Yeah, seems likely that other republicans knew Biden’s condition was worse than the campaign was letting on and Trump was banking on that for the debate (and election in general).
Well listening to all the conspiracies coming from the Right prior to the debate they expected the Biden we saw at the State of the Union. And afterwards they accused him of being on performance enhancing drugs (because he could make whole logical sentences that Trump is struggling with these days).
Trump had a plan of just spewing a bunch of shit and calling Joe names, full stop. He got lucky that Joe made that easier for him, although he still made more sense than Trump. The Right has been running on the following since Trump announced:
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The immigrants that our economy depends on are out to replace white people/kill and rape white women/bring crime.
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Joe is old/sleepy (and sometimes responsible for things Trump did).
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Bury any mention of Project 2025 because nobody but elite Christofascists will benefit from it, and thus wildly unpopular even with the right.
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Keep Trump out of jail.
Edit ugh spell check
I dunno, I remember that days before the debate, there was an article that was talk about how the republicans were painting themselves into a corner with all of their Biden has Dementia rhetoric because they were setting the bar so low that if “Biden finished the debate with a pulse, he would have won by their metrics”. It’s probably the old case of double talk, really. Biden was simultaneously both a roided out giga brain secret Stalin and a feeble confused old man prepared to die at literally any second.
