I wasn’t going to watch the debate, and not just because my husband wasn’t home and I honest-to-God don’t know how to turn on our TV and when I mentioned this to my daughter she laughed at me and said, “Mom, just find the remote and hit the power button, you can do this,” so I texted her this photo:
I wasn’t going to watch it because why suffer the frustration of following along in real time when I could just enjoy the invariable highlights that would be plastered all over social media in the morning? Sleepy Joe would be breathless and repetitive and emphasize all the wrong words come on, man, the combover king would be characteristically bombastic and talk about all of the very, very good, better-than-anyone-else-in-history things he’s done, believe him, and neither of them would answer a single question they were asked. It was all just theater and I’d be better off getting some beauty sleep and catching a recap on Friday.
But I couldn’t resist. Just a peek. Ten minutes. Twenty, max. It wouldn’t take long to predict where things were heading. There was no way I was going to sit through ninety torturous minutes of disingenuous debate. I’d just grab a quick snippet and be off to bed.
Narrator [dramatic stage whisper]: She in fact did not move from her spot on that sofa for nearly three hours.
When I finally got the massive black box to light up and found the proper channel, the pre-game chat did not have me feeling any more optimistic. Basically, the commentators were explaining, in our hotly divided country, the one thing we all have in common is that we desperately want a leader. This was the two candidates’ chance to appear confident, commanding, presidential. Both gentlemen’s age and cognitive capabilities have been questioned, after all. Both repeatedly insist they are as sharp as Bobby Flay’s favorite Shun knife, and that any “evidence” you see online to the contrary is obviously a highly doctored deepfake. Without an audience to pump up Trump or skilled editors to make Biden look bewildered, the people would finally get to see—in real time minus a curios two-minute delay—who our presidential candidates truly are.
Let me start off with two words: Oh, my God.
[*My husband did not get that reference and just informed me that “oh, my God” is three words. Kindly click the pink hyperlink if you didn’t get it, either. #YesICanCount]
From the moment the doddering Commander in Chief shuffled onto the stage, it was clear the whole deepfake explanation was akin to a toddler insisting his invisible pet dragon is the one who scribbled on the walls. Biden repeatedly stuttered, stumbled over simple words, went sixty seconds at a time without blinking, and at one inexplicable point, compared a woman’s hypothetical need to cross state lines to seek an abortion to the gruesome murder of a 12-year-old girl by illegal immigrants.
“Look, there are so many young women who have been, including a young woman who just was murdered, and he went to the funeral. And the idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in, to talk about that. But here’s the deal. There’s a lot of young women are being raped by their in-laws, by their, by their spouses. Brothers and sisters, by — it’s just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. And they try to arrest them and they cross state lines.”
It. Was. Painful.
My favorite moment of the debate, hands down, was this one:
Biden: “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on, the total initiative relative what we’re going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.”
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.”
“Joe you did such a great job, you answered every question!” the first lady praised her husband after the debate. It was a cringy compliment that sounded like something you’d print on a motivational poster for kindergarteners who suffer separation anxiety.
As much as I wanted to be celebrating the thought of liberals seeing their beloved leader prove his undeniable lack of presidential fitness, I couldn’t escape the reality that last night’s disastrous display was likely intentional. It had to be. The folks who surround Biden on the daily could not have been shocked by that performance. By allowing it, they sanctioned it. Rumors have been swirling for months that Biden will be replaced (with anyone from cacklin’ Kamala or Obummer or his husband wife to god-forbid-Killary or probably-most-likely Gruesome Newsom) before any so-called election occurs. Until last night, there would have been a whole bunch of media-hypnotized holdouts insisting Middle Class Joe was still the best man for the job. But today, that would be like nominating Pixee Fox to be the Love the Body You Were Born With campaign spokesmodel.
Surprisingly, I thought the debate itself was fair and the moderators were professional and endlessly patient (even as both candidates repeatedly failed to answer their questions now I understand why my husband yells at the TV when he watches sportsball). Both opponents lied their aging faces off, leading to criticism of the moderators for allowing unchecked claims. But it wasn’t much of a debate, nor was there any question in my mind who’d “won;” as far as I could see, it was a knockout in the first round.
It’s worth noting that the most shameful part of the evening was the notable absence of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who hosted his own live take on the debate where he allowed himself the privilege of weighing in on each question. [Full disclosure: I haven’t watched Bobby’s performance yet but I’m confident he would have crushed the competition had he been allowed on the actual debate stage.]
As anyone could have predicted, the media spin doctors are in a tizzy this morning. Headline writers—acting as if Joe’s shocking, one-off display of dementia simply will not be tolerated—are busily planting the seeds of a possible swap.
What did you think of the debate, who do you think they’re going to replace Biden with, and why are you sure it’ll be Newscum?
If the Dems were smart they'd replace Biden with Bobby but they're not smart and they know Kennedy will disrupt their plans for world domination.
So now the world knows what many of us knew in 2016. Jill and his entourage should be charged with elder abuse. Is their any loving wife that would do this to her husband?