The first presidential debate of 2024 was so lackluster people were left reeling for days — maybe even weeks — following its conclusion.
It was just that bad, as we were forced to sit through 90 minutes of dilapidated white men staring blankly into space, mumbling their way through responses, and leaning on the same bombastic baloney (that one’s for you, Biden) that established them as bottom of the barrel options in the first place.
And yet, we’re stuck with them. Nine million-year-old Joe Biden and rambling, incoherent felon Donald Trump are the only two options we have for president, and we have to pick one. There’s a clear lesser evil here, given Biden’s presence as an actual human with a heart, but Tin Man Trump arguably performed better at the debate. It’s hard to understand why, considering he’s a convicted felon with a track record that includes lying, sexual assault, lying, conspiracy, lying, the mishandling of confidential documents, and, of course, lying, but it’s true nonetheless.
Trump was never going to be anything but a bitterly unqualified toddler of a septuagenarian, but the blatant proof that Biden is simply too old to hold office was less expected. It left the American public in a disheartened daze, and quite a few viewers took to TikTok to share their upset.
Directly in the wake of the debate, a fresh TikTok sound started popping off on the platform, courtesy of user Austin Nasso. Nasso’s rehashing of the debate is painfully on point, as he provides voice clips so close to reality they could easily be mistaken for real quotes.
The sound rapidly spread across the app, providing a soundtrack to a million disappointed Americans stuck between a criminal rock and an expired hard place.
Quite a few people are ready to simply nope out of the country rather than make the choice between the potentially world-ending Trump and the barely coherent Biden.
Others are ready to put themselves on the ballot instead. One potential candidate tossed his hat into the ring and promised improvements including making everyone in Congress “work in fast food” for the next eight years and enacting a law enforcing that “if you talk s**t on the internet, you have to fist fight in real life.”
Those are some solid policy points, if you ask me.
Or we can just embrace the AI takeover and vote a nice sturdy appliance into office. It has to be better than the alternatives, right?
For many, the debate was only tolerable through observing the non-speaking candidate’s reactions while their opponent was unmuted. It’s still not enough to make the stand-off anything but a great American tragedy, unfortunately.
Biden’s showing at the debate was so dismaying, in fact, that it gave one TikToker’s father a stroke. To top it off, when her father started “speaking gibberish and staggering” it was so akin to the president that her mother assumed he was just mocking 46. There’s no coming back from this one, Biden.
We all know these men are way, way too old to be president, but did you also know that they are older than the country of India, color TV, birth control pills, Walmart, and the very same network that aired the debate?
Even Weird Al got in on the clap-backs, releasing a song in tandem with the Gregory Brothers titled “Deja Vu (But Worse).” He later released the parts of the song that ended up on the cutting room floor after various questions weren’t addressed in the debate.
It all equals out to a thoroughly accurate, but utterly depressing, look at exactly how the nation digested that train wreck of a debate. We’ve got another coming up in a few months here, but if you’re expecting either candidate to perform any better, I’d like a sample of what you’re smoking.