[CORRECTION: A previous version of this briefing stated that the debate was moderated by Anderson Cooper when it was, in fact, moderated by Jake Tapper. We apologize for the error. But, in fairness to ourselves, they are basically the same guy.]
Last night was the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It was so much worse than we expected… and we already expected it to be pretty bad.
From the very first moment, Biden appeared old, confused, and listless, and it got worse and worse as the night progressed. It would be impossible to comprehensively catalog the sheer amount of baffling and embarrassing moments that occurred, but here are just a few that give you a sense of the horrifying gestalt:
After stumbling through an answer about COVID that already didn’t make any sense, Biden hit a road-block and began stammering for what felt like an eternity. Just before his time was set to expire, he inexplicably blurted out: “We finally beat Medicare!”
Biden also said there are “1,000 trillionaires in the country,” before doubling back to clarify that he meant “billionaires.”
After being asked a question about abortion (by far the issue where he has the biggest advantage over Trump), Biden inexplicably began talking about a horrific case in which a 12-year-old girl, Jocelyn Nungaray, was raped and murdered by Venezuelan migrants. Trump, of course, used this case as evidence that every undocumented person is a danger to society.
Biden brought up Trump’s family separation policy and mumbled something incoherent about “going to continue to move it until we get the total ban on ... the total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.” Trump responded with the admittedly apt zinger: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
In response to a question about handling the opioid crisis, Biden kept talking about “fentanyl machines.” Presumably he was referring to testing strips, but it sounded like he was talking about a big vending machine full of fentanyl. (After watching this debate, we could maybe use one.)
Biden wandered off into a different galaxy during his closing argument, getting lost on a rambling answer about how Trump “wants to get away with, get re ... rid of the ability of Medicare to, for the ability for the us to be able to negotiate drug prices with the Big Pharma companies.” He barely addressed any of the major issues, like abortion, climate, and labor where he is clearly better than his opponent.
There are so many moments in which Biden trailed off in the middle of sentences, stumbled over clearly rehearsed one-liners, stared off into space with a glazed and vaguely frightened look on his face, and struggled to articulate anything resembling a policy vision that it would be impossible to include them all. We find that the images below really capture the essence of the night better than words ever could:
Did you say somethin', man?
If there was anything positive to take away from this performance, it’s that it is now impossible to live in the fantasy world that a lot of Democratic partisans have attempted to construct. Some of Biden’s most loyal soldiers on MSNBC and CNN are now openly questioning whether he should be replaced, and one Democratic operative reportedly told Politico that it was “Time for an open convention.” This morning, liberal op-ed columnists from the New York Times to the Atlantic to the Wall Street Journal urged him to step off the ticket.
It gives us no joy to say this: We told you so!!! We’vebeensaying that Biden should be replaced for years at this point. We suppose that realizing this mere weeks before the Democratic convention is better than never. But the fact that it has taken so many supposed political experts such a long time to recognize what was staring them in the face is a frightening indictment. Action needs to be taken right now: Biden must go.
"Joe Biden is simply not up to the task of taking on Donald Trump. Trump presents a major threat to the country, and Biden’s insistence on running is risking a catastrophe."
Amid all the panic surrounding Biden, it’s easy to forget that there was another guy on the stage. By default, Trump appeared to be the more coherent of the two individuals. But for the most part, he didn’t answer the questions he was asked, instead blaming every issue he could on migrants. Most of the things he said were just outright lies that any competent journalist should have been able to immediately recognize and correct. But CNN moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper did not correct him. Here are just a few things he said that went unremarked upon:
Calling the U.S./Mexico border “the most dangerous place in the world” (Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza will be relieved to know that!) This is one of numerous insane lies and exaggerations he told about the dangers of migrants over the course of the night.
Saying that every legal scholar across the spectrum wanted to reverse Roe v. Wade, and claiming that Roe allowed for “late-term” and even “post-birth” abortions. It did not do either of those things, and the latter is not a thing at all.
Saying that Biden had “become like a Palestinian” — but that actual Palestinians “don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one.” He also said there were “Palestinians rioting all over” the country under Biden.
Saying that he “had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people gave me that statistic.” It’s not clear what he means by this, but it’s definitely not true. The most specific reason for why he seemed to believe this is that “We had H2O,” during his administration. Credit where it’s due: Water did, in fact, exist during the Trump administration. Very good point, Mr. President.
Trump’s solution to the opioid crisis was somehow less coherent than Biden’s “fentanyl machines.” Trump said, “We bought the certain dog that’s the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen, the way they can spot it.” He did not elaborate on what he meant by this.
If Trump were running against any other candidate, his total incoherence and pathological lying would have been the story we took away from this night. But Biden’s zombie-like performance was so glaringly awful that Trump has somehow come away looking like the more put-together candidate by quite a lot. (A CNN poll found that two-thirds of voters said Trump won the debate.)
