At a rally in North Carolina on Friday, the president said Joe Biden brought the energy Democrats were hoping to see during Thursday night’s disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump.
Speaking in a clear, booming voice over a crowd of supporters, Biden acknowledged the elephant in the room: His stumbling debate performance had unsettled voters, many of whom were already concerned about his age and cognitive health, and caused mass panic in his party.
“I know I’m not a young man anymore,” said Biden, 81. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as fluently as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I know: I know how to tell the truth. I know what is right and wrong. I know how to do this job.
It was the clearest admission of failure that Biden’s supporters could wish for.
“I know, like many Americans, that when you get knocked down, you get back up,” the president said.
Biden also reiterated what many of his surrogates emphasized Thursday night — that Americans should be more concerned that Trump’s debate performance was full of outright lies about his record on crime, the economy and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol.
“I think he — and I mean this sincerely — set a new record for most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.
“His biggest lie – he lied about the fact that he had nothing to do with the January 6 insurrection,” Biden continued. “We all saw it with our own eyes. We watched it on television. We saw thousands, at his direction, attack the Capitol.”
But it will likely take more than one energetic meeting to assuage concerns raised by the debate, which took place in a closed studio without the usual live audience. Biden will get another chance to debate Trump on Sept. 10 in an event hosted by ABC News, which has not yet released details about the event’s rules, location, staging and format.
Midway through Thursday’s debate, Biden campaign spokespeople told reporters that the president was recovering from a cold.
Experts expressed serious concerns about Biden’s electoral chances after the debate, with several speculating about the possibility that he would withdraw. Vice President Kamala Harris clashed with an alarmed Anderson Cooper on his CNN show on Thursday.
“I mean, you can’t honestly say — I mean, can you say you’re not worried at all after watching the president’s performance tonight?” Cooper asked Harris.
“It was a slow start,” Harris acknowledged. “That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that. I’m talking about the choice in November, about one of the most important elections in our collective lives.”
