The Bee:

Politco:

Dems freak out over Biden's debate performance: 'Biden is toast'

One prominent operative texted, "Time for an open convention."

Really?

That surprises me, that really surprises me, because the Lying Media's claim for the past two weeks has been that all videos showing Biden wandering or stiffly trying to sit down when all other dignitaries knew to stand were just "cheap fakes."

CBS told me so. They deleted a video of Biden wandering and posted instead a note saying it was fake.

But now the Lying Press is telling me, all that was real?

Is the media once again just going to pretend it wasn't caught outrageously lying to aid the Democrat Party?

That's one of those rhetorical questions. Of course they'll lie. It's literally all the do.

The Gaslight Media does nothing but gaslight the public, often with psyops cooked up by their communist anti-American partners in the treasonous and, I dare say, delightfully prosecutable "Intelligence Community."

President Joe Biden opened the debate with a raspy voice and disjointed, rambling answers, reigniting Democratic concerns about his age and ability to take on former President Donald Trump.

Many of the president's answers were hard to follow. At one point, seemingly losing his train of thought, Biden said "we finally beat Medicare," misspeaking about his own policy on earned benefits.

In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it "terrible," adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over "What did he just say? This is crazy."

Another veteran Democratic operative texted, "Biden seems to have needed a few minutes to warm up. I wonder if the lack of an audience was the right decision. And poor guy needs a tea. Maybe a whiskey."

Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign in the state, said, "Biden is toast -- calling it now."

Biden's rambling answers provided Trump multiple opportunities to jump in with retorts. At one point, after an answer ostensibly on immigration, Trump said, "I don't know what he said at the end there. I don't think he knows what he said."

A commenter said, about an hour in, that the excuse that would be proffered is that Biden had a cold.

I immediately, vigorously endorsed that speculation.

It was correct -- and even Politico is throwing doubts at Biden's camp for making this claim only after the debate.

A person familiar with Biden's health claimed that his performance is due to a cold. But the president's team hadn't mentioned that to reporters until Biden began to answer questions in the debate.

MSNBC is all-in on that lie, and saying the Real Villains Here were the White House staffers who failed to set expectations lower by telling us about his non-existent cold.

Another Politico article quotes Democrat donors daydreaming wistfully about Joe Biden's death.

'WTF': Panicked Dems start looking for alternatives to Biden

Three strategists close to three potential Democratic presidential candidates said they were bombarded with text messages.

Democrats are so panicked over President Joe Biden's faltering debate performance some are actively discussing what was once unspeakable: replacing him on the ticket.

Three strategists close to three potential Democratic presidential candidates said they had been bombarded with text messages throughout the debate. One adviser said they received pleas for their candidate to step forward as an alternative to Biden.

Another adviser said they had "taken no less than half a dozen key donors texting 'disaster' and [the] party needs to do something," but acknowledged that "not much is possible unless" Biden steps aside.

They were among more than a dozen Democrats who spoke with POLITICO, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely.

One major Democratic donor and Biden supporter said it was time for the president to end his campaign. This person described Biden's night as "the worst performance in history" and said Biden was so "bad that no one will pay attention to Trump's lies."

"Biden needs to drop out. No question about it," the donor said in a text message, proposing an alternate ticket led by the governors of Maryland and Michigan.
Biden stumbles, rambles at first presidential debate beside Trump

...

Biden struggled throughout much of the debate, the first 2024 general election matchup between the president and former President Donald Trump. The 81-year-old president has long faced questions about his fitness for office, and the debate -- the earliest general election matchup of its kind in modern political history -- had been a gambit by the Biden campaign to reset the narrative around the race.

For weeks, Democrats had hoped a strong performance by Biden in the debate could ease concerns about his age. Instead, it did the opposite.

...

