by 
Biden must be the winner:
- He didn’t contract COVID and back out
- He was up there for an hour and a half and didn’t get a rest break
- While he stumbled over words a couple of times, there were no big “senior moments” or gaffes to speak of
- He didn’t fall asleep, forget his name or misidentify his wife.
But I’m not sure anyone really won this one. I had predicted from the beginning that this would have to be entertaining/interesting in order to keep people interested:
What was the first thing that caught my attention? None of the usual thanking everyone for coming, the venue and their spouses. It was knock-down, drag-out from the beginning. President Trump came off as a bully as he was constantly correcting or interjecting into Biden’s comments during the whole first half. I got the impression, watching the entire thing, that even though it seemed that President Trump got to answer first more times, Biden had longer, uninterrupted segments.
Chris Wallace seemed to set up more gotcha questions for Trump than Biden, though he did press Biden a couple of times with questions and follow ups. Biden did more name calling, which I found interesting. I mean, we did hear “Crooked Hillary”, but no direct name calling by Trump. Biden called trump a clown, stupid, the worst President ever… This doesn’t help the idea that his campaign wants to get across that he’s supposed to be the adult in the room.
Biden got away with not answering about whether he’d take some of the popular retaliatory actions the left has talked about, like court packing, with a non-answer that him saying anything would be news. That’s a cop out. His non-answer about any police group that supports him hurt as well. This was the best part of Trump’s night.
Trump fumbled around with the “condemn white supremacist” line of attack. It appeared he was hoping Wallace would give him a specific group to condemn or tell not to engage in riots, and because of this the whole message got garbled.
Seems like Trump decided he was going to play fact checker on Biden and try to give the impression that Biden was the one that was always lying– and Biden did engage in a few hoaxes:
But one can’t blame him, since he’s made the Fine People hoax the cornerstone of his campaign.
There were missed opportunities all around. Is this what it looks like to have a Republican that fights back, or just a mess? What was your impression?
