who won this first chaotic duel?

“Looser, poor guy, liar”… These are some of the insults launched between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on Thursday evening during the first debate in the run-up to the American presidential election. A chaotic duel in which the two candidates did not spare each other.

90 minutes of debate, watch in hand. Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced each other for the first time in four years. Four months before the American presidential election, a difficult evening for the current president, slow to start, according to his vice-president Kamala Harris, but who finished strong, she says. However, this is not enough to appease the criticism of the age of the candidate: 81 years old compared to 78 for Donald Trump. Criticisms to which the Democratic candidate tried to respond.

“I’ve been criticized for half my career because I was the youngest. I was the second youngest senator and now I’m the oldest. This guy, he’s three years younger and he’s much less competent. Look at the record, look at what I’ve accomplished, how I’ve turned around the horrible situation he left me in. The idea that our country is weak. I’ve never heard a president talk like that. We’re the strongest country in the world. The people he coddles, like Putin or Kim Jong Un, who he sends love letters to, they don’t want to mess with us,” he said.

A Biden who seemed tired

Joe Biden, who did not hold back with his opponent, calling him a “liar”, a “loser” or having the moral sense of a depraved person. Donald Trump in return challenged him to take a cognitive test and to behave like a Palestinian and to have done a bad job, especially in light of the inflation that “is killing the country”.

Who won the debate? It’s hard to pick a winner from this disappointing exchange. But there are clear losers: undecided voters and those who were waiting for reassurance about both candidates’ abilities. Biden confirmed fears about his age by speaking in a hushed voice, freezing up when answering a question, and appearing to be in pain for much of his speech. His aides chalked up his weakness to a cold.

A Trump in great shape

By contrast, his opponent was in great shape but he played Trump by regularly taking liberties with the facts and ignoring some of the questions asked of him. The two men spent considerable time accusing each other of having subjected their country to the worst presidency in its history and even bickered over their golf handicap. Neither provided a clear answer to the big questions the country is asking about the cost of living or border control, for example. Americans who will vote in four months had the right to expect plans for the next four years rather than recriminations about the past eight years.