I am not referring to the America Cup of soccer by any means, but to the Debate between the two candidates to be president of the United States in 2025 – 2029.

Biden and Trump faced each other in person and without an audience in the room, in the first televised debate of 2024, in which there was not much substance and too many personal attacks.

If I would give a verdict, it would be that both lost, since neither showed that he has the conditions to be president of the United States. Biden on several occasions, seemed to lose the train of his thoughts and be absent minded. Both candidates accused each other of lying on issues ranging from veterans and the border to the state of the U.S. economy and inflation.

Trump repeatedly attacked Biden for his handling of the economy and his foreign policy record, as well as record numbers of “illegal” immigrant arrivals. Biden, for his part, took aim at Trump’s recent criminal conviction and repeated that his rival is “a threat to democracy”. Some of Biden’s answers (who was also hoarse) were confusing and unclear, which will undoubtedly increase the concern of many Americans that he may be too old to be president.

Biden, after recalling Trump’s conviction on charges stemming from an alleged relationship with adult film star Stormy Daniels, he said the former president had “the morals of a stray cat.” “I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” Trump responded. As if that were what it was about. Trump was found unanimously guilty of 34 counts of committing fraud to hide from public opinion, in the context of an election, facts that would characterize in the eyes of many voters, a conduct inappropriate for a president. With whom you had or have not sex, no one gives a damn.

Faced with several questions, Trump did not want to answer and was also defensive when talking about his response to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and always denied having ever done anything wrong throughout his already long life. On the issues of the economy and immigration, matters that American voters say in the polls are most important to them, neither Trump nor Biden looked convincing.

If I wanted to note, Trump came closest to what his MAGA supporters wanted him to say, while Biden confirmed to his voter bases, that many criteria about his age and mental fitness are worryingly true. Watching him speak on television during the debate, I remembered when I visited V. I. Lenin’s mausoleum many decades ago, if somebody had put there the Biden I saw last night on the screen, Lenin would have looked more alive than him.

The long-awaited debate was an insipid spectacle, not only because they did not say much, but also because of the limited credibility about the little they expressed. A sad panorama for the electorate, having to choose between two mediocre old men with limited statesmanship. Neither Trump nor Biden proved to be fit to lead the United States, in times of both internal and global crisis, but rather to be very capable of deepening that crisis and taking it to levels of extreme stress and danger.

I insist that, in my opinion, both candidates, the one from the red corner and the one from the blue corner of the ring, left the debate utterly defeated. If anything prevailed, it was the immaturityand pettiness of two candidates without programs or strategies, only with a lust for personal power and to maintain their country leading an impossible unipolar world.

*The author is a political analyst from New York who seldom writes for Prensa Latina.

mh/jo