UNITED STATES
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Crossing swords live again for the first time in four years, the current and former president offered the painful spectacle of a Democratic incumbent very diminished in the face of the lies spouted on the channel by his Republican rival.
This was not a night to have a cold. Almost 82 years old, including more than half a century in politics, Joe Biden has his good days and his less good days, and his team did not even wait for the end of the first debate, Thursday June 27, which opposed him to Donald Trump since 2020 to communicate behind the scenes on what was supposed to explain – by an unfortunate cold snap, therefore – what appeared to be a very, very bad evening for the current president, campaigning for his re-election.
As soon as the hour and a half of confrontation was over, commentators from all sides on American television, returning to the air with defeated faces, echoed in chorus a panic reaction running through the Democratic edifice, from the base to high-ranking elected officials, suddenly questioning out loud the feasibility of a last-minute replacement of their champion, perhaps in favor of the party convention, scheduled for mid-August in Chicago. But Biden, the only decision-maker on board, would still have to choose to withdraw. In a brief statement to the press at the end of the evening, he wanted to dismiss these alarmist speculations: “I think we did well. […] It’s hard to argue with a liar.”
The inaudible background in a disastrous form
Because, opposite, his republican rival did not deviate
