I try to approach things objectively and with nuance. It's obvious that Trump won this debate. I will say that Biden's doctors deserve some sort of medal for whatever cocktail of drugs they concocted because despite the obvious cognitive failings, this was actually one of the more coherent performances of Joe Biden. He was talking quickly and at least intelligibly at the start. Seemed to wear off over time.
Trump played this pretty well, reigning in the bombast (as much as he is able, anyway) and mostly letting Joe's own words and facial expressions do his work for him.
I honestly thought this might have been a mistake on Trump's part to agree to debate on Joe's home turf. He said in the Logan Paul interview that CNN hadn't thought he would accept and I believe this whole interview caught the Democrat establishment off-guard. They wanted this to be a "we offered to debate Trump but he declined play". That wouldn't have convinced everybody as it would be obvious why Trump declined, but it would give them the talking point they needed to avoid Trump saying Biden was afraid to debate. But Trump blindsided them and accepted and yet again, turned out to have made the right media call. Trump plays well with an audience - they kept out the audience. Trump really needs unbiased reporting - CNN kept journalists and even only let the White House press corp have a brief intermission visit to see the set. Trump works well with being able to dominate a conversation - they set up a format of strict mic silencing. Trump wanted a live debate - there's an unspecified delay we're not sure about. There were so many reasons to think the debate would be an un-level playing field against Trump. None of it stopped him and in fact, a bunch of it went in his favour!
It was Biden who ended up getting cut off more than Trump due to Biden's inability to time his answers. The short answer time may even have helped Trump as he has a tendency to go off on meandering speeches and he was self-disciplined enough to stop himself. CNN were so scared of being seen as biased (LOL - the Clinton News Network biased?) that I think they genuinely took measures to be neutral in the format.
Now did the debate make me want to vote for Trump? Not really - he dodged or refused to answer some important questions and frankly a debate in this format is never going to win me over to anybody because it just doesn't allow for meaningful answers about actual policies. You can't give a useful answer about a complex topic in two minutes. But Trump's answers were mostly effective and frankly I'm not the mass audience he needs to appeal to. Biden lied in his very first response saying that Trump told people to "inject bleach". He also later repeated the "very fine people" lie. There are other lies, such as about J6, but they take more effort to pick apart and show they are lies. Both of these are straight up simple untruths, easily refuted. Biden resorting to them so quickly is a bad sign.
Trump did handle the Roe v. Wade questions exceptionally well. Bringing it back around to the late term abortions, the post-birth "abortions". Meanwhile Joe talks about "three trimesters". Is there any other number of TRImesters you could have, Joe? Yeah, Trump handled that section very well.
There's very little I can say in Biden's favour. I will give him a point for saying "fewer" rather than "less" in the correct places which I as a total Grammar Charlottesville Protester appreciate, but I may be a dying breed on that one. Any language points he scores with me are quickly undone by his repeated use of "Keev" for Kiev which is obnoxious. I can't Keev!
For me, Biden really started to take a turn for the worse when he started to become genuinely angry about a third of the way in when he starts snarling "the idea that I have to apologise to you..." Biden's anger is one of his most unappealing qualities - he just comes across as nasty.
Something I haven't seen commented on here but I saw one or two people comments on on Rumble where I watched it, is the way Biden is starting to emulate Trump's speaking style. As it went on, we got more and more of Biden saying: "...and by the way" over and over and attempts at Trump's bombastic "best ever", "worst ever," "everybody thinks" rhetoric. I honestly don't like it when Trump does it, I certainly don't like Biden's attempts to be like him.
Anyway, it's in the subtext of most of the comments here but in conclusion I'll wrap up by making it more explicit. This debate has been less about Trump being effective or doing well and more about Biden doing poorly. Trump didn't really need to do more than exist and be present to get Biden snarling and undermining himself. I don't go as extreme as some in harping on Biden's stumbles in this debate because as I began with, I think the amphetamines and the immodium (and the secretly surgically implanted earpiece behind Biden's right ear) did their job very well. I have seen Biden way less focused and more stumbling on previous occasions. But even allowing for that, this was Biden's debate to lose and he did.
I've been saying here for months I think they'll replace him as candidate and people always tell me that it would be not possible / disastrous / a win for Trump, yada yada. Well I don't know everything about US politics but I know that if they run Biden they'll lose. And after tonight, they know it too.
