🇺🇸 ‘Biden is toast’ | Politico

🔶️ President Joe Biden opened the debate with a raspy voice and disjointed, rambling answers, reigniting Democratic concerns about his age and ability to take on former President Donald Trump.

🔶️ Many of the president’s answers were hard to follow. At one point, seemingly losing his train of thought, Biden said “we finally beat Medicare,” misspeaking about his own policy on earned benefits.

🔶️ In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over “What did he just say? This is crazy.”

🔶️ Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state, said, “Biden is toast — calling it now.”

🔶️ Biden’s rambling answers provided Trump multiple opportunities to jump in with retorts. At one point, after an answer ostensibly on immigration, Trump said, “I don’t know what he said at the end there. I don’t think he knows what he said.”

🔶️ The president’s performance was widely panned online and will likely reinforce the impression that he’s lost a step. The 81-year-old president’s age has long been a liability, with poll after poll showing even many Democrats concerned about his age.

🔶️ One prominent operative texted, “Time for an open convention.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/27/biden-debate-opening-concerns-00165595

🇺🇸 The first debate reinforced Biden’s biggest weakness | Washington Post

⬛️ President Biden’s advisers are probably hoping not many people watched the confrontation.

🔶️ Biden seemed tired. His voice was weak. He looked old — which he is, certainly, but which his team has insisted is not something that affects his ability to do the job. Perhaps it doesn’t, but in this debate, he also stumbled over his words, or, at times, failed to find the words he was looking for completely. When he offered arguments, they were often confused or confusing. His team noted that he has a cold, which might be the worst-timed cold in American political history.

🔶️ To put a fine point on it: Biden has very few opportunities to demonstrate to the public that his age is not a hindrance to what he wants to do, including this opportunity. He demonstrated the opposite.

🔶️ There’s no question that the issue of Biden’s age — as you no doubt know, he’s the oldest president in American history — is a central point of concern to voters. New York Times-Siena College polling released this week asked Americans whether they were concerned about the candidates’ age. Two-thirds said they were concerned about Biden’s age, with more than 4 in 10 saying they thought he was so old that he was incapable of serving as president. Only 1 in 5 said that about his opponent Donald Trump, most of them Democrats.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/27/biden-age-debate-performance/

https://archive.ph/Q8TvE

🇺🇸⚡️- CNN anchor Erin Burnett says that Biden "knows every one of these questions is coming" seemingly admitting that CNN gave Biden camp the debate questions beforehand.

🇺🇸 Trump: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he does either.”

📎 Auron Macintyre

🇦🇷🚨🏛🗳

Official Results of the vote in the Chamber of Deputies for the Bases Law Package of the General Law:

🟢: 147
🔴: 107

The Law Package 6 months in the waiting finally goes to the desk of Argentine President Javier G. Milei.

But I think this raises an important concern about Trump's seemingly inevitable march back into the White House. The two developments that radically changed his fortunes in 2023 are each a double edged sword.

The series of indictments against Trump transformed him into a powerful martyr figure, but they have also left him politically and financially vulnerable. Without the presidency and without an unlimited glut of cash, Trump faces bankruptcy and possibly house arrest for the rest of his life. This is an all or nothing scenario where he must win by any means necessary, and that makes him politically dependent on Republicans and financially dependent on donors.

The cardinal rule in Art of the Deal is that you must be willing to walk away from the table and in this case that is not an option. Did the indictments substantially harden the resolve of the base? Or did they make Trump more pliable to powerful interests? I think this is a fair question, and it always is when serious indictments are brought.

On the second point, Jewish donors have flocked to Trump owing largely to the impact of the October 7th attack on the Jewish consciousness. Not only Israel but all of World Jewry was pushed far to the right seeing Israel imperiled on October 7th. This was the first time Israel has faced such an existential threat since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago which produced generations of neocon Jews.

So yes Trump gained very powerful allies like the reliably Republican Miriam Adelson and also from lifelong Democrat Jews like Jacob Helberg from Silicon Valley and like Bill Ackman from Wall Street. But their resources are not unconditional. And suddenly the Trump campaign becomes the one that is backed by billionaires, foreign governments, security contractors, and big business.

It certainly doesn't alleviate these concerns to see Trump roll out a new agenda based on drilling oil, deepening the Paul Ryan tax cuts, and stapling greencards to diplomas.

So the question becomes— what is this all for? When Trump wins in 2024 will his MAGA revolution have conquered the system, or will the system have conquered the MAGA revolution?

If Trump wins and serves his full term, the MAGA Revolution will have spanned 14 years from his announcement in June 2015 to the inauguration of a new president in January 2029. Will the Trump movement have been transformational and changed the trajectory of America on the three foundational issues that he ran on in 2016, which are trade, immigration, and foreign wars? Or— did the Trump movement merely re-legitimize the same uniparty consensus by leading the disaffected on a dramatic adventure right back to where we started?

I do believe the Trump movement has led to a course correction maybe most notably on trade and political correctness, but it seems that the foreign wars and immigration are worse than ever. Those will be what define the second term and to what extent Trumpism was a success. And if Yoram Hazony and Bill Ackamn have any sway over the hiring... it isn't looking good.

Regardless, we must begin to think ahead to the battle within the Trump administration to restrict immigration, protect free speech online, and fight for independence from Israel. And then beyond to the post-Trump period when Christian and White identity may be at the forefront of the political struggle.