America's Talking - Biden, Trump Spar Over Inflation, Border, More in First Presidential Debate

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump grappled over inflation, illegal immigration, abortion and more during the first debate of this election cycle Thursday night in Atlanta. A Quinnipiac poll released the day before the debate shows Trump with a 49%-45% lead over Biden, showing Biden needed to turn the tide Thursday night. But throughout the debate, Biden showed moments of murmuring, blank stares, trailing off in his responses, or seeming to lose his train of thought. “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said early in the debate. “I really don’t think he knows what he said either.” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, June 28th. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump squared off Thursday night in the first of two scheduled debates before November's presidential election. The presumptive nominees of their respective parties gave an early look into the rematch of 2020 when Biden-Edged Trump and a few key swing states to win the election. But questions about Biden's age and declining cognitive abilities surrounding the president

heading into the debate, and those questions only intensified after his performance. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, before we get into some of the issues the tackle during the debate, let's start with Biden's performance. What do you think? Well, Dan, I think we might have to go into a witness protection program because we may have witnessed a murder of a presidential campaign last night. I mean, it was a bloodbath. You saw the reaction, even from diehard Democrats, that they were very troubled by President Joe Biden's inability to, you know, can keep a sentence going for, you know, or a thought going for 90 full

seconds. He trailed off. He seemed lost at times. His mouth just was open. And as he kind of stared off to the side for extended periods of time, you know, we, have seen this version of Joe Biden pop up at different points throughout the last few years. But it's not consistently this bad. You know, he'll have a good day and then the next day he'll kind of have an embarrassing moment. And then the day after that, he'll be fine. But what was different about this, he did it on the debate stage. He did it for 90 minutes. And he did it at a time where his number one goal out of that debate was to convince America that he's not too old to be president. I mean, he totally utterly failed at that.

The entire Democratic establishment is brainstorming ways to remove him by the convention so they have a better chance of beating Trump. And I think they could, you know, it's funny. I joked about this being a murder, but I think it was actually not true. It wasn't really a murder. It was a suicide because Trump didn't perform so well that he just punished it by it and pushed him into the ground. Trump just kind of kept his mouth shut more so, which is, you know, to his favor and his credit. as Biden just continued fumbling and stumbling over his words in ending his own campaign. You know, Dan Biden is sort of, his presidency was made by the Democratic establishment.

And I think it can be destroyed by it. I mean, what I mean by that is Biden was not winning the Democratic primary a few years ago. But the powers that be within the party came together and said, hey, we can't let Bernie win this primary. Bernie Sanders, Senator from Vermont. And if we let this primary drag on too long, it's going to impact. power Trump. So you notice, boom, boom, Kamala Harris, you know, drops out. Pete Buttigieg drops out. Of course, they were summarily rewarded for that later. Others dropped out. They were able to beat Bernie and go on to beat Trump. So Biden's campaign, Biden's presidency was created by the powers of being the Democratic

Party. And I think they believe they have the power to, to remove him. Now, the details of that can get very messy and will the president cooperate? Is he going to just, you know, grit and bear it and try to push through? There's a lot of question marks raised from the debate, Dan, but one thing we know for sure is that any attempt by buying to shore up the base and show everyone that he's capable for the job, he utterly failed in that capacity. Wow, Casey, that's some heavy stuff there. Most of the state's primaries are done, not all. There's still a few primaries left to go, but every single state that's voted so far in the primary season, Biden's been the top vote getter by far. But you're saying heading into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, the heads of the party could theoretically replace him.

Oh, sure. I mean, the first question is, will Biden cooperate? If Biden cooperates, it's very easy to replace him. I mean, you know, if he gets out of the way, he can endorse the next one and then that's that, right? If they try to do it more forcefully, it can get very messy, very complicated, and they might fail, honestly. And so, you know, I think there's also a Quinnipiac poll that came out the day before the debate that showed Trump leading by four points, which is beyond the margin of error, you know, generally assumed. And so you see Trump, even despite his conviction a few weeks ago, pulling away, you saw Biden's performance. It's at the point now where the only thing that could save Biden's campaign is Trump going to jail, which is a, you know,

a real thing, not a conspiracy or conjecture at all. So we have a candidate who, whose own party has lost faith in his mental ability and we have a facing a candidate who is scheduled for jail later this year. So happy 2024, Dan. Casey, as the producer of this show likes to call me the season journalist, I've been through a number of presidential campaigns in my journalism career. This is just, I've never seen anything compare, even come close to comparing to this. The sitting president and the presumptive

Democratic nominee, huge questions about his age and his mental capacity. The other candidate, the former president, already convicted felon, faces several different felony charges and three different indictments. And here we are almost July of 2024 ahead of the November election, and there's uncertainty about the entire election process.

What's next? Yeah, what's next is a lot of backroom meetings among Democrats, a lot of congratulating among Republicans. But I think, you know, this may have been a – it could have been a kill shot too early for Republicans, because if Biden drops out now, it's very possible that Democrats could pull somebody else out of the wings, who's much better than Biden and a much stronger candidate and could beat Trump. And so it's kind of like, do you really want to fully take out Biden? Because wouldn't you rather face him in November, I think it's a good question. I don't want to give the illusion, though, that this is going to be easy or a sure thing replacing Biden.

I still think it's, you know, probably 50-50 that they're actually able to do that. But before last night, the idea of Democrats forcefully replacing Biden was something, was just an idea you might say, or it was something that maybe some conspiracy theorists would claim to have inside knowledge about. But now it's, it went from that, what a quote unquote, conspiracy theorist, whether they really are or not. It went from that to being mainstream talking point on CNN within 24 hours. I mean, the way that CNN panel railed and tried to end Biden's campaign as soon as the debate was over, and they created this cascade effect in the media, Politico saying he's toast, even in New York Times, is talking about,

how Biden, you know, fumbled the ball. And so when you have the elite liberal media coming against an incumbent Democratic president, it gives credence to this idea that there's at least going to be some conversations, maybe an attempt to replace Biden. There's certainly an attempt to ask him to step down to endorse someone else. I think Trump's going to keep steaming, steamrolling ahead and hope he gets lucky in the courts. But I can tell you for sure it's going be an interesting next couple of months. Casey, at the center square and here in American focus, we like to focus on, you know, policy issues.

But after Biden's performance, we've spent this entire segment not even talking about the economy and inflation, the looming border crisis, Roe v. Wade and abortion rights. It was just, it was such a questionable performance that, you know, that, you know, No one was even focusing on the issues. Yes, they talked about those issues last night. They were asked about inflation and the economy and border crisis and abortion and Trump's conviction and other things. But everyone was so hyper-focused on the president. It just seems like that discussion, that debate, was pushed aside. Closing comments, Casey. Yeah, I mean, he made the mistake that Trump usually makes.

Trump usually, instead of hitting the border, hitting the economy, he gets distracted and sidetracked to make. the story about himself. But actually, Biden made that mistake in this debate instead of talking about abortion, which is the issue he needed to hammer. He needed to win on the debates about Biden and his mental fitness. That's what the debate was about. And he lost on that count. He made the mistake Trump usually did. Trump was disciplined this time around. And we're walking in the fallout of it right now. Thank you for joining us today. Casey, listeners can keep up with the presidential election and more at the center square. com.