There is no world where this should be the case. The only reason we are in this spot is because of Biden’s stratospheric ego and the sycophants and enablers he’s surrounded himself with. If Trump wins and implements the monstrous agenda he is planning—which now looks more likely than ever—the Democrats will have only themselves to blame.
During the 2020 debates,artist Jason Adam Katzenstein did live drawings to convey the horrors as they unfolded. This one certainly has a lot of re-use value four years later.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, "What's going on with our politicians?")
Jamaal Bowman brought down by dirty politics
In New York’s 16th Congressional District, Jamaal Bowman—a democratic socialist and member of the progressive “Squad”—has lost his campaign for reelection to the House of Representatives. He secured just 41.4 percent of the vote, compared to 58.6 percent for George Latimer, his centrist challenger. Immediately afterward, centrists in the Democratic Party started taking a victory lap, saying that Bowman’s defeat represented—as New Jersey’s Representative Josh Gottheimer put it—a “swing from extremism to a more common-sense Democratic lane.” But that’s not the real story here.
Instead, the Latimer victory was a triumph of dirty politics, with gerrymandering and an unprecedented influx of AIPAC money as its main tools. To begin with, the borders of Bowman’s district were re-shaped since his last election, as seen in these maps:
As you can see, the entire 16th District shifted upward, subtracting working-class Black communities in the Bronx (where Bowman’s support was strongest) and adding wealthier, majority-white ones in Westchester County. It’s not exactly surprising that such communities would be hostile to a Black socialist, and for Jacobin, Matt Karp points out that the suburb of Scarsdale in particular was a bastion of Latimer support.
And then, of course, there’s the millions of dollars from AIPAC. According to Democratic operative Lis Smith (who’s better known for other work), it’s a “disgusting antisemitic trope” to even mention this. That’s an odd thing to say, since AIPAC themselves have been bragging loudly about their role in Bowman’s downfall, saying that “the outcome in this race once again shows that the pro-Israel position is both good policy and good politics.” Altogether, the group spent $14.5 million against Bowman, which breaks down to an astonishing $17,000 an hour—the most money ever spent in a House race, anywhere in the country. And as Branko Marcetic recently reported for In These Times, AIPAC’s war against the “Squad” is hardly a grass-roots effort: in fact, around 60 percent of its funding comes from “CEOs and other top executives at the country’s largest corporations.” It’s corruption all the way down.
In a recent statement, Senator Bernie Sanders said the outcome of this race was “an outrage and an insult to democracy” from a “system which allows billionaire-funded super PACs to buy elections.” That sounds about right. More than ever, it’s clear that the American electoral system desperately needs reform. Overturning Citizens United, and getting rid of PACs as a concept, would be a lovely start.
It’s the “and Westchester” bit that proved fatal for Bowman’s chances.
❧ The Supreme Court has released several new rulings since Tuesday.
Most of them are horrendous:
You can now give your local government officials “tips” and “gratuities” for doing things you like. In many circles, this is known as “bribery.”But as long as you don’t bribe someone before they do the thing you want them to do, you are now allowed to bribe them. As Moira Donegan writes for the Guardian: “By sheer coincidence, this ruling concerns the sort of generous ‘gifts’ and ‘gratuities’ that [Justices Thomas and Alito] have been known to accept."
After 40 years of the "Chevron Deference," regulatory agencies can no longer make their own guidelines when there are ambiguities in laws passed by Congress. Now, fleshing out those ambiguities is up to the courts. “It could make it harder for executive agencies to tackle a wide array of policy areas, including environmental and health regulations and labor and employment laws,” writes Axios.
The Environmental Protection Agency is blocked from implementing regulations that would have required power plants and factories to curb smog-forming pollution. (Washington Post)
Cities are allowed to jail and fine homeless people for sleeping outside. Notably, since these people by definition do not have homes, that means thousands of people will essentially be banned from sleeping at all. (USA Today)
The January 6 rioters, as well as Trump, cannot be charged with obstruction of Congress. (CBS)
There were also two decent rulings:
For now, Idaho must allow abortions in cases of emergency. (SCOTUS Blog)
The Sackler Family, whose company Purdue Pharma manufactured the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, is not immune from civil claims related to the opioid crisis. (New York Times)
In other news...
In Arizona, the vice-chair of the Maricopa County GOP recently threatened to lynch an election official, then tried to pass it off as a joke. (Huffington Post)
Ten years after it was submitted to the White House, the Senate’s report on the CIA’s use of torture during the War on Terror is still being kept secret from the public. (The Intercept)
As Alex Jones is forced to close down his conspiracy site InfoWars following a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit, the All Lawyers Are Bastards podcast goes back in time to look at the immense harm he caused to the families who lost their children in the Sandy Hook shooting.
