Republican operatives were hard pressed to imagine how Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump could have gone better for them. Maybe Biden could have started calling Jake Tapper “Jeremy,” or perhaps the nation’s cell phones could have started buzzing mid-debate with a Silver Alert for the incumbent president. They were equal degrees jubilant and appalled by the president stumbling and bumbling through questions with a raspy voice and halting answers.

One Trumpworld operative’s initial thoughts on the debate was simply “LOL,” adding “this was worse than John Fetterman’s infamous post-stroke debate in 2022.” Another senior Capitol Hill Republican aide was just left worried about Joe Biden’s mortality. “There’s no way coming away from tonight’s debate thinking anything other than the fact that Joe Biden could be president for the next four years. Stripping through all politics and all partisanship, no way he could survive.”

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