Thirty minutes into the presidential debate, I’ve heard from three veteran Democratic presidential campaign officials, and all of them had the same reaction to President Biden’s performance: This is a disaster. It wasn’t just that Biden wasn’t landing a glove on Donald Trump on the economy, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Covid, taxes, temperament or anything else that was coming up in the questioning. It was Biden’s voice (low and weak) and facial expression (frozen, mouth open, few smirks) with answers that were rambling or vague or ended in confusion. He gave remarks about health care and abortion that didn’t make a strong point, giving Trump a chance to say lines like, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” One of the Democrats said Biden looked scared. Another said it was an “emperor has no clothes” performance so far. The third said of the performance overall, “Don’t ask.” Trump lied repeatedly during the debate about the pandemic, immigration and Roe v. Wade, but Biden didn’t hold him accountable for those lies in a memorable way. At times, Trump attacked Biden, but the president didn’t fight back. Frank Luntz, a veteran focus group moderator who was holding a live focus group during the debate, wrote of their reactions so far: “The group is so bothered by Biden’s voice and appearance. But they’re getting madder and madder with Trump’s personal attacks.” “If Trump talks less,” Luntz said, “he wins. If Biden doesn’t stop talking, he loses.”
They had a rule where each person were given 3-4 minutes to answer question while the other person had their mic off to prevent interruption. This prove to be disastrous, Biden cannot talk coherently for 3-4 minutes straight without falling apart, meander, and losing his train of thought. Biden often finished early, then the mods said "Mr. Biden you have 2 minutes left", started to freestyle disastrously and then time's out and got cut off. Trump deflected every question the moderators asked, and talk about something else entirely, lies through his teeth, but he is coherent within the 3-4 minutes time, finished on-time, mods don't have the balls to ask follow up question, and changed the topic. It's a disasterclass both ways for the planet, but horserace wise it is also a calamity for Dems.
It was 2 minutes. With 1 minute rebuttals. Not trying to
on you but just pointing out it was even worse than that.
Trump didn't bother answering the question and just went off topic lol