Former President Bill Clinton once said that Americans prefer “strong and wrong” over “weak and right.” If he’s correct, a majority of his fellow citizens will have settled for former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden in Thursday night’s presidential debate on CNN. Biden’s voice was not only hoarse, but also feeble, meek, and sometimes unintelligible, his performance leading to panic among senior Democratic officials.
Trump acquitted himself as he often does. A post-debate fact-check on CNN found that the former president made more than 30 false assertions on a variety of topics, from Russia to tariffs and abortion rights. But Biden’s performance was so starkly worrying that the question of his ability to serve for four more years has dominated headlines.
How is the rest of the world processing a disappointing debate for Biden?
“Horror,” said Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’ chief international commentator, speaking on FP Live from London. “Within five minutes, I was cringing. I wasn’t alone in that reaction. Biden kept losing his thread and misspeaking. He sounded hoarse. He looked vacant when the camera wasn’t on him. Of course, he made some good points, but for the president of the United States, the bar has to be much higher than that.”
“Europeans are absolutely terrified,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, the director of the U.S. and Americas program at Chatham House. “They talk about trying to Trump-proof Europe, certainly in the context of a land war in Europe, but really have very few mechanisms to do that. So when they look at Trump saying that he would solve the war in Ukraine before he was inaugurated, that Europe is not doing enough, prevaricating on whether Palestinians should have a state, all of these things are just deeply worrying.”
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