Without InfoWars, men will sadly have to look elsewhere for their Alpha Spray.
(Art by Shawn Vulliez, from Issue 6 of Current Affairs Magazine, March/April 2017)
AROUND THE STATES
❧ It's official: flipping off the cops is protected by the First Amendment. In 2018, a Vermont man named Gregory Bombard did what most of us can only imagine: he gave a state trooper a big ol’ middle finger. It’s a little unclear exactly when he did it; Vermont police officer Jay Riggen says he stopped Bombard’s car because he saw The Bird being directed his way, while Bombard says he only deployed it after being stopped for no valid reason. In any case, he was arrested and jailed for a day for “disorderly conduct,” although the charge was later dropped.
In 2021, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on Bombard’s behalf, arguing that “giving the middle finger to protest a police officer’s actions is free expression protected by the First Amendment.” And on the 26th, a Vermont judge ruled in their favor, awarding $100,000 to Bombard and $75,000 to the Vermont ACLU.
It’s an amusing case, but also a serious one, because U.S. police have a nasty habit of arresting people simply for speech they feel is “disrespectful”—something that’s often referred to as “contempt of cop.” It’s an obvious violation of people’s basic Constitutional rights, and imposing financial consequences on police departments is a good first step in getting it to stop.
Art by Cali Traina Blume, from Issue 47 of Current Affairs Magazine, March/April 2024
In other news…
If you’re looking for a good reason to flip off the cops, they’ve been ripping off Muslim women’s hijabs all around the country. (The Nation)
Defying predictions that a higher wage would kill the industry, California has added roughly 10,000 fast-food jobs since hiking their minimum pay to $20 an hour. (Fox Business)
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled that it’s unconstitutional for religious charter schools to receive public funds. (Oklahoma Voice)
Walmart is replacing its price labels with digital screens on each shelf that can change instantly. The company insists the technology won’t be used for exploitative “surge pricing”—and somewhere, there might even be someone who believes that. (Fortune)
After years of tireless activism, New Mexico now has free school lunches. Universal free lunch programs have now been implemented in eight states, and they have been massively successful. (The Nation)
Voter disenfranchisement for felony convictions makes the U.S. a major outlier in the world. (Common Dreams)
A strange, shiny obelisk was found jutting out of a mountain near Las Vegas. Nobody knows how it got there. But it’s one of several that has appeared around the world with no explanation in the last few years. (Associated Press)
All hail the mysterious otherworldly pillar! (Photo: Twitter, via CNN)
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Bolivia’s military has launched another coup attempt—this time against the nation’s democratically elected socialist leader, Luis Arce. It comes five years after the U.S.-backed coup against its left wing president Evo Morales, which briefly caused the nation to descend into right-wing authoritarianism before the interim government was forced out in a resounding electoral defeat.
Thankfully, Wednesday’s attempt to depose the current Movement for Socialism (MAS) government failed spectacularly. Unlike the 2019 coup, which involved a coordinated effort by the U.S.-backed Organization of American States and Bolivia’s military to discredit Morales’ legitimate election victory, Wednesday’s effort to overthrow his successor was a much blunter and more slapdash affair.
At the urging of the army’s general commander, Juan José Zúñiga, armored cars rammed the doors of the presidential palace. “We are going to recover this homeland,” Zúñiga said amid the putsch. The day prior, Zúñiga threatened to have former president Morales arrested, saying he “can no longer be president of this country.” (Morales, it should be noted, is planning to run against his former ally Arce to reassume the presidency in 2025 amid a rift within the MAS party and post-pandemic economic difficulties.)
For a moment, Zúñiga’s troops commandeered the presidential palace, which led to an extraordinary sequence in the hallway: Arce confronted Zúñiga face-to-face, saying, “I am your captain, and I order you to withdraw your soldiers, and I will not allow this insubordination” and ordered him to vacate his role. Within hours, the military retreated. After they cleared the square in front of the presidential palace, throngs of MAS supporters flooded the area waving Bolivian flags and shouting pro-democracy slogans.
Like Jeanine Añez, who was sentenced to prison after seizing power in 2019, Zúñiga faces decades in jail for organizing Wednesday’s coup attempt. It is a massive win for a Latin American country that is no stranger to anti-democratic seizures of power. (Bolivia has seen dozens of attempted coups since the 1950s, many with U.S. involvement.) It remains an open question whether the U.S. played a role in this particular attempt. For the moment, evidence is scarce, but given the very recent history of U.S. involvement in the region and stake in its natural resources, we can’t dismiss the possibility.
❧ At least26 people are dead after a massive uprising against Kenya's government. Like with many crises around the world, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is at the bottom of this chaos. As Nicholas Ford writes for Jacobin, the IMF plays a key role in Kenya’s economy, giving or withholding crucial loans depending on whether its dictates are followed.