The pleas from within the party, while unlikely to actually result in a change atop the ticket, reflect a major turn in the campaign. Incumbent presidents have traditionally underperformed during their first debates -- inundated by the demands of the job and often unable to dedicate serious time to preparation. But Thursday's debate was unique in that it affirmed an existing preconception of Biden among many voters as a candidate past his sell-by date.

One adviser to major Democratic Party donors said they were texting from a meeting of donors in Atlanta on Thursday night, some writing "wtf."

"Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or dies," the donor adviser said. "Otherwise we are fucking dead."

Nonetheless, the likelihood of a brokered convention or Biden stepping aside are unlikely, a reality that even those who privately complained about Biden's performance acknowledged.

"Only one guy can decide, and it's him," said one Democratic strategist.

Chuck Todd admits the "conservative media" was telling the truth when we said Biden was too old to do the job as president. But he fails to admit he and the other Gaslight Media propagandists lied. He's pretending they just didn't know.

Ben Shapiro
@benshapiro

The real question you should be asking tonight is why the entire media and Democratic Party have been obviously lying to you for years about Joe Biden's mental incapacity.

Yes that's my point, Ben. Stop copying my homework. (This whole post was written at 11:20 pm last night.) My fren Erielle Azarad:

Erielle Azerrad
@politicalelle

Americans should be very angry that Biden's entire administration hid this decline for so long. They've put our nation at risk in so many ways. Enraging. Now we know why Garland has been hiding the tapes. Maddening. They all knew. Every single one.

Not just the administration -- every reporter in DC knew about this and concealed it from their readers/viewers.

Marina Medvin
@MarinaMedvin

They didn't just actively conceal it -- Biden's team and the entire Democratic Party actively, aggressively, and intentionally deceived the nation about his mental state. They ran cover for him just days ago. It was nonstop propaganda. Absolute fraud upon the nation.

Yes but, let's be serious, their job is to lie to voters. What's Jake Tapper's excuse? What's CBS' excuse for lying about videos being "cheap fakes"? THEY ALL KNEW. THEY LIED, AND LIED, AND LIED, AND LIED. And, as usual, they smeared anyone telling the truth.

GregGutfeld
@greggutfeld

This is officially the longest most elaborate cheap fake in history

That's the only theory that makes sense to me, too.
Isn't she a peach?

Mark Hemingway
@Heminator

MSNBC's Jen Psaki, a former Biden employee, literally just asked Newsom what influencers online should say to show their support for Biden.

#GreatMomentsInJournalism

Jen Rubin holds out hope that "the voters" didn't see it the same way that smart TV pundits like she did.

ennifer "Trump Convicted Felon" Rubin
@JRubinBlogger

Maybe ordinary voters simply dont think and analyze like tv pundits. Might explain a lot

Inhale the medical-grade copium, Jen! I don't mean about Biden, I mean about your conceit that you are superior in intelligence to anyone in America. As you know, the White House's big way to change impressions is deploy their Ultimate Communicator, Kamala Harris, to convince people they didn't see what they saw. She's spinning that he "started slow" but "finished strong." The play is to hope that most people tuned out after a half-hour (I almost did), and to concede that yes, he did do badly in the half hour you saw, but in the hour you didn't watch, Joe Biden did great! Because they didn't see it, you can maybe, kinda convince them. If you were someone who didn't have a Charisma score of 4, like Kamala Harris. Here Harris melts down under questioning from... um, Democrat hack and Nepo Baby Anderson Cooper.

Mark Levin
@marklevinshow

Jill Biden, the White House staff, the media, congressional Democrats tried to fool the American people and don�t give a damn about the country.

Yes, of course!

Rich Lowry
@RichLowry

Democrats and much of the left-of-center media had the alternative of not lying about Biden's mental and physical state and doing something about it in time to avoid a debacle--but this the path they chose

So obvious that even a National Review editor understands it. This guy has a comment that I certainly cannot repeat.>
Biden had to be, get this, gently led off the stage by his nursewife. And CNN kept the camera on Biden as he was led off, almost as if they were in on the Op. Ex-CNN Thumb Chris Cillizza is sad! Video of the Thumb here. I've said several times that I want Trump to beat Biden, but to beat him in a way that Biden still seems viable as a candidate. He needs to keep it close. Make it look winnable for Biden.

