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Former US President Donald Trump is taking a victory lap following the aftermath of Thursday night debate with US president Joe Biden, which solidified his standing as the favorite in the presidential race.
Biden, 81, got bad reviews after stumbling over his words and at times struggling to clearly lay out his positions, especially during the debate’s first half hour.
Trump, 78, came under criticism for a number of misleading or false statements, but he successfully landed several attacks on Biden and came off as sharper.
The night gave his campaign a fresh boost of momentum as he leads Biden in many national polls.
The morning after the debate, the Supreme Court gave Trump another significant victory with a ruling that the Department of Justice went too far with prosecutions against Trump and many indictments related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The ruling could undermine the charge against Trump, and it gives him ammunition to argue he and others are the victims of a political prosecution.
Trump and his allies got another win from the Supreme Court on Friday in a key regulatory decision that will dramatically reduce the power of federal agencies.
“Despite the fact that crooked Joe Biden spent the entire week at Camp David resting, working, studying — he studied very hard. He studied so hard that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing,” Trump told supporters in Chesapeake, Va.
“He got the debate rules that he wanted. He got the date that he wanted. He got the network that he wanted with the [moderators] that he wanted,” Trump continued. “No amount of rest or rigging could help him defend his atrocious record. It’s not defensible.”
Trump is the first former president and presumptive major party nominee to be convicted of a felony, following the guilty verdicts in his New York case in May, and he faces a wide range of other charges yet to go to trial. But Biden has faced widespread questions about his cognitive ability to serve a second term, and his performance.
“If immigration and crime and inflation are top issues and you had concerns about Donald Trump those concerns were put roundly to bed. He presented his platform and his ideas very clearly,” said Republican strategist Nicole Schlinger.
“And Joe Biden gave America a cause for great concern about his ability to do the job.”
Sources said Biden had a cold, explaining his often-hoarse voice throughout the night, but that did little to quell fears among Democrats about his chances in November. Polling taken after the debate found respondents picked Trump over Biden as the winner of the night by a 2-to-1 margin.
“The reality is that Trump didn’t need to throw big punches like we’re used to seeing him do on the debate stage, and I think that’s where we saw him being very measured and focused and consistent in this messaging,” said GOP strategist David Capen.
Capen said Trump clearly prepared for the debate and showed discipline in regularly coming back to immigration as one of his top issues.
“He was staying focused and on message,” he said.
