‘Now everyone sees there’s NOTHING fake about Biden’s decline. We were right and simply sharing the TRUTH!’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Following Thursday night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump’s campaign demanded on apology for the Biden camp alleging that videos showing Biden seeming frail and confused were “cheap fakes.”

“Cheap fakes” was a term used by the White House to describe videos circulated by Republicans showing Biden standing motionless during public events, looking confused and being escorted by family members and aides.

The White House alleged that these “cheap fakes” were being used by Trump supporters to spread “misinformation” about Biden’s faulty mental acuity and motor skills.

However, after Thursday night’s debate when Biden frequently seemed confused, rambled off topic, spoke in a feeble tone and had difficulty finishing his sentences, the Trump administration is asking the White House for an apology for the cheap fakes allegation.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X Friday, “It’s only been a week since our fantastic team @TrumpWarRoom & @RNCResearch were wrongly accused of editing ‘cheap fakes’ to make Biden look bad.”

“The Democrats, and of course their mouthpieces in the Fake News, peddled this ridiculous lie,” she continued.

“We actually had to spend time fighting ‘journalists’ on this ridiculous narrative and telling them Americans can believe their own eyes!” she added.

Levitt wrote, “Now everyone sees there’s NOTHING fake about Biden’s decline. We were right and simply sharing the TRUTH!”

“We will take an apology now,” she concluded.

The Biden campaign responded by alleging that Trump lied during his responses to questions during the debate.

In liberal media outlets following the debates, “panic” was a dominant word characterizing reaction by Democrats.

A New York Times Headline read, “Biden’s Shaky Debate Performance and a Panicking Party” and MSNBC‘s Joy Reid said Democrats were “approaching panic.”

Peter Baker, who has covered the past five US Presidents, wrote in the New York Times that, “Mr. Biden appeared on defense much of the time and either did not use lines teed up for him by his campaign’s predebate advertising or mumbled them in passing in such a way that they barely registered.”

Although Baker, like many New York Times journalists, cast doubt on Trump’s statements, he admitted that the Republican candidate answered questions “with energy and volume” and that he managed “to stay on offense even on issues of vulnerability for him like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and abortion.”

The debate was called sooner than usual as an attempt by the Democrats to show they were firmly behind their candidate. Still, instead, the length of time before the Democratic convention in August has raised speculation of the possibility that Biden may be replaced.

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According to PredictIT.org, Biden was given a 48% chance of winning re-election before the debate and a 33% after.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Following a Presidential debate showing characterized as weak by Democrats and Republicans alike, US President Joe Biden’s chances for re-election have plummeted, according to data.

PredictIT.org showed that Biden’s re-election chances fell 15 points following Thursday night’s debate.

The site, which allows users to “buy” candidates the way one would a stock, assigned a value of 48 cents a share or 48% chance of Biden winning re-election before the CNN debate, and his value fell to 33 cents or 33% after.

The 78-year-old Republican candidate, former President Donald J. Trump, rose as high as 61% by Predict.It metrics during the debate before dipping to 58% and ending with a 53% chance of winning the presidency.

Although some were questioning Biden’s fitness for re-election prior to the debate, his Thursday night performance caused even Democratic news agencies to openly express panic.

A New York Times Headline read, “Biden’s Shaky Debate Performance and a Panicking Party” and MSNBC‘s Joy Reid said Democrats were “approaching panic.”

Peter Baker, who has covered the past five US Presidents, wrote in the New York Times that, “Mr. Biden appeared on defense much of the time and either did not use lines teed up for him by his campaign’s predebate advertising or mumbled them in passing in such a way that they barely registered.”

Although Baker, like many New York Times journalists, cast doubt on Trump’s statements, he admitted that the Republican candidate answered questions “with energy and volume” and that he managed “to stay on offense even on issues of vulnerability for him like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and abortion.”

The debate was called sooner than usual as an attempt by the Democrats to show they were firmly behind their candidate. Still, instead, the length of time before the Democratic convention in August has raised speculation of the possibility that Biden may be replaced.

In the meantime, Biden seemed oblivious to his poor performance and blamed a sore throat for the debate debacle.

“I have a sore throat,” he said. “I think we did well.”

Amid talk of replacing Biden, Symone Sanders, former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris insisted Biden would be the Democratic candidate.

“Folks, the facts are if Joe Biden was going to step aside, he would have done so a long time ago,” she said.

“That’s not my opinion, that’s literally the facts. So no, he won’t be stepping aside tomorrow morning. He’s the nominee, and a number of Dems I suspect will be out defending him over the next few days,” she added.

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in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack and the backlash to Israel’s response, antisemitism has become a vulnerability for Biden – and Republicans are noticing.

By Ron Kampeas, JTA

The debate comes at a touchy time for Biden’s relations with Israel. The president is enduring tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has accused the administration of slow-walking weapons deliveries — an accusation the White House has denied.

Biden should expect hard questions on that front. He may be asked about mounting casualties in Gaza and how he reconciles his longstanding support for Israel with pressure he’s gotten from the left, younger Democrats, and Arab American and Black Democrats to scale back or end his support for Israel.