Because the moment Trump jumps out to a six point lead, that's it, they get out the hook and pull Shanghai Joe off the stage.

Alas, last night, Biden imploded. Trump was pretty good for Trump -- he looked cool, kept his cool, and pounded his message. He did fail to really finish off some punches. He often starts making a good point, but then gets distracted by another thought that drifts into his head, and winds up barely making two points instead of really making one single point, strong and powerful and with good follow-through. But the real problem was Biden. He failed me. He failed me by not projecting the Illusion of Viability. His "Talking Pills" -- the medical grade cocaine, the amphetamines, whatever cocktail they give him -- did not work. He needs so much of the stuff now that they are literally flirting with the charge of murdering the president of the United States if they give him a dose big enough to try to make him appear coherent for 90 minutes. So I think this part of the campaign is over. Trump is already four points ahead (that the leftwing pollsters will confess to). He will surge by another 2-4 points and that is a wrap for Biden. The Democrats aren't even waiting for the polls. They can't wait to take Middle-Class Joe out to the pond and tell him about rabbits and eating off the fat of the land.
Of Mice and Middle-Class Joe:
The next phase is picking out a new candidate, and then we'll have to restart the campaign with Trump taking on some other Democrat, probably Gavin Newsom. And of course a lot of judges will set aside state laws to order Newsom's name on to ballots. The Torricelli Option again. They did in New Jersey, they'll do it almost all of the states. We might even have the Supreme Court weigh in, with Amy Coney Barrett writing the opinion which Kavanaugh, Roberts, and their three liberal colleagues declaring that the Democrats must have a do-over.

L A R R Y
@LarryOConnor

Kinda funny to watch the "Trump is a threat to Democracy" crowd openly strategize how to thwart the will of every Democrat who voted in the primaries by engineering a coup at the convention and placing a candidate on the ticket without a single person casting a vote.

Ben Shapiro: "Biden is staring into the afterlife.... It was his resting death-is-upon me face. It's the look that you give at 3am when the Grim Reaper is at the door with a scythe." He pronouces it "sith" with a short i. It's ScIthe, with a long I. But the point stands. And he says the wrong th sound. Did you know there are two th sounds? One is "voiced" -- your vocal cords vibrate -- and one is unvoiced. The voiced th is in mother, the unvoiced is in moth. It's like the difference between "s" and "z" -- they're the same sound, mostly, except the s is unvoiced, and the z is voiced, with your vocal cords vibrating like Kamala Harris's electric friend Nigel. For those saying last night was a "set-up" of Biden, I agree. There was that guy I wrote about who suggested this, but I poo-pooed it because Biden would not agree to an early debate just to give the Democrat Party the ammunition to dump him. But I do now believe they snookered Shanghai Joe, telling him that he had to debate to "reassure the donors" but secretly planning to use the outcome of the debate -- which, knowing Joe's condition better that voters do, they knew would be a disaster -- to then force him to drop out of the race. Was that why Tapper and Bash were (relatively) unobtrusive in the debate? Did they know the plan was to let Joe sink or swim under his own steam so that the party would have enough time to coalesce behind another candidate, and get Democrat judges ready to throw out state ballot laws to force Newsom's name on to the ballots? Maybe! I will say that Trump did himself a lot of good last night. His personality -- the blustering, the anger, the self-pity -- has always been his downfall. But last night he was calm and cool and coherent. Though he still needs to learn to follow through on a punch. Just weakly throwing one and then changing his mind and throwing a different one is still a problem. But Trump kept the unappealing parts of his personality in check last night and gave a performance worthy of a president. If Trump can get his personality problem under control, it won't matter much who the Democrats nominate as their Double Secret Probation Candidate.