Lori Lahrmann left, and Tonya Morris, second from left, both from Cincinnati, watch the presidential debate between President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at Tillie’s Lounge on Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Cincinnati. Both plan to vote for President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Millions just witnessed the end of a presidency live on television.

Joe Biden’s performance during the debate was embarrassing.

Whenever CNN put him up on the split screen, he had a thousand-yard stare.

He didn’t look old.

He looked ancient.

He looked empty.

But at least he wasn’t speaking.

Because when it was his time to answer, Biden was incoherent.

He said he “beat Medicaid.”

Asked about abortion, he randomly started talking about migrant crime.

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” former President Donald Trump noted at one point, “and I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”

At one point, Biden just froze.

The administration can’t say it’s a “cheap fake” — everyone saw it happen.

The sound you heard last night was Democratic operatives everywhere screaming at their televisions.

Biden can’t survive this.

It is political malpractice to let him continue to run for re-election.

—NY Post Editorial Board

Democrats who have defended the president for months against his doubters — including members of his own administration — traded frenzied phone calls and text messages within minutes of the start of the debate as it became clear that Mr. Biden was not at his sharpest.

Some took to social media to express shock at his troubles, while others privately discussed among themselves what it would mean for the party and whether it was too late to persuade the president to step aside in favor of a younger candidate.

“Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” said a veteran Democratic strategist who has staunchly backed Mr. Biden publicly. “Joe had a deep well of affection among Democrats. It has run dry.”

“Parties exist to win,” this Democrat continued. “The man on the stage with Trump cannot win. The fear of Trump stifled criticism of Biden. Now that same fear is going to fuel calls for him to step down.”

Democrats on Thursday night were imagining scenarios that would require party elders like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina to intervene with the president, although there was no indication that any of them would agree to do so.

Other Democrats said they feared that it was too late and that Mr. Biden would not listen to anyone other than perhaps his wife, Jill Biden, who has strongly supported another run. The president’s team ended the evening knowing that the task of the next few days would be to quiet such talk and rally the party behind their besieged leader.

—Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The NY Times

He looked like he wanted to be in bed. Or maybe every Democrat in America was just projecting. People kept sending me vomit emojis, among other things.

Aides soon leaked that the president had a cold. Whatever. He hasn’t looked this bad in public for years. It was painful to watch, and it’s not getting better. The whispers were polite, deferential for a while. Eighty-one? Really? Is he up to this?

Clearly not. Biden needs to step aside, for the sake of his own dignity, for the good of his party, for the future of the country. This debacle of a debate was a low point. It needs to be a turning point.  

— Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic

The media tried to convince voters that Biden’s incredibly odd behavior at recent events was all “cheap fakes” by Republicans.

This time, however, the media couldn’t rush in and protect Biden. And now they can’t claim it was camera trickery or out-of-context quotes. Yes, they will sic their army of fact-checkers on Trump. But nobody is going to care about that when the current president looks so incredibly enfeebled.

Americans saw the unvarnished truth about Biden. It’s a side of Biden that his critics, us included, have been pointing out since before he took office, when Biden, campaigning from his basement four years ago, struggled to read the teleprompter.

Biden’s performance was deeply troubling….the media’s coverage of Biden for the past four years has been nothing short of criminal.

—Issues & Insights Editorial Board

I wrote a little over a week ago that I believed that, with an outstanding debate performance on June 27, Donald Trump could be virtually assured of triumph in the presidential election in November.  If he showed himself calm, dignified, strong, and presidential, and avoided appearing as so many Americans have come to view him—boorish, bullying, arrogant, caustic, and narcissistic—then he would soothe the people and have a clear path to victory over an obviously failing, incompetent, and physically incapable Joe Biden.  I think this is exactly what happened in the debate.  If anything, Trump may have performed TOO well.

So far this year, Trump has run an outstanding campaign.  Whether it be because he has a group of wise handlers now who give him good advice, or whether he has, in his own wisdom, progressed to a higher level of intimacy with larger numbers of the American people, his campaign has made very few mistakes.  Of course, it hasn’t hurt that his opponent is clearly failing in all his faculties.  The Democrats have a serious problem right now, and they know it.  Part of it is a more dignified Trump preaching a populist, pro-American agenda that people want to hear.  Part of it is that their own far-left agenda is disastrous everywhere around the world and people across the globe are turning away from it in droves.   And part of it is Joe Biden.  The Democrats have a horrible candidate.   Biden couldn’t sell candy to a child.   Children run away from zombies.

— Mark Lewis, Townhall

HOW DID DEMOCRATS LET THIS HAPPEN? How long did it take Democrats to panic after President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump walked onstage for their debate in Atlanta? One minute? Two? Three max? Whatever the exact time, it was quick. Biden’s weak, raspy voice, his stiffness, slow uptakes, and weird, vacant expression confirmed in a few awful seconds what Democrats had denied for the last three years: that there is no way the 81-year-old president is physically or mentally fit to serve for four more years. 

Of course he is not up to being president until he is 86 years old. He’s not up to being president right now. The question is, why didn’t everybody already know that?

For years, Democrats at all levels of the party have looked the other way, buried their heads in the sand, and lied to themselves about Biden’s condition.

Then, at about 9:01 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, the self-deception stopped. The CNN debate presented a brutal picture of the president’s condition.

Now, of course, Democrats face a problem made much more difficult by their denial of Biden’s condition. If they had faced reality a year ago, the party could have moved forward with an orderly selection of a 2024 candidate.


That did not happen. Now it is nearly July. The Democratic convention is in August. The primaries are long gone. There is no new candidate. Many Democrats feel powerless.

Democrats should look at themselves. They should look back to 2020 and to the first three years of the Biden presidency, years in which the president was in observable decline, and ask themselves: Why didn’t we do something?

—Byron York, Washington Examiner

The point is now he is the nominee of the Democratic Party. This isn’t the 60s, okay. Voters choose the nominee. He is the nominee only he can decide whether he’s going to continue, and as you point out, this is a guy with a lot of pride who believes in himself. The idea that he’s going to say, “You know, I had a bad debate, I think I’m going to walk away from this.” I find it hard to believe.

— Former Obama advisor David Axelrod

The debate was an easy win for Trump. Everyone watching now knows what we’ve known for a long time: there is no comparison between them, though the press will pretend both are too old and in cognitive decline. No. Trump looked like a leader, Biden did not.

It was a strong debate for Trump, maybe his best. He realized early on just how badly Joe Biden was doing. He didn’t completely ease off of him, which I thought he should have, but it didn’t matter. He presented himself as sane and competent, and that was all he had to do.

—Sasha Stone, Substack

This president does indeed come across as a struggling elderly man who may be kind and respectable but increasingly lacks the cognitive sharpness to hold the most powerful office in the world.

It’s time for Biden’s inner circle to do the hardest things friends, colleagues, and loved ones can do: Intervene, knowing it will be tremendously hurtful to the person you care about. The needed interventionists must include his wife.

Jill Biden (needs) to step up—not to tell her husband what to do, but to push him to really reflect on what is best for the country.

—Jill Filipovic, a Biden supporter, writing in The Daily Beast