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With more than his candidacy on the ropes, President Joe Biden’s debate damage control attempted a new spin likely to leave some “even more concerned.”

“It’s not an excuse but an explanation.”

In the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s matchup against former President Donald Trump, the incumbent’s team endeavored to shrug off the “bad debate” as the byproduct of a cold, with some even going so far as to fault his being “overprepared.”

Tuesday, amid growing calls for his ouster as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Biden was said to have addressed pool reporters for about six minutes during which he foisted new blame on his overseas trips.

“I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate … I didn’t listen to my staff … and then I almost fell asleep on stage,” Biden was quoted as saying. “It’s not an excuse but an explanation.”

The effort was perhaps too little too late if the president’s team believed they could still count on corporate media being in their corner to gaslight the public as reservations about recognizing Biden’s declining mental state had gone by the wayside.

After their editorial board had openly called for the sitting executive to bow out, a report from the New York Times cited an insider that laid waste to the notion that a lack of rest was at fault, claiming that daily naps were a part of his debate preparations that never began earlier than 11 a.m.

“Mr. Biden was drained enough from the back-to-back trips to Europe that his team cut his planned debate preparation by two days so he could rest at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., before joining advisers at Camp David for rehearsals,” read the Times report. “The preparations, which took place over six days, never started before 11 a.m. and Mr. Biden was given time for an afternoon nap each day, according to a person familiar with the process.”

Meanwhile, on CNN, White House correspondent MJ Lee readily challenged the idea that the president’s D-Day and G7 trips could have impacted him, if nothing else because of how far removed those travels had been.

“I find it a little bit puzzling and, frankly, I’m not sure that a lot of people are going to find this reassuring. If anything, some folks might hear this and be, you know, even more concerned,” she said from outside the White House Tuesday.

“We’re talking about roughly 12 days in between when he was back in the States and remember a part of those 12 days, about a full week, he actually spent with his advisers at Camp David for the sole purpose of really focusing on debate prep. So why is the president falling asleep on the debate stage…” she wondered making note of the time from 9-10:30 p.m.

Lee left open the possibility that the tone was missing from the text and that Biden may have been attempting a lighthearted joke before reminding that the excuse leading up to the disastrous debate was that the president was “suffering from a cold.”

Kevin Haggerty
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