Biden lost as he is demented.
They will try to replace him in the next 60 days.
These demons cheated in 2020, they will try to cheat again in 2024.
Calls for Biden to stand aside grow after shaky debate performance against Trump – live | US elections 2024
Biden’s raspy voice, tendency to meander and difficulty finishing his answers have his allies deeply worried about his ability to beat Trump
Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist-turned ardent Biden supporter, told the AP in the spin room after the debate, “That was the worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates”.
Updated at 03.25 EDT
03.16 EDT
What Biden had to say after the debate
In case you missed this earlier, here is what Biden had to say.
“I think we did well,” he told reporters.
Asked whether he had any concerns about his performance, and calls from some supporters for him to drop out, he said: “No. It’s hard to debate a liar. The New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times.”
When asked whether he was sick – his aides told reporters during the debate that Biden had a cold – Biden said, “I have a sore throat.”
At a debate watch party earlier, Biden told supporters: “Look we’re going to beat this guy, and I need you in order to beat him,” he said, adding, “You are the reason why America is as good as we are.”
“We’re the finest nation in the world,” Biden told supporters energetically a short while later, and “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you”.
A CBS host responded: “It appears his cold has been cured.”
Updated at 03.16 EDT
03.10 EDT
Could the Democrats replace Biden?
Under current Democratic Party rules, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without the party officials being willing to rewrite its rules at the August national convention.
The president won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. And party rules state that, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
That said, DNC rules don’t have the same strict “faithless delegate” rules that the RNC does, which ignore votes against in violation of a delegate’s pledged position.
More detail on why it would be hard to replace Biden here – and some of the names that could (in the also extremely unlikely eventuality of him dropping out of the race) be in the running.
Updated at 03.10 EDT
Biden and Trump aren’t not scheduled to meet on the debate stage again for another 75 days, so Biden’s performance is likely to linger in people’s minds for a while.
Trump co-campaign chief Chris LaCavita told the Associated Press Trump would be at the next debate “with bells on.”
Updated at 03.04 EDT
Biden’s surrogates were slow to enter the post-debate spin room in Atlanta, AP reports.
And when they finally emerged, they largely avoided questions from the press. Instead, they railed against Trump’s long list of falsehoods during the debate. Among other things, Trump didn’t disavow those who attacked the Capitol on 6 January.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential future presidential candidate who was Biden’s most prominent surrogate in the Atlanta spin room, urged Democrats not to panic.
“I think it’s unhelpful. And I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to go in, we’ve got to keep our heads high,” Newsom said in an interview on MSNBC. “We’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”
Still, signs of anxiety were apparent as Democrats began to openly encourage the party to find an alternative to Biden. Some party officials pointed to a social media post from former Obama campaign aide Ravi Gupta.
“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad,” Gupta wrote on X. “Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”
Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad. Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I'll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.
Under current Democratic Party rules, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without the party officials being willing to rewrite its rules at the August national convention.
The president won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. And party rules state that, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
But DNC rules don’t have the same strict “faithless delegate” rules that the RNC does, which ignore votes against in violation of a delegate’s pledged position.
Updated at 03.01 EDT
Biden, whose deceased son, Beau, served in Iraq, had one of his most forceful moments when he went on the attack against Trump’s reported comments in 2018 that he declined to visit a US military cemetery in France because veterans buried there were “suckers” and “losers.”
It was an argument that Biden, then the Democratic challenger, made against Trump in their first 2020 debate and one that the incumbent president has regularly used against Trump, framing him as a commander in chief who nonetheless disparages veterans. “My son was not a loser, was not a sucker,” Biden said. “You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.”
Trump responded that the publication that initially reported this comments, The Atlantic, “was a third-rate magazine” and had made up the quotes. But undercutting Trump’s retort is the fact that his former chief of staff, John Kelly, confirmed those private remarks in a statement last fall.
Updated at 02.54 EDT
Nicholas Kristof, the leftwing political columnist, said on Twitter/X that he hopes Biden reflects on the debate and decides to withdraw from the race, letting the convention decide who should be the nominee. He suggested someone like Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio senator Sherrod Brown or commerce secretary Gina Raimondo.