Recently, those orders have all revolved around austerity, like when the IMF demanded that Kenya cut food and fuel subsidies to zero last November. More recently, the IMF pressured Kenya to raise its tax revenue before it could receive another loan, leading to proposed legislation that would have imposed a 16 percent tax on bread and a 25-percent tax on cooking oil. Unable to live with this latest round of abuse, the Kenyan people have risen up against their government.
The protests that followed are some of the largest and deadliest in Kenya’s history. As Al Jazeera reports, they began more or less peacefully in the capital of Nairobi on June 18, after which 210 people (including journalists and Amnesty International observers) were arrested in a police crackdown. That led to even bigger protests on June 20, and a more violent crackdown as police deployed water cannons and tear gas—and killed Evans Kirutu, a 21-year-old activist, with a stray canister. Further escalations followed as the protestors declared “7 days of rage,” and the BBC reports uprisings in the cities of Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu and Nyeri as well as Nairobi. At one point, footage of a Nyeri man apparently smoking from a tear gas canister that was launched at him went viral online (although its authenticity is questionable, since human lungs can’t typically do that):
For the BBC, Nairobi bureau chief Stuart Maclean writes that Ruto’s “humbling shows the power of African youth,” and that’s putting it mildly. The people of Kenya have taught the world that the age of revolutionary uprising is far from over—and that ordinary people can stand toe-to-toe with the most powerful economic institutions in the world, and win. That’s a lesson every nation could use right now.
What’s that saying about the people united never being defeated? (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
In other news…
The Chinese government is enforcing a “common prosperity” policy that caps CEO pay at $400k and pressures executives to return excessive bonuses. As corporate pay packages skyrocket in the U.S., maybe our lawmakers should take notes. (Bloomberg)
China is also renewing its “panda diplomacy” with the U.S., sending two of the big fuzzy animals to the San Diego Zoo. (The Guardian)
In the upcoming U.K. election, neither the Conservatives nor the Labour Party seem to have a plan for disabled Britons. (openDemocracy)
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak calls it a "terrible mistake" to invite Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. (New York Times)
Julian Assange may finally be walking free, but justice has not been served. (Jacobin)
Uganda ended its “open door” policy for Sudanese migrants, leaving them stranded. It is one of the largest refugee destinations in the world, but also one of the worst-funded. (openDemocracy)
Iran’s presidential candidates have been making wild promises to win votes, including giving 20 grams of gold to every citizen and slashing the price of fuel. Oh, and one of them keeps defending his role in ordering thousands of executions in 1988, so there’s that. (Middle East Eye)
CAT FACT OF THE WEEK
A Japanese TV show tested which cats could deadlift the largest fish!
The segment, which aired in 2002, originates from a Japanese program called The Fountain of Trivia (There was also an English-dubbed version called Hey! Spring of Trivia, which aired on Spike TV).
From the Wikipedia description, it sounds like a mix between Mythbusters and America’s Funniest Home Videos: Viewers sent a panel of celebrity judges bits of unusual trivia. They would then watch a video that tests whether that piece of trivia was true and “evaluate each video segment and vote on how interesting it is by pushing a 'Hey!' button every time they are astonished.” (In Japanese, the word “hey” means something similar to “wow” in English.)
Some other episodes had answered questions about which baseball mascot can run the fastest, whether spiders react to caffeine, and which company produces the longest ramen noodles. On the episode that concerns us, the hosts sought to determine what was the heaviest fish stray cats could lift. There isn’t much Fountain of Trivia that can be found online, but the cat episode has thankfully been uploaded to YouTube with English subtitles. It is thoroughly delightful, and you can watch the entire exquisite program here!
The question was apparently inspired by the theme song to a popular anime called Sazae-San which has lyrics about “a stray cat holding a fish.” The hosts tested it with several different strays who prowled the area and narrated it with greater intensity than most Olympic events receive. (Spoilers ahead!)
Starting with a tiny 85 g (0.2 lb) sardine, the hosts left out increasingly heavy fish for the cats to pick up. A few weaklings were quickly dispatched, leaving the three strongest strays remaining:
As the fish began to exceed a kilogram, these cats did not back down, continuing to drag them away even as they approached half their own body weight. In perhaps the most impressive feat of the competition, a white cat, whom the hosts called “buff as fuck” and nicknamed “Yokozuna” (after a famous sumo wrestler) was able to lift a mammoth 1.8 kg (3.9 lb) mackerel entirely off the ground.
The grand champion—a brown tabby—was able to drag away a 2 kg (4.4 lb) bonito with relative ease.
But the ride stopped with a 2.1 kg (4.6 lb) tuna, which was too heavy for them to lift, so they just began eating it where they found it.
Did we learn anything from this? Well, we learned a “new trivia,” which is that cats are strong as hell. We also learned that Japanese television is absolutely marvelous and capable of producing things American viewers can only dream of.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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