Trump, for his part, will probably refer back to his own presidency, when he had close relations with Netanyahu and pivoted longstanding U.S. policy in a wide range of areas toward the preferences of Israel’s right wing. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran and recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights. Israelis particularly celebrated the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries that the Trump administration brokered.

But Trump has been light on details when it comes to what he would do in the Middle East now — and that’s where the moderators and Biden may press him. How does Israel “finish it up” quickly without crumbling its Abraham Accords relationships? How does Trump intensify pressure on Iran as it threatens an all-out war with Israel? How do the Palestinians factor into hopes for expanding the Abraham Accords?

Trump is also not without vulnerabilities when it comes to Israel. When the war started, Biden was outspoken in his support of Israel, and became the first president to visit the country in wartime. Trump, meanwhile, chastised Israel for being unprepared, called Hezbollah “very smart” and attacked Netanyahu. The two men broke from each other after Netanyahu and congratulated Biden for winning in 2020, and Trump later said, “F— him.”

Expect both candidates to face questions on antisemitism.

A major Biden strength in 2020, at least in his campaign for the Jewish vote, was his emphasis on the correlation between the rise of violent antisemitism since 2016 and Trump’s rhetoric.

He said he was inspired to run after Trump equivocated in condemning the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia. The man who carried out the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October 2018, the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, was spurred by a baseless take on immigration that Trump has echoed.

In May 2023, to much fanfare, Biden unveiled a national strategy to combat antisemitism.

Now, however, in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack and the backlash to Israel’s response, antisemitism has become a vulnerability for Biden – and Republicans are noticing. Some pro-Palestinian protests that are largely associated with the left, both on campuses and on the streets, have included antisemitic signs and slogans. And some progressive Democrats who have harshly criticized Israel, such as Jamaal Bowman, the congressman who this week lost his New York primary — have used rhetoric their rivals say crosses into antisemitism.

Biden has publicly reviled these outbreaks of hostility, but his Republican critics say his party is implicated in the protest movement and that he has not produced results. His Education Department is investigating antisemitism on multiple campuses, but most of those probes are not yet completed, or their outcomes are not yet tangible. It is the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives that has most prominently shone a light on vulnerabilities that some Jewish students say they feel on campus — and that has brought about the resignation of two Ivy League presidents accused of not taking a strong enough stand against antisemitism.

Trump and his acolytes, including one of his top Jewish surrogates, anti-immigration activist Stephen Miller, say without evidence that the protests are spurred by foreign students. Trump has said, likewise with no proof, that Biden’s visa policies will lead to a Hamas takeover of American streets and universities. Trump has said that Biden’s immigration policies generally make the United States more vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Biden is likely to seek to turn the antisemitism tables on Trump during the debate. A key theme of Biden’s campaign in recent weeks is the threat that Biden says Trump poses to democracy — it has become a centerpiece of Biden’s video ad campaign — and the Biden campaign has sent reporters multiple fact sheets listing the ways Trump’s authoritarianism leads to antisemitism.

Those fact sheets include Trump accusing, on multiple occasions, Jews of not being loyal, reports of his admiration for Hitler, his dinner last year with two well–known antisemites and a recent Trump campaign social media post that appeared to celebrate the return of a “unified Reich” — a term associated with the Nazis. (Trump’s campaign said the post was a low-level staffer’s error.)

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Around 80% of survey respondents said the economy and inflation were the main determining factors in deciding who they would vote for in November.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel 

Top Democratic advisers told CNN that they are advising US President and incumbent candidate Joe Biden to stop praising his own record and instead attack his opponent, former President and current GOP candidate Donald Trump.

Although Biden feels he can accentuate the positive in his record, the adviser says the message isn’t resonating with voters, and he should instead focus on a negative campaign centered on Trump.

The adviser said, “He wants the credit, but it’s not working,” one top Democrat, who recently shared these concerns with the campaign, said of Biden. “He needs to stop.”

Four advisers have recommended that Biden focus on Trump’s alleged close ties with corporations and his economic plan, which Biden claims is inflationary, during the presidential debate this Thursday.

Ron Klain, a longtime Biden adviser and former Chief of Staff, explained that Biden spends too much time talking about the bridges he built and not enough time connecting directly with voters and addressing their concerns.

Those around Biden are worried at his apparent complacency and frequent doubting of polls that show a dead heat or Trump ahead.

Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett, “We’ve already turned it around. The polling data has been wrong all along.”

Although the economy seems to have made some headway since the pandemic and avoided a recession, economic growth has exacerbated the problem of inflation and higher prices.

This means that even if the economy has seen an upturn, the average consumer isn’t feeling it, but is aware of paying higher prices.

According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll, 80% of respondents said the economy and inflation were the main determining factors in deciding who they would vote for in November, and according to one poll, Trump showed a 14-point lead over Biden in those areas.

A majority of 56% of those surveyed said they felt pessimistic about the economy, and four out of ten said they were falling behind financially.

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