Biden Frustrates Supporters by Sounding Sharp On Fox News: “You Were Wrong”
An earthquake hit the Biden-Harris re-election campaign last Thursday night as President Biden struggled to cogently answer questions during a now famous primetime debate with GOP rival Donald Trump.
Biden has spent the days since the debate trying not to fall into the cracks that opened around his feet as a result — and the President’s post-debate efforts show him (so far) still above ground.
But Biden’s subsequent performances, designed to demonstrate his capacity and command, have done nothing to repair the cracks in the terrain below him, fissures that Biden must now sidestep every time he walks or talks until election day — if he stays in the race.
A rally in Wisconsin on Friday assured some nervous Democrats, though hardly all, that the debate was merely a “bad night” — as Biden claimed. And a taped ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired after the rally showed a candidate looking far more possessed of his faculties than he was during the debate, though not altogether sharp enough to dispel concerns about his overall mental acuity.
In total, neither the rally nor the interview quieted critics, many of whom dispute that Biden remains the Democrats best chance to defeat Trump in November — in an election the party has characterized as nothing less than an existential test of a democratic future for America.
But while Biden backers have cherry-picked the better moments from the Stephanopoulos sit-down to promote a narrative of a capable candidate, it was a moment shown on Fox News featuring Biden in combative mode that showed the President at his sharpest among all the recent footage and captured moments.
In the clip below, outside on a hot day wearing his aviator sunglasses, Biden sounded more lucid and less frail than during any of his more highly criticized appearances. Aiming his ire at Fox News — and at the media in general (no publication has been more critical of Biden, perhaps, than the supposedly liberal New York Times) — Biden flamed his interrogators: “You have been wrong about everything so far.”
Biden: You have been wrong about everything so far. You were wrong about 2020. You were wrong about 2022. Remember the red wave? pic.twitter.com/9AGqZTdOB9
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 5, 2024
Biden correctly asserted that the media predicted a GOP-fueled Congress-snatching “red wave” in 2022 that never materialized. He said the media was wrong about 2020 and again in 2023, when he recalled Democrats winning “all but two” of the tough congressional races. Seemingly buoyed by his doubters’ string of bad predictions, the POTUS said: “So, look, we’ll see.”
Biden supporters saw what they wanted in the clip and it assuaged many, proving that Biden is capable of responses like this when in attack mode. The problem that brief moments like this don’t fix is the sinking feeling that the President won’t show this same vitality in the next exchange or the one after. That worry pervades even in the positive comments of those who relish this particular exchange.
Watching President Biden in these clips is just making me angry. Why was he NOT prepared for the debate like this??? I have no desire for 4 months of hoping Joe Biden doesn’t fall apart. Not when Democracy as we know it hinges on it. Why was he NOT prepared for debate night??
— Politics of Brian (@PoliticsOfBrian) July 5, 2024
“Watching President Biden in these clips is just making me angry,” wrote one commenter. “Why was he NOT prepared for the debate like this???” It is the inconsistency that haunts the campaign now, and the sense that even a nimble Biden — treading carefully around the cracks that opened beneath him during the debate — will eventually fall into one. Because nobody — neither Biden’s supporters nor his detractors — believes the cracks are going away.