The Year of Chaos Shifts up to Second Gear as President Joe Steps Down off the Stage

The US presidential campaign turned into a mad national scramble on Thursday night as current president Joe Biden stepped off his platform into a morass of criticism and worry from his supporters all over the world.

During Thursday night’s debate, President Biden told former President Donald J. Trump that the United States is the “envy of the world.”

Not so after the debate. If there were any allies of the US who believed in Biden, they were all shaking their heads by the end of the debate or staring grimly at the floor.

“That whole thing was an unmitigated disaster,” wrote Simon Canning, a communications manager in Australia, on X. “A total shambles, from both the candidates and the moderators. America is in very, very deep trouble.”

Countries that have hoped the United States could balance a rising China and deter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions spent the past four years trying to rebuild ties after Mr. Trump’s first term deeply rattled alliances in the region. The debate on Thursday night immediately resurfaced serious questions about how U.S. politics might affect stability across Asia.

Chan Heng Chee, who served as Singapore’s ambassador to the United States from 1996 to 2012, said Mr. Biden’s disjointed performance and Mr. Trump’s repeated attacks and factual inaccuracies unsettled those who rely on the U.S. to act as a trusted global partner, adding, “Facts do not matter now, and civility has totally gone out of the window.”

… “It was clearly a Trump win and a nail in the coffin for the Biden campaign,” said Lee Byong-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “Trump looked healthy compared with Biden, who came across as an old, stammering hard-to-hear grandfather. We must now brace ourselves for a second Trump administration.”

… Mr. Trump’s comments during the debate about how he does not want to spend money on allies are likely to revive anxieties about how his approach to international relationships is transactional rather than enduring

Other big names in China mocked the US presidential debate as “very entertaining.”

"Personal attacks, hazy memory, mocking each other... this debate was very entertaining for many Chinese people," wrote high profile media commentator and former state media editor Hu Xijin on X….

"Objectively speaking, the low-quality performance of these two old men was a negative advertisement for Western democracy…."

China is seen by the United States as its main strategic rival and Beijing has made clear that it seeks to displace a U.S. dominated world order in its rise to global pre-eminence…..

"This chaotic rhythm almost dominated the entire debate, and many people lamented: One has Alzheimer's disease and the other is mentally ill, they are really evenly matched," wrote financial news site Cailianshe.

Even The View is begging Biden to step down “for the good of humanity,” saying his performance last night was “stunningly worse than expected.”

And …

“Disaster,” said a Biden donor who plans to attend a fundraiser with the president on Saturday in the Hamptons.

“This is terrible. Worse than I thought was possible. Everyone I’m speaking with thinks Biden should drop out,” said the person, who was granted anonymity in order to recount private conversations….

“Game over,” said a longtime Democratic campaign advisor, who has been raising money for congressional leaders for over a decade and helped raise money for Biden’s 2020 White House bid.

“Biden’s got to leave. He’s got to get out now and if he doesn’t get out we’re going to get f------ crushed,”

For Donald Trump, the debate was a clear and certain loss in one way, however: he will no longer have an opponent who is easy to beat as blowing a feather off a fence. It is far from clear, however, what he will have as an opponent, but Biden is now clearly on the road out as press coverage all over the world is unanimous in declaring that he lost … and lost “catastrophically.”

JFK, Jr., comes to mind.

You can read all about it in the headlines below (if you’re a paid subscriber), but you can also read my take-down of the president in The Malarky Musket, which is where I’ve placed the rest of my editorial for today:

“The Debate is Over and So Is Joe: Thursday night was the president's biggest misstep along the campaign trail.”

You can also listen to “GoldSeek Radio Nugget - David Haggith: Gold's Long-Term Potential vs. Short-Term Struggles”

(Quotes above come from the boldface headlines that follow:)

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