Biden vs. Trump 3: fight of ‘soundbites’, gaffes and ageist insults leave the President more exposed and “under scrutiny”
At the end of September 2020, the world was once again closed at home, the pandemic was on the rise again. And in Cleveland, Ohio, President Donald Trump and candidate Joe Biden took the stage for their first presidential debate confrontation. The next 90 minutes were unusual, and a frustrated Jake Tapper, CNN anchor, summed up the debate as the two men said goodbye: “A mess, inside a fire in a container, inside a derailed train†.
Glued to our cell phone screens, we watched a flood of videos, compilations of Trump’s interruptions (there were more than 120), Biden’s exasperated shouts (“Can you shut up, man?!†, were the most famous words of the meeting), and the desperate attempts of moderate Chris Wallace, from Fox News, to contain the septuagenarians .
Moments like the ‘order’ from the then President to the far-right Proud Boys militia (“Stand back and stand by†, said Trump, without condemning the ultranationalist group), were repeated to infinity nos feeds of social networks, seen and shared by millions. The two men would meet again in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly before the presidential elections in November of that year, won by Biden. It wasn’t much better.
The debate of memes
‘Biden vs. Trump 3’ does not promise to be any different. Quite the opposite. The website Axios already classified as “the meme debate†the next face-to-face between the two candidates for President of the United States, which takes place on Thursday in Atlanta, and is broadcast on CNN. A huge effort is expected from the propaganda machines of the Republican and Democratic parties on social media, with short, aggressive, eye-catching and supposedly comical content, which takes advantage of the electorate’s doubts about their age.
