Resurfaced clip exposes tragic Biden reality
Resurfaced footage of Joe Biden during the 2012 vice-presidential debate has underscored the stark change in the 81-year-old.
Resurfaced footage of Joe Biden during the 2012 vice-presidential debate has underscored the stark change in the 81-year-old over the past 12 years.
Amid reports on Sunday that the President was meeting with his family to discuss his candidacy following his poor debate performance last week, a video of Mr Biden’s fiery showdown with Paul Ryan during Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has gone viral with nearly 11 million views on X.
In the clip, shared by pollster Frank Luntz, an energetic then-Vice President is aggressively attacking Republicans’ tax proposals, firing off statistics and citing studies in rapid-fire succession.
“Not mathematically possible!” he retorts after Mr Ryan insists Republicans’ proposals are viable.
“Man, 12 years sure does make a difference,” one user on X wrote, while another commented it “doesn’t even seem like the same person”.
Mr Biden, then 69, was widely viewed as having trounced Mitt Romney’s 42-year-old running mate with his smirking, sneering performance.
“By the end of the evening, Joltin’ Joe had done real damage to his opponent,” Politico’s chief political columnist Roger Simon wrote at the time.
“In fact, as the 90 minutes flew by — it was the rare debate where one actually wanted it to go longer — Ryan began looking younger and younger. And not in a good way.”
By contrast, Mr Biden’s disastrous showing against Donald Trump in last Thursday’s debate saw the President often hesitate, trip over words and even lose his train of thought at one point, highlighting concerns about his age.
Joe Biden in 2019 vs. 2024: pic.twitter.com/qo641DgWaZ
— Global Press (@GlobalPressCorp) June 30, 2024
Similar clips shared online have compared Mr Biden’s performance on Thursday with debates as recently as 2019 and 2020.
Prior to last week’s CNN debate in Atlanta, Mr Trump had changed his tune and appeared more wary going in.
After previously claiming the President “can’t put two sentences together”, Mr Trump said in a podcast interview published on Thursday that he had watched Mr Biden’s 2012 vice-presidential debate and appreciated his rival’s abilities.
“He beat Paul Ryan pretty badly,” Mr Trump told the All-In Podcast. “And I assume he’s going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater. I would say I don’t want to underestimate him.”
But Mr Biden’s halting debate performance has sparked renewed concerns among Democratic supporters about his mental fitness and even calls from party insiders and media figures for him to stand aside.
Publicly, Democratic leaders have rallied behind the President and the White House denied reports he was meeting with family at Camp David to discuss his future.
No major party figures have broken ranks to call for Mr Biden to step down, with prominent Democrats including past presidents Obama and Bill Clinton voicing full-throated support amid a torrent of doubts from everyday Americans — and even a call from The New York Times editorial board to move aside.
“It’s not about performance in terms of a debate, it’s about performance in a presidency,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
On “one side of the screen, you have integrity, the other side you have dishonesty”, she said, echoing a number of party figures attempting to shift the focus from what they say was Mr Biden’s unfortunate performance to the barrage of lies that came from Mr Trump during the debate.
According to a CBS News poll conducted in the two days following the debate, nearly three-quarters of registered voters now believe Mr Biden should not be running for president, including 46 per cent of Democrats.
Mr Biden and his family travelled to the Camp David presidential retreat late on Saturday, where NBC News reported he was expected to assess the future of his re-election campaign following his performance.
White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, however, posted on X that the trip had been planned since before the debate, questioning the publication and claiming it had failed to ask for comment on the matter.
The Biden campaign has meanwhile reported that it has raised $US33 million ($49 million) since the debate, including $US26 million ($39 million) from grassroots donors.
Mr Biden should “absolutely not” drop out of the race, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
“It’s our assignment to make sure that he gets over the finish line come November,” he said. “Not for his sake but the country’s sake.”
On Friday, Mr Biden attempted to tamp down the nay-saying with a fiery campaign speech in North Carolina in which he pledged to keep fighting.
He appeared alongside his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, who has fiercely defended her husband amid calls for him to step aside.
“On that campaign stage in North Carolina, I saw a forceful, engaged and capable Joe Biden,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons, from Biden’s home state of Delaware, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
“I think it was a weak debate performance by President Biden,” Mr Coons said, adding that nonetheless “side-by-side, Donald Trump had a horrifying debate performance where, yes, he spoke plainly, but what he said was lie after lie after lie”.
Mr Biden, he added, is “the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump”.
— with AFP
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