Daily Tribune‘I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to’
United States President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden step off Air Force One upon arrival at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach, New York to attend campaign fundraisers.
MANDEL NGAN/agence france-presse
A fired-up Joe Biden came out swinging as he tried to make up for a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, insisting he was the right man to win November’s US presidential election.
Biden’s appearance at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina came amid rumblings in his alarmed Democratic Party about replacing the 81-year-old as their nominee — and shortly before the nation’s most influential newspaper urged him to step aside.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden admitted to supporters in unusually confessional remarks.
“But I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job,” he said to huge cheers, vowing “when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
Biden’s team was in damage-control mode after Thursday’s debate when he often hesitated, tripped over words and lost his train of thought — exacerbating fears about his ability to serve another term.
He had hoped to allay qualms about his advanced age, and to expose Trump as a habitual liar.
But the president failed to counter his bombastic rival, who offered up a largely unchallenged reel of false or misleading statements about everything from the economy to immigration.
On Friday, Biden delivered the lines Democrats wished they had heard in the televised debate.
“Did you see Trump last night? My guess is he set — and I mean this sincerely — a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.
“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat for everything America stands for.”
Trump also returned to the campaign trail Friday, speaking at a rally in Virginia and launching his familiar attacks on Biden in a rambling speech.
“It’s not his age, it’s his competence,” Trump said.
“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden.”
Trump addressed the chances of Biden being replaced by another candidate, saying “I don’t really believe that because he does better in polls than any of the (other) Democrats.”
So far, no senior Democratic figure has publicly called on Biden to withdraw, with most toeing a party line about sticking with the existing ticket.
“I will never turn my back on President Biden,” California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has figured prominently on lists of possible replacement candidates, said immediately after the debate.
