On Friday, US President Joe Biden attended a Democratic rally in Raleigh, the capital of the US state of North Carolina, where he said he wants to beat Donald Trump, the leading candidate of the Republican Party, in the next presidential election.
It was Biden’s first public statement after the debate with Trump which aired on network television CNN on the night between Thursday and Friday, in which he had often stuttered and had not always seemed ready or lucid. For this reason, after the confrontation – which had been judged “a disaster” – there had been renewed discussion of a hypothesis that until now had been considered remote: that is, that Biden could be replaced as the Democratic Party’s candidate.
During the rally, Biden appeared decidedly more energetic and confident than the evening before: he tried to reduce or erase skepticism about his physical and mental fitness and to unite Democratic voters, thus dispelling rumors relating to his possible replacement for the elections in November.
“I know I’m not young, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t talk as fluently as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know how to tell the truth, and I know how to do this job,” he said of his disappointing debate performance with Trump. He added:
“I wouldn’t run for office again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I could do this job. The stakes are too high.”
Biden also addressed the many falsehoods Trump had told during the debate: “He set, and I say this sincerely, a new record for the most lies ever told in a single debate.” He also referenced the January 6, 2021, storming of Congress and the Republican nominee’s criminal conviction in New York, topics he had only touched on in passing the night before.
“I thought to myself, Donald Trump is not just a convicted felon. Donald Trump is a crime wave in one man.”
In yesterday’s debate, Biden had tried to attack Trump on the many issues that concern him, such as abortion rights and the assault on Congress on January 6, 2021, but was ineffective and often lost the thread of the discussion.
Two of the moments in which Biden seemed most confused were at the beginning of the debate, when he spoke in a disorganized way about policies to limit immigration from the southern border with Mexico, allowing Trump to comment «I don’t know what he said and I don’t I don’t think he knows either” and when he tried to explain his results on healthcare, listing a series of numbers, getting confused and blocked.
– Read also: The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in five videos
As his time was running out, he closed with “we defeated Medicare,” the public health program for seniors (he probably meant “we defeated Covid”). Trump obviously took advantage of this: “You’re right, you hit it and sunk it.”
The second and final debate between Biden and Trump is scheduled to be held on September 10, organized by ABC News. In all of this, the sentence that Trump will have to serve will be made known at the beginning of July, then the Republican convention will begin. The Democratic convention, which currently should therefore ratify Biden’s choice as the party’s candidate, will instead be held in August in Chicago.
