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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to the Free Expression podcast from the Wall Street Journal. I'm Jerry Baker,

editor at large of the journal. If you're not already a subscriber to Free Expression, please sign up

wherever you do your podcast listening. This week, the night that sank Joe Biden. In more than 30 years of watching

U.S. presidential debates, I can't recall one that was more calamitous for a candidate than the one we

witnessed on Thursday night. For 90 minutes, a nation watched and frequently had to look away,

as President Joe Biden mumbled, fumbled, and stumbled his way through a head-to-head exchange

with former President Donald Trump. This, remember, was a debate that Biden himself had initiated.

The venue, the rules, the unusually early timing were all at the president's behest, and why?

Well, they were all designed to put to rest doubts Americans

have about the mental and physical capabilities of their president four months ahead of the

election. The whole event was intended by Biden's people to show that the image we had formed

of his frailties was somehow just wrong to demonstrate that this 81-year-old is fully capable

of serving in the world's most

powerful office for another four years. And what we got was the exact opposite. A public, prolonged,

painful demonstration of the man's advancing mental weakness and alarming cognitive fragility.

...