The debate was a bad day, and it is bad to have a bad day on the debate. And on the other side Trump, who is a very erratic performer himself, was much stronger than I’ve seen him in previous debates. He was crisp. He said a lot of things that were straight [expletive], that were brazen, that were bizarre, but he was much more in control. He was able to stop himself from talking in a way he couldn’t in 2020. He was quite clear in most of his answers. There were exceptions to that for both of them. I was occasionally checking in on reaction, and I was watching Democrats fall into a complete panic.
Cottle: Before we get into the ensuing panic, Ross, what about you? Same take?
Douthat: I mean, Ezra’s being very modulated in his entirely accurate description of the worst performance for a contender for the presidency in a major debate since the little-known time that, I don’t know, Andrew Johnson drank too much moonshine. [Laughter]
This was the worst. I think we should just say Biden is too old to be running for president of the United States. You could say he has a cold, which I think was put out. I myself have a cold at the moment. I’ve had one for a little while. It’s a bad cold. I’m also running on very little sleep because I have a newborn child. Still, I’m pretty sure that I am more equipped to be president of the United States than Joe Biden, based on that performance.
We can sort of dig into the back and forth of the debate, and I agree with Ezra that Trump was, by his standards, quite strong in certain ways. Some of his answers were ridiculous nonsense, wild exaggeration and so on, but I think you could say he did his job. He prosecuted the case against Biden, saying: The world is less safe than when I was in charge, the border is less secure, and inflation was low when I left, and now it’s high. But really, the Trump part of the equation is just not the important part here. The important part of the equation is: Is Joe Biden still going to be the Democratic nominee? And if he is, the Democratic Party is derelict in its duty to the United States of America. I think that’s the only takeaway.
Cottle: I would like to disagree or be the kind of ray of sunshine in this discussion, but I can’t. I feel a little bit bad when I come out of these debates because I listen to the policy discussions or I listen to the substance and then I’m like, “Well, people aren’t looking for that, largely. They’re looking for how the candidates sound and how they’re looking.” In this case, I am betting that America had a hard time following any of the substance in this debate. It was all about what was a truly hot mess of a performance by the president of the United States. I’m just not sure that anything they said in terms of policy or substance matters.