It was a fascinating thing to watch, in the same way that the demolition of a high-rise is fascinating to watch. We first saw this decrepit structure on the horizon four years ago. And then, last night, right before our eyes, we saw it implode.

The first question of last night’s first (and likely only) 2024 presidential debate came from CNN’s Jake Tapper, and it went to Joe Biden: “What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?”

Right away, you could tell something was amiss. Biden began to answer, but it seemed like he was speaking on 78. Like someone had slipped him an extra shot of espresso. And this was after a full week of intensive debate prep. He was mumbling, and mumbling quickly: “Well ya gotta take a look at what I was left when I became president,” he blurted, “what Mr. Trump left me. We had an economy that was in free fall, pandemic was so badly handled, many people were dying, all he said was, ‘It’s not that serious, just inject a little bleach into your arm, you’ll be all right.’”

The ol’ “bleach injection” lie is as tired and phony as the “suckers and losers” lie and the “very fine people” lie, both of which Biden would bring up later in the debate. But it gave us a sense of the kind of night it was going to be. Biden was prepared to go low. Indeed, the seven-year-old Charlottesville lie had been debunked just days earlier by no less than the hard-left fact-checkers at Snopes, and yet he still trotted it out. Heck, Jake Tapper himself debunked it five years ago. How detached from reality is this man? And how stupid do his handlers think the American people are?

The worst moment of the night for Biden — indeed, the worst moment of his entire presidency, given the stakes — came when Tapper asked him to respond to a question about the national debt. Biden began shakily enough, mistaking trillions for billions and millions for billions, but the wheels came off around 45 seconds into his reply, as a series of numbers seemed to overwhelm him. Amid a rambling rant about raising taxes on billionaires, he said, “We’d be able to write, wipe out his debt … making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person, uh, eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, uh, with, with, with the COVID, uh, ‘scuse me, with, um, dealing with, everything we had to do with, uh … look … if … we finally beat Medicare.”

Biden suffers multiple brain freezes. The drugs are already wearing off… We just barely got started. pic.twitter.com/aS7hWBVaeZ

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 28, 2024

It’s not a stretch to say that these were the most painful 20 seconds in presidential debate history. And it’s instructive to watch Donald Trump’s reaction. He’s looking straight ahead, calmly taking in Biden’s words, then he glances over at Biden, then back ahead for a split second, then right back to the train wreck taking place to his left.

And when Tapper redirected to Trump, the former president was quick on his feet: “Well, he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”

Biden recovered, inasmuch as anyone can recover from such a jarring freeze-up, but the damage had been done. The rest of the night was mostly a series of Trumpian superlatives punctuated by Bidenesque barbs that failed to get under the former president’s skin. In the face of those personal attacks, Trump was forceful but never unhinged — not even when Biden was at his worst: “The crimes that you are still charged with,” said Biden, “think of all the civil penalties. How many billions [sic] of dollars do you owe in civil penalties, for, for, molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, of having sex with a porn star on the night, uh, while your wife was pregnant? What are you talking about? You’ve got the morals of an alley cat.”

Perhaps the most telling post-debate analysis of the night came when a shell-shocked Anderson Cooper asked CNN Senior White House Correspondent M.J. Lee, “What are they saying?”

This was Lee’s verbatim response:

Yeah, well, Anderson, uh, obviously a ton of Democrats, voters, elected officials were tuning in tonight, really nervous and really desperate for President Biden to give his “A” performance, and after his performance, uh, it has really set off panic. There was one Democratic congressman I was in touch with who was on Capitol Hill at a watch party with a number of other lawmakers. And that moment, early on in the debate, when President Biden was talking about the national debt and seemed to lose his train of thought, uh, pause for several seconds and then gave a confusing answer, he said when that happened, the entire room was just completely silent and in shock, and that this member’s own reaction was that he wanted to jump off of a bridge. And he said that throughout the 90-minute course of the debate, he and the other lawmakers in the room felt like Donald Trump looked young and Joe Biden looked, uh, old, and that Donald Trump seemed to mostly be on the offensive and that Joe Biden seemed to be mostly on the defense. Democrats, he said, are just panicked right now and don’t even know what to do.

