While everyone is understandably focused on Democrat President Joe Biden’s complete disaster of a performance in Thursday evening’s debate, gone missing in the post-debate analysis is just how effective his Republican opponent former President Donald Trump was in his own showing.
Trump, from the get-go, had a clear message he hammered Biden with all night: That Biden “has done a poor job” as President and life was better for Americans during Trump’s administration. And from the first few minutes of it, Trump had effectively framed the conversation on terms that were his: the discussion was about the economy, and Trump inserted into that talk of Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan and Biden’s open borders immigration policies. But even when the debate and conversation moved into areas that are typically Democrat strengths and GOP weaknesses, Trump swatted away concerns and moved deftly through a coherent policy vision while Biden struggled to score points on things like abortion and January 6 and the various hoaxes against Trump over the years.
The debate opened on the biggest issue facing the country—the economy—and Biden struggled from the get-go with the first question, offering a frail defense of how bad things are now by blaming Trump, but Trump in his first answer deftly laid out how the economy was very strong until COVID came in and then when he left office he gave Biden a mostly-recovered economy.
“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well. Every – everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us,” Trump said, per CNN’s rush transcript of the debate.
He continued:
We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression, the likes of which we had in 1929. By the time we finished—so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good. But the thing we never got the credit for, and we should have, is getting us out of that COVID mess. He created mandates – that was a disaster for our country. But other than that, we had – we had given them back a – a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID. And nobody thought that was even possible. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID.