Joe Biden started the presidential debate slowly but finished strongly, if you ask his vice president. According to Biden's former boss Barack Obama, you can have "bad debate nights".
I think it went well, says the president himself.
Biden started the night's debate against rival Donald Trump with a hoarse voice and seemed to be searching for the right words. Afterwards, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked on CNN if she felt any concern after following the debate.
It was a slow start. It's obvious to everyone, Harris replied, who believes that the sitting president then got going and delivered a "strong finish".
Harris describes it as Joe Biden, despite everything, standing in clear contrast to Donald Trump on issues that are of the greatest importance to the US population.
When Biden's entourage stopped at a lunch restaurant on the way from the debate, the president briefly mentioned that he had a sore throat, but that he still thought it "went well", given how difficult it is to "debate against a liar".
"You can have bad debate nights", writes USA's former president Barack Obama on X, while expressing his support for Biden and writing that "so much is at stake in November".
To be discussed
Several high-profile Democrats are expressing some concern after the TV broadcast.
Julián Castro, former housing minister under Obama, writes on social media that Biden seemed poorly prepared.
"He seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to effectively counter Trump, who lies constantly", Castro writes.
Biden looked a bit disoriented at first, according to Obama's former top adviser David Axelrod.
He got a bit better as the debate went on, but I think panic had set in by then, Axelrod tells CNN.
There will be discussions about whether he should continue.
"Not suitable"
Joe Biden's opponents in the Republican Party are, as expected, seizing on the president's vigor, with references to his age.
The Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, Steve Scalise, announces that Biden "showed that he is not suitable to be president".
One of The New York Times' more seasoned journalists, Thomas L Friedman, writes in a column that he started crying when he followed the TV debate and realized that neither of the two candidates should be elected in the fall:
"I can't remember a more crushing moment in presidential campaigns in American politics during my lifetime – precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has nothing to do in a re-election campaign."
