Times Opinion asked 12 columnists and contributors to watch Thursday night’s presidential debate, evaluate who won and who lost, and take away what stood out to them. They rated the candidates on a scale of 0 to 5, with 0 meaning nothing changed that night and 5 meaning one man won. Here’s what the columnists and contributors thought about the debate.
Who won and why?
Josh Barro Joe Biden failed in his key task of showing voters he’s still fit to be president. He was particularly bad in the first 20 minutes, mumbling, rambling and looking really old, while Trump looked more normal than usual. That was enough to give him a landslide victory.
Jamel Bouie So now we have a raspy, stumbling President Biden and a crazy, incoherent Donald Trump who ran a two-hour string of lies. Are there any winners here? No.
David French Trump won, but that’s not his fault. All that can be said about his completely dishonest performance is that he didn’t seem to lose his mind. The low-information voters who support his campaign probably don’t know how much he lied. The reason Biden lost this debate is simple: he acted like a man his age, which can’t be faked or excused.
Michelle Goldberg Trump, God help us. He spewed a ton of outrageous lies, and Biden was too incoherent to use any of them. Biden looked old and lost. Now there will be new cries for him to step down, and I will join them.
Jean Guerrero Trump. He used anti-immigrant hate speech to create the image of himself as a defender of black and brown communities. “They’re taking black people’s jobs, they’re taking Hispanic people’s jobs,” he said. It was deceptive and corrupt, but Biden had no strategy for it and no one fact-checked Trump. His scapegoating will resonate with many distressed people.
Matt Lavash Trump was his usual self, albeit a more subdued and degraded version. Trump is still as crazy, fact-free and dishonest as ever. But Biden needed to convince doubters that he was alive and well. Biden sounded like a dying humidifier or my great-grandfather writing his will.
Carlos Lozada Trump won the debate despite numerous lies, especially about January 6th and the state of the economy. He won by abstention. Biden in 2020, and even Biden at this year’s State of the Union, did not attend the debate.
Katherine Mungward Trump won, no surprise there. But the clearest message from the debate was that the presidency has too much power, and it’s long past time to rethink the scope of executive power. (Bonus points to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash for keeping things orderly, asking polite, timely questions, and above all else, functioning as moderators rather than arbitrators.)
Dan McCarthy Trump won as a more menacing presence, focusing on his own themes, especially immigration, as opposed to Biden, who attacked tax cuts. Biden had a raspy voice and sounded like he was campaigning in another century. The president seemed to see himself as Walter Mondale, who ran against Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Lydia Polgreen There were no winners in this debate, but there is no question about who lost: those who will be voting for President in November. It was a disaster for Biden. His voice was barely audible at times. He got the answers he cares about most, from abortion to democracy. Trump lied and lied and no one, not even the moderator or, even worse, Biden, offered even a shred of rebuttal. Trump yelled and glared. He lashed out at Biden and came off like a bully. This is the choice facing the American people. This was a disaster for America.
Kristen Soltis Anderson Biden’s demeanor and performance was so disturbing that it overwhelmed nearly every other element, making any substantive debate all but impossible.
Bret Stephens Trump, stand firm. He dodged questions, he made false statements and outlandish claims, he exaggerated from start to finish, but against a very old and very frail 81-year-old opponent, he was forceful, confident and energetic.
The most important moment
Anderson “I have no idea what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said himself.” This is the video that will be circulating for the next four months and beyond.
Baro Biden lost the debate with a disjointed opening answer that ended with him boasting that under his leadership, “we finally beat Medicare.”
Bouillet If by “decisive” you mean something that meaningfully changed the debate, I’m not sure there was anything. Biden got a little more ahead as time went on and Trump got more shaky, but the same thing basically happened no matter when you watched.
French The first five minutes. Biden grew stronger as the debate went on, but from the moment he began speaking he seemed incompetent. Even the split-screen footage did Biden serious damage. Every American has been their age, or their parents’ or grandparents’ age. It’s hard to convince people not to believe the evidence they see and hear.
Goldberg Trump got Biden to talk about abortion by telling the outrageous lie that “everyone” wants Roe overturned, to which Biden responded with a string of incomprehensible statements, including “a lot of young women are raped by their in-laws, their spouses, their brothers and sisters.”
Guerrero At one point, Biden started to say that immigration was the reason we weren’t in a recession. But he didn’t finish the thought. He sounded weak and confused. It was disastrous. He failed to reframe the immigration issue, which he had to do to defeat Trump.
