Held together with nothing but clothespins and hairspray.

David Muir, the supposed moderator of my father‘s presidential debate, who instead chose to be a participant, is so vain that as people in Los Angeles are losing everything, he used clothes pins to make his fake fireman’s jacket more form fitting.
Sick! pic.twitter.com/0jXW4OPfkq

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 9, 2025

Asked if he was "already prepping for the debates," Biden said he was, but then, asked "Who is playing Trump?" he was utterly flummoxed.

This is the most interesting thing that happened in the utterly softball interview Biden did with ABC's David Muir:



Here's the transcript of the whole interview. Relevant portion (which cannot be appreciated in text form):

MUIR: The president said he's already prepping for the debates. Are you?

BIDEN: So am I. I can hardly wait.

MUIR: Who is playing Trump?

BIDEN: I'm prepping.

MUIR: You can get back to me on that.

My guess is that Biden is not prepping yet, but he just gave the most generic positive answer when he said "So am I. I can hardly wait." The followup should not have been difficult, and I don't think Muir was going for a gotcha, since you can see that he readily moved in to give cover once Biden came out with something. But Biden wasn't sharp enough to bullshit something like "Oh, I can't tell you that!" He was a deer in the headlights. Maybe that was some indication of a conscience — he'd lied saying he was already prepping and he had to think about whether he wanted to keep going with lying and he just couldn't decide, perhaps because it seemed as though he needed to come up with a name.

Biden invites us to "watch" him and Kamala Harris and to "look at... what we control."

I'm reading "Biden to ABC's David Muir on Trump's attacks on mental fitness: 'Watch me, Mr. President'/Biden, Harris' first joint interviews air tonight at 8 p.m. ET on ABC." I just hope it's a serious interview that is arms-length and challenging. The question ABC is teasing for us this morning is "[Trump's] campaign has called you ‘diminished.’ And, I'm curious how you’d respond to that."

Biden's answer is:

“Watch me. Mr. President, watch me. Look at us both. Look at us both, what we say, what we do, what we control, what we know, what kind of shape we're in.... I think it's a legitimate question to ask anybody over 70 years old whether or not they're fit and whether they're ready. But I just, only thing I can say to the American people, it's a legitimate question to ask anybody. Watch me”...

On the one hand, that's a completely empty answer, which probably only reflects the complete emptiness of the question. What did you expect him to say?! Why did Muir devote time to that? What potential was there to bring out anything significant?

But Biden did say one interesting thing there, seemingly by accident: "what we control." What's that about? If he's talking about political power, it sounds sinister, but the question is about the decline of old age, so maybe he's referring to his bodily functions. What am I supposed to "look at"?

Also in the teaser: Biden answered "Absolutely" to the question whether it's possible that he will seek a second term. I suspect that's to reinforce the assertion that he's in fine shape to begin serving a 4-year term now.

ADDED: If Muir actually wanted an answer to the question whether Biden is "diminished," he wouldn't ask Biden directly, the way he did. He would ask hard questions about specific issues — probing into Biden's past actions and assertions — and give us a chance to see whether Biden could perform at the high level that's needed. If you want to find out if someone's drunk, do you ask them if they're drunk, or do you give them a sobriety test?

"Our country has to go back to being our country again. You have people that are not going to stand for this and I understand them very well..."

Said President Trump in his interview with ABC's David Muir — transcript, video.

Muir was trying to get Trump to talk about how the reopening would work — whether the results would be monitored and the restrictions reimposed if transmission/hospitalization/death rates go up. Trump continued:

... and we are going to put out little embers and little fires and maybe some big fires, but we still have to go back to work.

Muir wanted Trump to speak in the same terms as Governor Cuomo, who'd said — this is Muir's paraphrase — "you just have to be ready to turn the valve off for a time if you see a spike."

But Trump's reaction to hearing Cuomo's name was to remind us that Cuomo had praised him. Trump said: "Governor Cuomo last week said, the president and the federal government have done a phenomenal job. He said that, a phenomenal job."

That's Trump's strategy in dealing with these difficult questions, to get right on the message that his administration has done a great job. Every question is understood first as a prompt to bang us on the head again with that message. He ignored the whole point of the question, which is about how the reopening will be done. Why couldn't he address Cuomo's idea and agree with it or reject it?

Here's Cuomo speaking on May 4th. Trump acted as though he wasn't familiar with this, but I don't believe that. It's so cogent and sensible that it's very disappointing to hear Trump professing unawareness of it and Muir letting him off the hook. Cuomo: