Jon Stewart has called out the White House’s “spin” of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate as “blatant bulls***” as calls continue to grow for the president to exit the 2024 race. Following a brief hiatus across the late-night shows, hosts are finally weighing in on the first televised debate of the 2024 election, which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27. In the debate, the president tripped over his words and, at points, appeared to lose his train of thought altogether as he went head-to-head with Donald Trump on stage.
On Monday night, The Daily Show host Stewart said that he’s sick of Biden’s “get onboard or shut the f*** up” rhetoric about his future in the race. “For a campaign based on honesty and decency, the spin about the debate appears to be blatant bulls***,” the host said. Biden’s team has claimed that his performance was simply one lackluster night, citing a litany of excuses ranging from a cold to jet lag. “He’d been home for almost two weeks,” Stewart said. “He was jet-lagged? How big is that f***ing jet?”
Stewart went on to argue that “the redemption tour hasn’t gone that much better” than the disastrous debate. “We’re told that the threat of Trump is so great and the stakes are so high that even bringing up these absolutely legitimate concerns about the president’s ability to do the most vigorous job in the world for the next four years is enabling fascism,” he said. “Yet even the president doesn’t seem particularly alarmed.” He added: “‘Get On Board Or Shut The F*** Up’ is not a particularly compelling pro-democracy bumper sticker.”
Stewart also shut down the campaign’s claims that it would be too late to replace Biden on the ticket. “Four months is for f***ing ever,” he said, pointing to other recent elections. “Britain just held an election in two months. France had two in one month, defeated fascism, and still had time to have an affair with Denmark,” he said. “Are you telling me ― you sons of b***hes ― are you coming to my house and saying to my face that the United States of Bruce Springsteen’s America can’t hold an election better than the f***ing French? Is that what you’re telling me? It’s four months. Four months!”
While Stewart did not explicitly ask for the 81-year-old president to step aside, he said it’s not too late to “stress test this candidacy.” Eleven House Democrats – six publicly – have so far called on the president to drop out of the race for the White House, while an additional 18 current and former senior party members have publicly denounced that the 81-year-old could defeat the Republican presidential candidate.
Despite the calls, the president has continued to stake his claim in the White House and, in last Friday’s ABC News interview, he told George Stephanopoulos only “Lord almighty” could usher him away from office. Biden told the ABC News anchor that he’s happy as “long as I gave it my all,” which Stewart furiously retorted on Monday: “There are no participation trophies in endgame democracy.”
On Monday, congressional Democrats received a two-page letter from the president declaring that he is “firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.” Stewart voiced his concerns that a potential rule which Trump might bring isn’t the only threat to democracy. “An arthritic status quo, unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters,” might be equally crippling, he said.
The Daily Show host’s disdain was echoed by other late show hosts on Monday evening with Late Show host Stephen Colbert giving an equally devastating assessment on the Biden affair. “I don’t think that’s fair, I think Biden debated as well as Abraham Lincoln… if you dug him up right now,” he said.
The confrontation in Atlanta between Joe Biden and Donald Trump Thursday night has a good chance of becoming the most fateful presidential debate in US history. For the first time, a sitting president and an ex-president will lock horns before millions of viewers, in an encounter taking place far earlier than normal — even before the party conventions. The CNN-hosted showdown is the most pivotal moment yet in a neck-and-neck election, and it’s Biden’s best chance to shake up a reelection bid that he is in deep danger of losing as he struggles to convince voters that he’s delivered the political and economic normality he promised in 2020.
The debate comes at a moment when many Americans are seeking relief from high prices that have made it harder to feed their families and afford rents, mortgages, and new cars. It is unfolding amid an intense national debate over access to abortion that was unleashed by the conservative Supreme Court majority built by Trump. Deep divides over immigration and foreign policy in a world filled with new challenges to US power will form a contentious backdrop to a clash between two candidates who openly disdain one another. The debate in that sense personifies an election race that has left millions of Americans unsatisfied with the choice offered by two elderly candidates who alienate more voters than they attract.
But the momentous circumstances of the occasion can only be fully understood alongside the context of the unprecedented politics of the times. Since Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon staged the first televised debate in the 1960 campaign, there have been agonizingly close elections that have set the country on a sharply different course. But the stakes in 2024 are greater than ever because of Trump’s attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power based on false claims of fraud in the 2020 election and his promise to wage a never-before-seen presidency of personal vengeance if he wins in November.
Biden plans to frame what he sees as Trump’s threat to the rule of law and democracy in the starkest terms, sources familiar with the matter told CNN’s Kayla Tausche. He will describe the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a “seismic,” era-defining moment that must be a watershed for voters. “The embodiment of the threat is returning,” said one Biden source.
That backdrop means this presidential debate has a different cast than all its predecessors. Had Sen. John Kerry beaten President George W. Bush in 2004 or ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney made President Barack Obama a one-term president in 2012, there would have been significant political change. But the character of the republic and its global posture would not have fundamentally altered. That assurance cannot be applied with any confidence to the current election. Trump’s strongman impulse – epitomized by his claim before the Supreme Court that presidents have almost limitless power, as well as a blueprint for hardline new policies on immigration, the economy and foreign policy – means a second term could bring massive disruption.
“(It is) unbelievably historic. You cannot (over) hype up the importance of this,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. Democrats are desperate for the 81-year-old Biden to put on a show of vitality and sharpness amid concerns about his age. Seventy-eight-year-old Trump’s biggest liability might be himself and the possibility of a performance that could validate Biden’s warnings that he’s too “unhinged” to be president.
Biden is expected to hammer Trump over abortion — one of the few policy areas where he outpolls the former president — and his admiration of foreign dictators. Trump is already signaling he’ll portray Biden’s America in dystopian terms, beset by uncontrolled immigration, rampant crime and searing economic pain. The most extraordinary aspect of the debate is that it takes place less than a month after Trump was convicted in a criminal hush money case in New York. Biden has already highlighted the guilty verdict in campaign events, but Trump insists that he’s the victim of an attempt to weaponize the legal system to interfere in the election.
Both candidates are facing extreme pressure. Both men will hope to avoid the kind of debate night gaffes or odd personal quirks that have often gone viral and dominated critical post-debate media coverage that helps cement the perception of who won and who lost in voters’ minds. Vice President Al Gore’s theatrical sighs in 2000 and President George H.W. Bush’s unwise glance at his watch in 1992 both became emblems of losing campaigns. The risks are now much higher because of social media.
Presidential debates don’t always decide who wins in November. But the tension surrounding this year’s first debate in June, rather than in September or October as usual, is palpable. “The closer the election, the greater the chance that a debate could influence it,” said Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan, who has conducted an in-depth study of every presidential debate. “A lot of times these mistakes reaffirm a caricature of one of the particular candidates that existed before it happened.” For Biden, that means no senior moments, and Trump would be advised to avoid outbursts that confirm Biden’s characterization of a tyrant in waiting.
Neither Trump nor Biden has debated since their final clash in the pandemic-disrupted 2020 campaign. And their preparation for one of the most important nights of their lives has reflected their character and political personas. The president has been out of sight for days, huddled below the oaks, poplars and maple trees at the Camp David retreat with advisers, strategizing how to handle the most challenging debate foe in history. Fueled by lasagna and tacos, he’s taken part in mock debates, immersed himself in briefing binders and tried to anticipate Trump’s wild twists and diversions. It’s a debate camp in keeping with Biden’s view that he’s locked in an existential election duel with the soul of the nation on the line.
The former president hates mock debates and has instead honed his preparation at rallies and events, trusting his instincts and intuition and a feral sense of an opponent’s political weakness. He has, however, had policy refresher sessions with aides and some potential vice-presidential picks including Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Biden has raised the stakes for himself heading into the debate higher than those any modern president faced. He argues Trump is a criminal in whom something has “snapped” and who is too dangerous and reckless to be let back into the White House. He’s also rebuked Trump for using Nazi-style language and warned democracy and freedom are on the ballot along with the capacity of ‘We the People’ to shape America’s destiny.
Biden’s debate team is led by former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has been prepping Democrats for presidential debates for a generation. One of Klain’s mantras is “while you can lose a debate any time, you can only win it in the first 30 minutes.” Biden is therefore expected to front-load the most important points to appeal to the likely highest rated part of the primetime event.
The Biden team has been poring over Trump’s recent public interviews and speeches while workshopping responses to whatever he and the moderators may throw Biden’s way. The president will be ready for whichever version of Trump shows up – whether it’s the bombastic opponent who talked over and insulted him in their first clash in 2020, or a more restrained challenger seeking to project stability. If Trump aims for a presidential bearing, Biden has a locker full of practiced attacks and rebuttals designed to provoke him into making the outbursts that could turn voters off.
A Biden adviser told CNN that debate preparations have included getting the president ready to respond should Trump get personal — weeks after his son Hunter was convicted of felony gun charges. Biden’s love and protective instinct for his family is always close to the surface, and he reacted furiously when the then-president brought up Hunter during their first debate in 2020.
Biden has been running through his paces inside a large hangar at the Maryland retreat, where there’s a mock debate stage complete with bright television lights. His personal attorney, Bob Bauer, is playing Trump and other aides have sat in as CNN moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.
But sources told CNN that the debate practice was about more than feeling comfortable. It’s also about answering the age question. Aides and allies of the president alike have frequently pointed to his State of the Union address in March as a model example of Biden at his best. He was energetic, focused and nimble, they’ve argued, over the course of his 67-minute prime-time speech.
Sitting presidents often have a rude awakening at first presidential debates, since they are unused to anyone getting in their grill and contradicting them. But Trump’s advantage on this score may be compromised since he refused to debate any of his GOP primary rivals this year. Still, his aggressive debate style isn’t much different from the belligerent, spiky attitude he displays in most public events.
Trump has warmed up for the debate by suggesting that Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs, as his aides frantically have tried to dismantle the expectations trap that the ex-president constructed for himself by suggesting that Biden is so mentally diminished that he can barely stand up or finish a sentence. In any other era, the idea of a candidate accusing an opponent of doping would be unthinkable. But Trump’s tactic is a reminder of a presidency and a political style that has shattered all previous norms.
In a new memo on Wednesday, Trump’s campaign signaled that the ex-president would assail Biden over immigration and the economy. It boasted about polling averages that his team says show the former president up in all the key states. And Trump, whose administration created a gale of daily falsehoods, characteristically worked to accuse Biden of the very transgression that is most associated with him — lying. “The man is a walking lying machine and a fact-checker’s dream,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, while accusing Biden, one of the best presidential golfers, of being unable to hit a ball 10 yards.
Trump’s unorthodox approach means that the country may get another reminder of the chaos, discord and cacophony that it experienced in his four years in office — and that his supporters love and want to restore. But it’s also a risk that could play into Biden’s desire to get voters to see the contrast between the 45th and 46th presidents that he believes could deliver him the election.
Former Obama speechwriter Terry Szuplat said successful debate performances tell a coherent story of where the country is and where it is going. “It’s a story about yourself. Why you’re the right candidate. Why the other candidate is the wrong candidate. And it’s a story about the future. Every election is about the future. It’s a choice about the future,” Szuplat told CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
Neither Trump nor Biden has so far fulfilled that goal. Thursday is the best chance to do so.
Source: CNN
