With the political world still reeling following Thursday evening’s CNN Presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson summed up most Americans’ reactions to the first 2024 faceoff by deeming it “the greatest mismatch in the history of Presidential debates.”
On his weekly Salem Media Group news program THIS WEEK ON THE HILL, Speaker Johnson echoed national media verdicts that the debate was nothing short of a political catastrophe for Biden and the Democratic Party. “On every metric of performance Thursday night” he added, “Donald Trump won clearly. On the issues…on his temperament… on his stamina and on the mental acuity. There was only one man on that stage that night that is qualified and capable of being President in the next term. And that's Donald J. Trump.”
Biden’s rambling, often confused answers to softball questions like “What would you do in another term to protect reproductive rights?” left moderators, viewers and even Trump stunned. “I’m not sure what he was just talking about, and I’m not sure he knows what he was just talking about” observed our 45th President at one point.
CNN itself—which engineered the first Trump/Biden debate, controlling everything from the questions being asked to the actual microphones which moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash muted when each candidate’s turn had passed—rolled out its own “Instant Poll,” showing that among debate viewers Trump clobbered Biden by a hefty 67% to 39%.
Other media outlets were equally damning: POLITICO ran a headline while the debate was still in progress reading “Biden is toast.” Lefty website The Huffington Post was even more unhinged: “The Debate From Hell. Biden Primetime Disaster. Full Dem Panic—Biden Replacement Talk.”
Mike Johnson added this perspective: “Listen, we live in very dangerous times. The American people are in panic mode about their own lives they can't afford to put groceries on the table consistently. They’re worried about the rising crime rates and the open border and the weakness that we're projecting on the world stage; all these things because we have a weak commander in chief. This is not a game. This is the most important election of our lifetimes. Donald Trump showed in the debate that he can address these challenges and he can bring America back, and I'm telling you, it doesn't matter what party you're in. If you watch that debate, you're nodding your head in agreement saying, ‘I want that.’ “
Another guest on THIS WEEK ON THE HILL—former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—issued a stark warning that while the debate was a domestic political event, it is undoubtedly having a profound impact on foreign leaders, as well. “Iran, China, North Korea and Russia are taking note of the weakness of America’s President,” Pompeo offered. Zeroing-in on recent Biden administration policies that whiplash from “support” for Israel to criticism of how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prosecuting Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists, Pompeo bluntly charged that Biden “doesn’t understand the difference between good and evil. And that’s allowing anti-Israeli propaganda to be beamed to the American people.”
Pompeo added that Biden is “living in a fantasyland if he thinks he can blame President Trump for what’s unfolding in Ukraine.
Johnson agrees, telling THIS WEEK host Tony Perkins that Biden’s debate answers on foreign policy were “sad to watch. We're all concerned about this because our adversaries see this as well. We're in a dangerous moment. We've got China, Russia, Iran, North Korea forming a new Axis of Evil making threats to us and our allies. We can't afford to have this on the world stage.”
The House Speaker concluded: “The only solace we have is that help is on the way. November can't get here soon enough. “
THIS WEEK ON THE HILL is produced by Salem Media Group, and is heard each weekend on leading radio stations nationwide, as well as on the Salem News Channel starting at 10AM Eastern time on Saturdays.