Donald Trump’s brutal kill-shot in debate left Joe Biden a dead man walking metaphorically and, sadly, almost literally
I’ll never forget my first earthquake.
I was staying at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Los Angeles in 2009 and
at 8.30pm one night, my suite suddenly began to rock wildly.
Chairs flew across the room, the minibar rattled furiously then burst
open sending bottles flying, my clothes tumbled out of the closet, and for 20 seconds, it felt like the world was about to end.
The whole experience was so shocking to my system that it took me
many hours to get over it and I barely slept.
The US presidential debate between Presidents Biden and Trump had
much the same effect on me, but the repercussions are likely to be far more profound.
This wasn’t a mere car crash or train-wreck, as some are saying.
It was a political earthquake of Biblical-level proportions.
Only this quake lasted just 16 seconds.
That’s how long it took Joe Biden to show horrified Americans, and the watching world, he is no longer fit to serve as President of the
United States.
His rambling, nonsensical, stuttering attempt to explain what he’d do
about the out-of-control illegal immigration border crisis that he’s
fuelled, was excruciating enough.
Trump’s kill shot
But it was Trump’s response that was the kill-shot.
‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,’ the
former President said, with unusual calmness. ‘I don’t think he knows
what he said either.’
It was a devastating riposte, because it was what we were all thinking.
And from that moment, which came just a few minutes into the 90-minute debate, Biden was a dead man walking, both metaphorically
and sadly, almost literally.
I say sadly because nobody wants to see an old man humiliated live on television like that in front of tens of millions of people.
It was so shudderingly painful to watch that I felt the same sharp
pangs of discomforting anxiety I felt when going through that actual
quake 15 years ago.
They should have stopped the debate right there and then.
That would have been the kind, humane thing to do.
But of course, it continued, and Biden stumbled on like a guy with
senile dementia who’s escaped from his carer – and got lost in a
hospital corridor.
Trump didn’t even have to go full-bore Trump to win.
In fact, I’ve never seen him more restrained.
He was even entirely respectful to the CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who I thought did an excellent job with a revised debate format – featuring no audience, and mute buttons – that was powerfully effective in exposing the brutal reality of this race.
Trump’s bemused and half-smiling facial expressions as Biden
self-imploded with his croaky, monotone, drone-like, incomprehensible verbal diarrhoea said it all.
At one stage, it looked like the Republican nominee was even feeling
a tiny sliver of sympathy for his opponent.
We all did, didn’t we?
Setting aside political partisanship, this was a desperately sad moment for America.
Political immolation
It was the eye-popping, jaw-dropping public confirmation of what many of us have been saying for the past year: Joe Biden, both mentally and physically, is a busted flush.
Honestly, there were more than a few times when I either held my head in my hands, or wanted to run and hide behind my sofa, such was the agonising spectacle unfurling before our eyes.
And lest there be any doubt about what we had witnessed, CNN’s
post-debate reaction show reaffirmed it had been a political
immolation.
To see former colleagues of mine like John King and Van Jones, and
Democrat grandees like David Axelrod, queue up to denounce it as an
unmitigated catastrophe was truly startling to behold given how
savagely critical they’ve been about Trump for so long.
But what else could they say?
For several years now, Biden supporters have tried desperately to
pretend he’s not the man we’ve all seen constantly falling over,
freezing, or speaking gobbledegook.
Just two weeks ago, when Barack Obama was seen at a fundraiser taking his former vice-president’s hand to guide him off stage, I posted on X: ‘So embarrassing. The Democrats can’t let this go on, surely?
My view was shared by billionaire US hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman,
who replied to me: ‘The Democratic Party is destroying itself by
advancing Biden for a second term. This is the Emperor’s New Clothes
in real life. But it is not a children’s book or a joke. The world is
at great risk, and a Biden second term is a grave threat to global
security and prosperity.’
This enraged another billionaire entrepreneur, Mark Cuban, who raged at us: ‘You guys both, are so consumed with pandering to your twitter followers, you have lost all objectivity.’
He then insisted Biden was no more age-frail than Trump.
To which I replied: ‘I think Bill and I are more consumed with
reality than you seem to be, Mr Cuban!’
He retorted: ‘What matters to me is the ability to understand and deal with concepts, strategy…to have leadership skills, even if you do them while in a rocking chair.’
Well now it’s been proven beyond any lingering doubt that me and Bill Ackman were right, and Mark Cuban was embarrassingly delusional.
Biden will inevitably be forced to resign from office to allow someone younger and more dynamic replace him as the Democrat nominee before it’s too late
Frankly, I wouldn’t trust Joe Biden to even sit in a rocking chair
without tumbling out of it, let alone have his supposed
Commander-in-Chief fingers anywhere near a nuclear trigger.
And shame on the First Lady, Jill Biden, for not stepping in before
to save her husband from himself and such hideous ignominy.
Instead, she was seen after the debate congratulating him on ‘answering all the questions’ and leading a chant of ‘four more years.’
The fallout from this unedifying debacle will be fast and ruthless.
Biden will inevitably be forced to resign from office to allow
someone younger and more dynamic replace him as the Democrat nominee before it’s too late.
And it won’t be Republicans, or people like me and Bill Ackman, who
will have forced him to quit.
It will be the very same Democrats who disgracefully tried to pretend
their Emperor had new clothes, when they all knew he didn’t.
