Joe Biden debate performance sparks avalanche of jokes, memes (2024)

Joe Biden's "slow start", as Kamala Harris described it, during the presidential debate on Thursday night in Atlanta, Georgia, his fumbled answers, and vacant expression have sparked a deluge of jokes and memes on social media. Both conservatives and liberals admit that the president's performance likely hurt his campaign.

Most of the memes online, especially those created by Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters and conservative accounts, focus on Biden's age. In one post, Liberacrat Media—which claims to oppose "the liberal media industry complex"—calls voting to endorse "Biden for retirement." The image shows several care-home residents sitting on wheelchairs; the president's face has been added to one of them.

Biden's age has long been a target of Republicans' attacks against him and one of the factors troubling voters the most, including Democrats. A New York Times/Siena College poll in March showed that 73 percent of all registered voters strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that Biden was too old to be an effective president.

Voters are slightly less concerned about the embattled Republican candidate, despite the fact that they are close in age: Biden is 81, while Trump is 78. Only 42 percent of all voters believed the Republican was too old to lead the country. Newsweek emailed the White House and Trump's campaign team for comment on Friday.

Biden's main goal of the presidential debate on Thursday night was to dissipate concerns over his age and fitness, proving he is alert and able to run the country. But his poor performance—including verbal missteps and truncated sentences—has likely done the opposite, cementing voters' fears and fanning the flames of MAGA's attacks against him.

A meme shared on X by "ultra MAGA" supporter HOGGMAN_Memes shows a truck crashing against a guard rail, to which the user added the Biden-Harris campaign sign. Another user shared a clip from the TV show The Sopranos showing "Junior" Soprano saying he's confused, comparing the character to Biden during the debate.

A meme shared online shows CNN journalist Jake Tapper, who moderated the debate together with Dana Bash, rescuing Biden in a war scene, while Trump's voice says "get him out of here."

The debate was conducted under strict rules, including the duration of the debate—90 minutes with two commercial breaks—the time for each of the candidates to speak and reply and no in-person audience. The candidates' microphones were muted when it wasn't their turn to speak. The result, as many have said following the debate, was that Trump's many falsehoods went unchallenged—for example, when he said that Biden supported abortion "after birth," a statement that is not only false but also misleading, as that would be infanticide.

Despite the vulnerability of his challenger on many fronts, including his recent trials in court, Biden was on defense most of the time and failed to attack Trump. On the subject of the president talking with a raspy voice, his campaign team said that he was battling a cold, and Biden himself told reporters after the debate that he had a sore throat.

However, a cold can hardly justify Biden's lack of bite during the Atlanta debate, which comes nearly two months before his formal nomination by the Democratic Party. Several news media reported that Democrats panicked at Biden's performance during the debate, with some calling for him to step aside and for others candidates to be considered.

"There is a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of this debate, how his voice sounded. He seemed a little disoriented," David Axelrod, a top adviser to Barack Obama, told CNN on Thursday. "There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue. Only he can decide if he's going to continue."

An unnamed Democrat strategist told NBC News that "the chatter of replacement is absolutely going to explode. There is no coming back from this disaster."