The reviews are in, and former President Donald Trump overwhelmingly won Thursday's debate against President Joe Biden.
The Republican National Committee posted a roundup of reactions showing people across the spectrum declaring Trump the winner and panning Biden's performance.
Among those praising Trump's performance were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute; and David Friedman, the former Ambassador to Israel.
"President Trump has been doing an impressive job of going back to President [Joe] Biden's enormous weakness on the border," Gingrich posted on X. "I suspect it will hit home much more than any of President Biden's attacks."
"I have watched every Trump debate since he entered electoral politics in 2015," Continetti posted on X. "Thursday night was his best performance."
"Donald Trump always was the better candidate for America, Israel, and the rest of the world," Friedman wrote in an opinion piece published by The Jerusalem Post. "Now, he is the only candidate."
Reviews for Biden's performance were scathing, even from those on the left, with Vice President Kamala Harris admitting it was a slow start. CNN's John King said Democrats are aggressively panicking.
"I can tell you it started minutes in," King said. "It started with the first couple of answers. And it has continued throughout the night from an 'oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,' to 'what do we do about this?' And it involves very senior people in the Democratic Party, including elected officials, saying, 'We have a problem.'"
Negative reviews also came from Joy Reid of MSNBC; Chuck Todd of NBC News; and Chris Cillizza, who writes the So What newsletter at Substack.
"The universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic," Reid said. "The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak."
"Joe Biden looks like the caricature that conservative media has been painting," Todd said. "You saw it before your eyes."
"Biden looks old," Cillizza posted on X. "Halting. He just lost his train of thought. His voice is weak. Bad bad bad.
"Biden would have been better off just refusing to debate Trump. He would have taken some flak for it sure. But it would have been way better than this," he wrote in another post on X.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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