It’s a good reminder that the German word for “embarrassing”, peinlich, literally means “painful” (like its Dutch cognate pijnlijk which in modern German is Schmerzlich).
I didn’t watch the Trump-Biden debate in part for personal reasons: if you’ve ever lost a parent to dementia, this performance would have been acutely peinlich as well to watch, not funny. And sportsmanship? Shooting fish in a barrel is not a spectator sport either, nor is clubbing baby seals.
The Babylon Bee has the inside scoop on Trump’s debate prep. Vodkapundit drunk-blogged the debate so we wouldn’t have to.
If I had to do a quick & dirty summary, this would be it.
Trump spent most of the night reminding us that things weren’t always this bad, and we had three pretty damn good years on his watch.
Biden?
Biden was “Old man tried to whisper at cloud but mostly failed.”
If Team Biden was hoping to lure Trump into a repeat of his lousy 2020 debate performance, it didn’t work. If they were hoping to “Let Joe be Joe,” it did work. Just not in the way they intended.
Now let’s see some reactions from Abu Hunter’s nominal political allies in the DNCMSM:
Okay, but now hear me out. It’s easy to ascribe this to clueless and out-of-touch advisors in a cognitive bubble thinking this was a good idea. [Or, as another conspiracy theory goes: the fix is already in, and they are so confident they can ballot-stuff and cheat their way to victory that they don’t even care.]
But what if this were all a controlled demolition? Give Abu Hunter and “Dr. [demiculo] Jill Biden” what they want and let them dig their own political grave onstage. Note that the abnormally early debate is happening before the official nomination at the DNC Convention — leaving the option of an eleventh-hour substitution. Moochelle? Gavin Nuisance? Gretchen the Whitless? Low-information voters might go for any one of these — all of whom represent more youthful and mediagenic versions of the same suckage — if the alternative is Trump.
But that plan could not work as long as Abu Hunter and “Dr.” demiculo kept insisting he was running because he had the nomination votes sowed up. So on to Plan B: let him so comprehensively embarrass himself on live TV that the pressure to bow out — or worse, be forcibly replaced at the Convention under whatever rigged rules — will become irresistible.
My betting money is on: “controlled demolition”.
PS: I would not be surprised if the DNC-MSM would no longer put a lid on embarrassing stories about Hunter Biden’s drug use and influence peddling, about Ashley Biden’s diary detailing bizarre borderline-incestuous behavior, and the like.
Some people will blame the Mossad, or contrariwise the pro-HamaSS wing of the [anti-]Democratic Party, for bringing down Biden. The truth, I believe, is much more prosaic: things on the ground have gotten so bad that even the best efforts of a propaganda apparatus that would make the Pravda blush are failing, and not even the most careful stage management can project Biden as up to the job anymore.
ADDENDUM: from mrs. Arbel:
Spin, strangeness, and charm 
Irresistible pressure? I’m not sure there is such a thing in this case.
The only one with the power to force Joe to step down from the Presidency is Joe – well, practically speaking, Dr Jill. And she will. not. do. it. (Out of mercy for Joe? If she had any trace of that, would he have been on TV for 90 minutes last night?)
And the only ones with the power to ditch Joe as the candidate this fall are the several hundred members of the Democratic National Committee, who could if they wished cancel the “Zoom early nomination” plan and make clear to the Democratic Convention delegates they can vote for anyone they like. Only the current DNC is hugely beholden to the current White House, which is run by, you guessed it, Dr Jill. And she still won’t do it. (Well, maybe if offered pardons for the whole family, plus a hundred-million-in-a-Swiss-bank “pension”? After all she has a lifestyle to maintain now. And a LOT of leverage. So, maybe. Maybe she might take that as a reasonable opening offer?)
So absent a mass revolt by the DNC (or by the VP, Cabinet, then 2/3rds of both Houses of Congress to make the 25th stick) it’s President Joe Biden right through to next January 20th. (And possibly beyond, if they can pay for enough Cheat ballots.)
Interesting times.
I see I wasn’t the only person to think of this as elder abuse. Something that I find deeply ironic is the Brandon signed a proclamation about elder abuse 2 weeks ago as I note in my substack about the debate
I also note in that post that the dems have very limited time to replace Brandon on the ticket. In fact in some states they may have already missed the deadline. Thus I’m not entirely sure that this was a controlled demolition
My take, it was a too-clever-by-half miscalculation by Biden’s campaign. (By Biden himself? The decision does have that classic arrogant-midwit Biden-blunder flavor.) They thought to offer Trump a “debate” he’d refuse because of unacceptably one-sided conditions, so that after negotiations broke down they could campaign on “Trump’s afraid to debate!” Trump looked at the conditions, looked at Biden, decided (correctly) he could win regardless, and called their bluff – accepted their offer as-is. No way they could back out at that point.
After watching the debate, I suspect what compounded the Biden campaign’s error is that the CNN moderators then saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to play things close enough to straight they wouldn’t be placing their future Trump White House access at risk. So, leaked questions, biased questions, some attempts to bail Biden out of cul de sacs he’d wandered into, but no Candy-Crowley blatant tilt to the playing field. So there Biden was, one-on-one with Donald Trump on national TV for 90 minutes. Oops!