

On Saturday, Axios published an article titled “Two Joe Bidens: The night America saw the other one.” The piece was based on interviews with eight current and former Biden officials. According to Axios, most of them “agreed the debate was damaging, but disagree[d] on the extent. But by having it in June, Biden’s team has several months to recover.”

The officials told Axios that, “[t]he time of day is important as to which of the two Bidens will appear. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Biden is dependably engaged — and many of his public events in front of cameras are held within those hours. Outside of that time range or while traveling abroad, Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued.”

A massive fraud was exposed on Thursday night that should concern every American. The Democrats foisted a president on us who was showing early signs of cognitive decline on the day he launched his campaign in April 2019. Five years later, his condition has become glaring. And still, they have tried mightily to conceal it from the public.

Will voters finally grasp that the Biden administration and the legacy media have been lying to them for years? Will they demand accountability or even an explanation? 

Or will they choose to believe Obama’s spin that “bad debate nights happen sometimes” and simply move on?

If the U.S. were still a serious country, the answer would be obvious.

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Elizabeth Stauffer is a Research Fellow at the Sixteenth Council