He wanted to jump off of a bridge.

Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, saw their guy seize control of this race. Such as it is. Leading up to the debate, two new polls — one from the New York Times/Siena and another from Quinnipiac — put Trump ahead of Biden by four points. And after what happened last night, it’s likely those gaps will grow larger.

CNN’s first post-debate flash poll of debate watchers came in just after midnight, and while it wasn’t necessarily representative of the national audience, it wasn’t good news for Biden. Before the debate, respondents had been asked who they thought would win: 55% said Trump, while 45% said Biden. Then, after the debate, they were asked who won: 67% said Trump, while just 33% said Biden.

But one wonders: What debate were those 33% watching?

In addition, debate watchers were asked whether they had favorable views toward each candidate. Trump’s favorability went up from 40% to 43%, while Biden’s dropped from 37% to 31%. Ouch.

As CNN’s Trump-hating John King said, “The main organizing impetus of the Democratic Party is keeping Donald Trump out of the White House.” But if that’s the case, and if this debate is allowed to settle in as I expect it will, then the Democrats are in a helluva pickle. Because Kamala Harris is waiting in the wings, and she’s even less popular than Joe Biden.

Our Mark Alexander predicted long ago that Biden wouldn’t be the Democrats’ 2024 nominee, and I’m starting to think he might be onto something. But what to do with his veep?

Speaking of Kamala, there she was on CNN after the debate, being interviewed by Cooper. Noting the “panic setting in” among the Democrats, Cooper asked: “Some in your own party are saying that Joe Biden should step aside. What do you say to that?”

Harris replied: “Listen, first of all, what we saw tonight is the president making a very clear contrast with Donald Trump on all the issues that matter to the American people. Yes, there was a slow start, but … a strong finish. And what became very clear tonight is that Joe Biden is fighting for the American people.”

She then called Joe Biden “extraordinarily strong.” With a straight face.

Cooper continued to press Harris about the disastrous performance that everyone had just witnessed, about how Biden “didn’t push back on Trump’s lies.” And the vice president kept spinning. But to her credit, she handled herself pretty well given the extraordinary conditions. Think about it: Her boss just embarrassed himself on live television in front of tens of millions of Americans. And her job at that moment was to tell all those people not to believe their lyin’ eyes. Talk about a tall order.

CNN’s Lee summed it up: “I have to tell you, Anderson: So far, I haven’t heard a convincing argument or spin on the president’s overall performance, either from the White House or the campaign.”

Let the meltdown begin.

While there’s only a three-year difference in age between the two men, last night, it seemed like 30. Donald Trump is a young 78, and Joe Biden is an old 81. And that was readily apparent to everyone who watched. Just how old and enfeebled is Joe Biden? Just take a look at this cheap fake his wife leading him off stage afterward.

Last night Joe Biden & Donald Trump held a debate, which is seen as disaster for Biden.

As Biden was leaving the stage, a zoomed in clip, shows how his wife Jill Biden had to escort him off stage.

It is disturbing. pic.twitter.com/ttWfuxdllW

— David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) June 28, 2024

Adding insult to injury, CNN aired a hard-hitting Trump ad just before midnight. It focused on Biden’s moribund economy and didn’t shy away from the question that’s on everyone’s mind: “He keeps denying reality,” said the narrator. “Is it dishonesty or dementia?”

After last night’s performance, all but the most dead-end supporters of Joe Biden now have the answer: It’s the dementia, Stupid.

POSTSCRIPT: In the run-up to the debate, there’d been a lot of talk about whether Joe Biden would take a cognitive test, much of it having been led by former White House physician Ronny Jackson. But as Dr. Marc Siegel noted on Fox News, “Last night was a cognitive test.”