“A car crash in slow motion”: CNN switches from happy Biden watch party to stunned panel

CNN anchor and broadcast journalist Chris Wallace pulled no punches on Thursday night, calling President Joe Biden’s performance at the debate a “slow-motion car crash.”

For many Democrats and Trump opponents online, that statement was anything but hyperbolic. But the already stunned jury nearly fell off their seats when they saw Biden boast at the after-party, “We’re going to beat this guy,” while the crowd cheered, “We need you!”

The celebrations were a stark contrast to the mood felt online, in group chats and on every major news channel as the world watched what some viewed as the end of the Biden campaign.

“He had to change the narrative, and he did,” Wallace said as Jill Biden raised her fist to the crowd. “He sank his campaign tonight.”

Her colleague and CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins said during the confusing Biden celebration in the so-called “Spin Room” that the Democrats faced a “tremendous challenge” in manipulating the result.

Later, his colleague Erin Burnett asked what the majority of America wanted to know when Biden appeared to boast to the crowd of his supporters.

“At this moment he’s at a party, they’re cheering: ‘Four more years!’ He’s talking,” she said. What I’m interested in is whether he knows how bad it was? At this moment. He went to his assistants – does he know?”

A visibly nervous Wallace replied: “If he doesn’t know, that’s more worrying than anything else.”

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The panel watched as a newly invigorated Biden told the crowd, “I want to go home with you!”

Collins praised Biden’s newfound energy source.

“He was not even a third as lively or energetic in the debate,” she said.

Another CNN anchor said that while Americans had seen a familiar Donald Trump – “his mannerisms, his quickness of reaction,” not to mention his “lies” and “false” information – they had seen a Joe Biden they “didn’t recognize.”

“This is not the person who is quick on their feet, quick to parry or quick to react to misinformation,” she said.

Wallace, with her arms folded, repeated her statement: “He hasn’t been that Joe Biden for a long time. This was the culmination of a process.”

“Maybe, but it was also stark,” she said, noting that Biden had failed to “soften the impression that he was frail.”

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