Joe Biden’s ABC interview went better than the debate. That’s what’s so scary

Well, it finally happened. The promised post-debate interview with Joe Biden — intended to prove that the president cannot actually be summarily defeated by bedtime — ended up going just as badly as the debate itself.

There’s not a lot to feel good about here. Joe Biden — the man who put on a good show in 2019 on a packed-out stage of Democratic hopefuls to become the official presidential nominee — now struggles to answer questions coherently, even in a softball interview like the one tonight on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos. As Stephanopoulos repeatedly asked the president what happened on the debate stage when he floundered in front of Donald Trump, Biden replied, “I had a bad night,” or, “I just had a bad night,” and eventually, “I had a bad night. I don’t know why.”

Other explanations that have been put forward for Biden’s performance onstage have included a bad cold and jet lag. But most people didn’t find it entirely reassuring that either jet lag or a cold might’ve rendered the sitting president incoherent — not least someone running to stay in the White House for the next four years. After all, international diplomacy has been known to happen after 9pm.

Tonight, his responses were hoarse and halting. He repeated the criticisms he’s been making of Trump over the past few weeks — that Trump is a “pathological liar” — and started out stronger, stating confidently that his rival lied 28 times during the debate. But as the interview went on, he seemed to lose his train of thought somewhat, and called Trump a “congenital liar” instead. Twenty-eight times morphed into “27 or 28 times, whatever the number, over 20 times”. And though Biden may be correct when he says “the character of the president” is what