“Bumble,” “Bluster” & Questions Over Whether Biden Should Step Down: World Media Reacts To First Presidential Debate

deadline.com:

The Biden vs Trump debate took place in the small hours of the morning in many parts of the world but one only needed to watch a few clips and glance at headlines within minutes of waking up to get a feel for what had happened.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the global press focused on a very tough night for the Democratic candidate, who failed to land meaty blows and at times rambled to the point of being incomprehensible, once again raising concerns about his age.

Perhaps more surprisingly, some of the press coverage that Deadline has analyzed was positive about Trump’s performance, although there was a laser focus on his falsehoods and CNN‘s failure to correct them – a key tenet of Deadline’s review, which said Trump “tossed out one whopper after another with no fact-checking from CNN moderators.” In France, where the country is currently focused on the first round of parliamentary elections this Sunday, in which far right party Rassemblement National is expected to come out on top, the consensus, whatever the political persuasion, was that the debate had been a disaster for the Biden and Democratic camp.

The focus was on his frail demeanor and questions over whether the 81-year-old president was still physically and mentally capable of running the U.S.