Trump could suffer the same fate as Biden in tonight’s debate — how will his party react? 

Will tonight’s debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump be as dramatic as the game-changer on June 27 between Trump and President Biden? That debate served to confirm what everyone already suspected: the reality that Biden’s age and mental decline make him unfit to serve another four years, despite the repeated public denials by Harris, administration officials, and congressional Democrats. 

Biden’s insistence on holding on to power contrary to his 2020 assurance that he would only serve as a “bridge” president, and his party’s timidity in refusing to challenge his Trump-like obstinacy, jeopardized not only Democrats’ prospects for holding on to the White House but also their prospects in Congress and state offices. The long delay in acknowledging political and geriatric reality put Democrats in a desperate situation to replace Biden before their national convention.  

Biden and party leaders compounded the error by precluding any kind of competition or discussion of alternatives to Harris. Her subsequent refusal to engage with journalists in press conferences or solo interviews raises doubts about the honesty of her candidacy and her competence to serve as commander in chief.  

This debate will be the first opportunity for the press to question her seriously one on one. How the former senator performs could have a major impact on her election prospects.  

The stakes for Trump are even higher. Biden’s infirmity was so painfully obvious in the June debate that observers failed to notice the weakness of Trump’s own rambling, nonsensical performance. This is a sampling of unedited excerpts from that debate on abortion, illegal immigration and the fentanyl epidemic.  

Abortion: 
“As far as the abortion’s concerned, it is now back with the states. The states are voting and in many cases, they – it’s, frankly, a very liberal decision. In many cases, it’s the opposite. 

But they’re voting and it’s bringing it back to the vote of the people, which is what everybody wanted, including the founders, if they knew about this issue, which frankly they didn’t, but they would have – everybody want it brought back.” 

Immigration: 
“And he didn’t need legislation because I didn’t have legislation. I said, close the border. We had the safest border in history. In that final couple of months of my presidency, we had, according to Border Patrol – who is great, and, by the way, who endorsed me for president. But I won’t say that. But they endorsed me for president. Brandon, just speak to him.” 

Fentanyl: 
“Jake, we’re doing very well at addiction until the COVID came along. We had the two-and-a-half, almost three years of like nobody’s ever had before, any country in every way. And then we had to get tough. And it was – the drugs pouring across the border, we’re – it started to increase. We got great equipment. We bought the certain dog. That’s the most incredible thing that you’ve ever seen, the way they can spot it. We did a lot. And we had – we were getting very low numbers. Very, very low numbers.” 

Now that the worst case of Biden’s cognitive deterioration is no longer relevant to the campaign — except for the Democrats’ coverup — Trump’s own decline is increasingly noticeable. As the oldest presidential nominee in U.S. history, he is now compared to Harris, who is almost 20 years younger.  

Trump seems to recognize that he is failing mentally and politically. But, where some suggested Biden’s childhood stuttering was to blame for his public speaking limitations, Trump ascribes his increasingly bizarre public utterances to a “brilliantly” deliberate rhetorical strategy. 

“I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together,” Trump said late last month. “And it’s like friends of mine that are like English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”  

His biographer, Timothy O’Brien, offered a less flattering view of the former president’s declining mental acuity. “The reason he’s now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns in his public appearances is because he’s hyper-aware that people have noted he’s making even less sense than he used to. What we’re seeing now is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate.” 

This year’s earlier debate served its purpose by laying bare the country’s choice between two elderly, cognitively challenged candidates. Both party establishments should expeditiously have seized the opportunity to go back to the drawing boards, replace their nominees and make fresh starts with younger, more capable candidates. Democrats acted first, since Biden’s deterioration was more striking; now, if Trump performs as badly as he did in June and as he has on the campaign trail, spewing venom and personal insults instead of offering coherent, substantive answers to questions and Harris attacks, he will demonstrate again his own unfitness for the presidency. And voters will take note. 

Of course, Trump is unlikely tonight to stand staring open-mouthed and mumbling incomprehensibly. He may simply show his age by not acting his age, combining confused thinking with juvenile antics. But a poor performance by Trump will give Republicans one last opportunity to recharge their chances in this election and begin their party’s long-term return to political health. And if Trump refuses to leave the political scene, as he refused to leave the presidency in 2021, party elders will have to muster the courage to press for his withdrawal, as Democrats finally pressed Biden.  

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.