The president said he was ready. He sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, a friendly interview with a longtime Clinton operative. It was supposed to be the grand slam of this media rehabilitation tour that’s quickly spiraling out of control as Biden’s age, which is unfixable, continues to show itself. The interview was only 22 minutes.
Biden didn’t do enough to quiet his detractors, worried that the aging president is going to wipe out Democrats in November, which is a real possibility, but also didn’t give the ‘dump Biden’ crowd the ammunition it needed to deliver the slam-dunk case to push the president out. It’s political purgatory at its finest, with the media also not buying the president’s spin that he’s going to beat Donald Trump, that this race is neck-and-neck, and his nightmare debate with Trump on June 27, which is looking like an election-killing spectacle, was due to a bad cold.
The Associated Press’ headline was not confident-inducing: “Biden faced a low bar in his first post-debate interview. It’s not certain he cleared it.”
Biden performed better than he did on the debate stage. There were also flashes of strength as the president talked up his record, vowed not to leave the race and took shots at Donald Trump, whom he repeatedly described as a “pathological liar.” Biden also referred to Trump at one point as a “congenital liar.”
But he needed to do much more than clear the incredibly low bar he set on national television last week. And the ABC interview had several examples of awkward pauses, garbled words and moments where he meandered.
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