Biggest blunder in presidential history

Some Democrats asking who could replace Biden this late in the campaign

- ALLAN WOODS

After Joe Biden delivered an incomprehensible answer on his plans to reduce the number of new migrants during the presidential debate Thursday, Donald Trump stepped in and laid a gentle knockout punch on the jaw of his nemesis.

Donald Trump realized that he would win Thursday’s presidential debate after Joe Biden’s raspy voice cracked, after he corrected himself for saying “a century” rather than “a decade,” and then for referring mistakenly to “trillionaires” instead of “billionaires.”

It was after the sitting Democratic president pitched the former and, perhaps, future Republican president an unintentional softball in accusing him of favouring the wealthy with “the largest tax cut in American history” — one that Trump teed up and then touted like a trophy.

It was after Biden’s aging eyes flashed momentarily bright on the hot-button issue of abortion rights after a Supreme Court stacked with Trump appointees repealed Roe v. Wade, but he could muster no better line to attack his pro-life opponent than: “It’s been a terrible thing what you’ve done.”

Then, after Biden delivered an incomprehensible answer on his plans to reduce the number of migrants coming into the United States, Trump stepped in and laid a gentle knockout punch on the jaw of his 81-year-old nemesis.

He had no need to use force, only to give word to what every single person of every political stripe who had watched the first 20 minutes of the debate was thinking.

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Mercilessly, there was still 70 minutes left until it was over.

Trump’s objective heading into the CNN debate was not to appear overly combative as he had in the 2020 campaign. In that first debate, he was told by an earlier version of Biden, a Biden who was in full command of his political powers, to “shut up” and that he was acting “unpresidential.”