Lavash Biden’s brain was frozen and he was rambling. He had a better grasp of the facts. He had prepared diligently. But since when do voters care about facts? They tend to vote by instinct. And even as he got stronger as the night went on, Biden sounded like he was auditioning for a glue factory.
Rosada Biden’s first moment speaking.
Man Words When asked about their respective ages, the candidates argued about who had the lower golf handicap.
McCarthy Biden lost his train of thought multiple times while discussing Medicare, and that, along with his raspy voice, will convince many voters that he is mentally and physically unfit for a second term.
Polgreen Trump was fully prepared for the questions on January 6th, and seemed to know he could get away with basically anything. “Everything was fine,” he said. “Regardless of what happened that day, Biden did this country a lot worse.” With a moderator who didn’t fact-check anything and an incoherent response, Trump got away with committing something close to murder.
Stevens Early in the debate, after being asked about the national debt, Biden stumbled and lost his train of thought. He lost the debate on the spot. His presence onstage felt like a form of elder abuse.
It’s small, but it means something…
Anderson Biden claimed he is “the only president with no soldier deaths anywhere in the world” in the last decade, which would seem to erase the 13 US soldiers killed in the Kabul airport attack while withdrawing from Afghanistan while Biden was president. Expect the Trump campaign to raise this issue repeatedly in the coming days and weeks.
Baro President Trump has said he has no intention of blocking access to abortion pills, something the president could try to block through the FDA or the Department of Justice. No one knows if he will follow through on that promise, but this is another example of President Trump trying to get away with unpopular abortion policies that his judicial appointees have enabled.
Bouillet This is no small thing, but it is instructive: both sides wanted this debate.
French Biden couldn’t effectively mount even the simplest arguments. When Trump called America a failed state, the most mediocre candidate could and should have launched an attack; he could and should have responded with an impassioned, patriotic rebuttal. But he couldn’t. Even as Biden grew stronger as the debate dragged on, he couldn’t get his point across.
Goldberg The only truth of what Trump said is that “we live in hell.”
Guerrero Biden’s first mention of a woman killed by an immigrant in the debate was shocking, as he doubled down on Trump’s notion that immigrants are murderers, even though statistics show they are far less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
Lavash The biggest loser tonight is that I stayed sober. The only way to face the horrible choices before me is to get drunk. Thank you, primary voters, for doing nothing. This is your fault. The implicit winner was Jake Tapper’s vest. The vest looks elegant and slim, and is worthy of a comeback.
Rosada Trump had the opportunity to say he would not use his presidency to attack political opponents, but he didn’t take it. “My retaliation was a success,” he said, but ended by calling Biden “a criminal who may be convicted shortly after he leaves office.”
Man Words The candidates remain steadfast in their support for higher tariffs, even though raising trade barriers with China and other countries could make already high prices in the U.S. “Do you notice he didn’t remove my tariffs?” Trump asked, speaking the quiet part out loud.
McCarthy Biden’s reliance on numbered lists made him sound like an archetype of rhetoric that emphasized his age and made him seem less authentic and dynamic. Trump has arguably changed the way politicians speak forever.
Polgreen Content-wise, Biden had the right answers and smart policies but couldn’t articulate them. But his best lines and most persuasive delivery came in his responses to personal attacks. “My son wasn’t a loser. He wasn’t a moron. You’re the moron. You’re the loser,” he said of Beau, the son of a military veteran who died of brain cancer. Biden was also animated when taunting over small things, in an exchange about golf, of all things, saying, “I’d be happy to play golf if you’d carry my bag.” I couldn’t help but ask myself: Where was all that passion and focus on what really matters in this election?
Stevens The golf controversy was a hilarious moment.
Jamelle Bouie, David French, Michelle Goldberg, Carlos Lozada, Lydia Polgreen and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, a Republican pollster, speaker, commentator and author of “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Catch Up).”
Josh Barro writes the newsletter Very Serious and hosts the podcast Serious Trouble.
Jean Guerrero is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda and Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, and a senior fellow at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab.
Matt Labash, a former national correspondent for the Weekly Standard, is the author of “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader” and writes the newsletter “Slack Tide.”
Katherine Mungward (Follow) is the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine.
Daniel McCarthy is editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
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Additional Production Eileen Clark.