Updated at 02.53 EDT
Trump, for his part, stumbled over the question of how he would reassure voters that he would respect his oath of office after the 6 January, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Trump tried to avoid addressing the issue at all. He defended the people who stormed the Capitol, blaming Biden for prosecuting them. “What they’ve done to some people who are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Trump told Biden.
More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal offenses stemming from the riot. Of those, more than 850 people have pleaded guilty to crimes, including seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers. About 200 others have been convicted at trial.
Trump leaves the stage during a commercial break as he participates in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections with US President Joe Biden at CNN's studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Trump warned that the members of the congressional committee that investigated 6 January could face criminal charges, as could Biden himself.
Biden shot back: “The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at.”
Terump also sought to blame former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She responded on X/Twitter, saying:
I tore up the former president’s State of the Union address because it was a manifesto of lies. Tonight he presented another pack of lies which along, with his candidacy, must be rejected. How dare he place the blame for January 6th on anyone but himself, the inciter of an…
Updated at 02.44 EDT
Now for some more reaction to the debate. Tevi Troy, a bipartisan policy center fellow and presidential historian, told Reuters that overall, the debate “is going to be a problem for Biden”.
Biden had a lot of answers where he looked weak. “There were other answers where he was more solid, but it doesn’t matter because the problematic answers are going to live on through Twitter and social media.”
Trump on the other hand was “more restrained” than in previous debates, Troy said. The rules of the debate where they shut off the mics “actually helped him (Trump) so he wasn’t interrupting and didn’t seem quite as rude.”
“There’s the phenomenon of the double haters, where people like neither candidate ... One guy’s crazy, the other guy’s too old. They were definitely validated in thinking the one guy is too old, and in terms of the crazy I think Trump did dial it down.”
Updated at 02.37 EDT
02.29 EDT
Analysis: Trump-Biden debate likely amplified Americans’ dismay about the election
Here is the analysis of tonight’s debate from the Guardian US’s senior political reporter, Joan E Greve:
Joe Biden and Donald Trump both walked into the presidential debate on Thursday hoping to sway the so-called “double haters”, those voters who disapprove of both candidates and could play a decisive role in the outcome of the election.
In the end, those voters probably walked away from the debate with a more visceral understanding of why they hate their options.
Trump spent the night spouting lies about immigration, abortion and foreign policy while deflecting moderators’ questions on the climate crisis and election denialism. But Biden largely failed to capitalize on Trump’s vulnerabilities and struggled to offer concise and coherent answers.
Biden’s gravelly voice became such a distraction that the White House had to clarify that he was suffering from a cold. When asked early in the debate about tackling the national debt, Biden offered a rambling answer in which he stumbled through his words before concluding, “Look: we finally beat Medicare.”
The bizarre slip of the tongue caught the attention of Trump, who retorted: “He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death, and he’s destroying Medicare.”
Trump then pivoted to the subject of immigration, a tactic that he deployed repeatedly throughout the night. Trump’s successful rebuttal may have obscured the fact that his claim about Biden “destroying Medicare” is false; the president has actually taken steps to expand Medicare benefits, including lowering enrollees’ prescription drug costs.
That dynamic played out over and over again on Thursday. Biden’s attempts to call out Trump’s endless stream of lies often missed the mark because of his uneven delivery, while CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash stuck to the network’s previously stated plan of not fact-checking the candidates in real time:
Updated at 02.29 EDT
Here are some photos of Americans watching the debate:
People watch the presidential debate between US President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump at Wicked Willy's on 27 June 2024 in New York City. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images
American citizens living in Mexico gather to follow the first debate between US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, at the Pinche Gringo BBQ restaurant, in Mexico City, Mexico on 27 June 27, 2024. Photograph: Quetzalli Nicte-Ha/Reuters
People watch the presidential debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump at Wicked Willy's on 27 June 2024 in New York City. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images
Updated at 02.27 EDT