(C) Arizona Mirror This story was originally published by Arizona Mirror and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Biden may be irreparably damaged by his debate debacle [1] ['James E. Garcia', 'Darrell Ehrlick Daily Montanan', 'Emil H. Frankel', 'More From Author', 'June', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Date: 2024-06-28 What may end up being the only presidential debate between President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump in the 2024 election cycle is over — and it was, by almost every measure, an absolute debacle for everyone involved. Here are my three biggest takeaways. Let’s start with the elephant in the room. President Biden failed last night to do the most important job he has as the standard bearer of his party as the leader of the free world: to instill confidence in the American people. As someone who’s insisted that Biden’s 81 years on this planet should not be an automatic disqualifier, I could reach only one conclusion after last night’s performance: The president must step aside as the nation’s chief executive and as his party’s presumptive nominee before the Democratic convention in August. Ageism is a real thing. Too many people are cast aside by our youth-obsessed society well before their time. But aging is also real. I know intellectually sharp and vigorous 90-year-olds, but what I saw during the debate was a good and decent human being with decades of experience struggling desperately to keep up. Maybe the president just had a bad day. It happens to the best of us. But the damage is done, and no amount of spending on campaign ads between now and November can fix it. Those who watched the debate witnessed a once vibrant leader cross past his prime. Those who did not see it will soon be bombarded with ads, memes and viral videos displaying the worst of Biden’s gaffes and stumbles. I don’t blame the president. He’s human. His heart is in the right place, and he knows better than most the danger that Trump poses. But it’s time now for Kamala Harris to assume the helm. She is more than capable, well prepared, and, most importantly, the nation now needs her. Biden was the right person for the job in 2020, after the shameful catastrophe that was the Trump administration, but now he needs to do the right thing and resign. The lying liar lied and lied and lied As for Trump? While appearing physically capable, the lies he told last night were endless, egregious and often dangerous. Don’t believe me. Look it up. Several major independent news organizations, including the Associated Press, fact-checked both of the candidates. Trump’s false claims were too many to list here, but among the most reprehensible included his statement that he never said there were “good people on both sides” in describing the clashes sparked by a white supremacist march and rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. A young woman died at the hands of a racist, neo-Nazi sympathizer in Charlottesville, making Trump’s claim downright cruel. Trump also lied when he said “18 million, many from prisons, many from mental institutions…” have been allowed to cross the U.S.-Mexico border by Biden “to come into our country and destroy our country” over the past three years. Trump was referring to the record number of migrants, including hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, who’ve come to the U.S. undocumented in recent years. First, 18 million migrants have not entered the U.S. since Biden took office. That is false. Next, very few of those migrants were criminals or mentally ill (and what does it say about Trump that he often groups them altogether?). To cast most migrants as a threat is not only false but it places them in danger by instilling fear in Americans about who’s coming across our borders. According to the Associated Press, “There is no evidence that foreign governments are emptying their jails or mental asylums as Trump says…and the latest FBI statistics show overall violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.” Plus, repeated “studies have also found that people living in the country illegally are far less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes.” Migrants are also not destroying our country. In the wake of the worst pandemic in a century, the U.S. has made a remarkable economic recovery. The unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in 50 years. Wages are up. The stock market (Trump’s measure of choice) is booming. Inflation is still too high, but it’s been cut by about 60% over the past year and is still dropping. Migrants are filling jobs that most Americans don’t want to do, jobs that there aren’t enough U.S. workers to fill — and most business owners and economists are thrilled to have them because not filling those jobs would cripple their companies and our economy. Immigration is good for America, and now more than ever, given our aging workforce. Trump lied almost nonstop during the debate, and the American people should not stand for it. Do we really want a compulsive liar to lead our nation? Of course not. No more than we would want our bosses or parents or even our neighbors to be compulsive liars. We deserve better. We deserve leadership that tells us the truth, even when we don’t want to hear it. If you need to be reminded about how dangerous it is to have a president who lies incessantly, consider the pandemic. More than 1 million or our friends, fathers, mothers, children and grandparents died during the pandemic, including potentially thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who’d be alive today had President Trump simply told the truth about the danger that COVID-19 posed. He lied repeatedly about the threat, often telling us the virus would soon vanish “like magic.” It didn’t. What vanished instead were the thousands of human lives that could have been saved. Amplifying Trump’s lies through pathetic silence Finally, I can’t end this piece without sharing how disgusted I was by the role the two so-called moderators, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, played in last night’s debate. A fundamental tenet of journalism is that you do not knowingly disseminate false information. If you interview someone who tells you a lie, you either don’t report what they said, or you show your audience why it’s a lie and why that lie matters. Bash and Tapper might as well have been mannequins equipped with tape recordings of last night’s questions. Their behavior was embarrassing. When Trump or Biden said something that was clearly false, Bash and Tapper should have called them on it. End of story. Yes, Biden made misstatements that deserved to be corrected as well, but Trump’s repeated, sunstative and often malicious lies needed to be challenged. “But, James, that would have taken all night!” So? That’s our job as journalists. And that’s what Bash and Tapper should have done, instead of allowing lie after lie to be spread unchecked to tens of millions of television and online views in real time. Journalists are America’s watch dogs. That’s why a free press exists. The only thing Bash and Tapper did last night was watch the train-wreck that is Donald J. Trump spew lie after lie after lie unchecked in his never ending quest to convince the world that he’s anything but what he truly is: the world’s most dangerous man and the greatest threat to democracy in our nation’s history. It’s time, or else we might be out of time A second debate between Trump and Biden is said to be in the works. If it happens, count on Trump, emboldened by his win last night, to be there, ready to spew more lies. But the Democrats need to rethink who will stand against him from here on out, including in November, by convincing Biden to resign and allowing the vice president to take his place. Biden’s time has passed. Harris’ time has come. And the future of our democracy hangs in the balance. [END] --- [1] Url: https://azmirror.com/2024/06/28/biden-may-be-irreparably-damaged-by-his-debate-debacle/ Published and (C) by Arizona Mirror Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/azmirror/