Whatever political momentum Joe Biden might have had going into the final debate, President Trump drank it right up on live TV.  By the time it was over, Old Joe looked drained and confused, and the prez stood smiling like a kid slurping up every last drop of dessert before ordering seconds.

Biden must have been thinking, "How did I get here?"  Or rather, "How is it that this guy is still kicking my butt?  I've got all the news corporations working on my behalf.  Facebook and Twitter are actively censoring information that makes me look bad.  The DOJ is still covering up the Russia hoax.  And the guy just got hit with the Wuhan Flu.  Why won't he give up?"  

Meanwhile, with all those campaign finance violations working in his favor, Biden still wasn't able to avoid punching himself in the face by bringing up the Biden crime family's pay-to-play operations in Ukraine and China all on his own.  The president had barely made mention of Joe's unexplained wealth when China Joe started talking about Rudy Giuliani being another Russian agent hiding in plain sight.  It was surreal...and maybe the greatest stratagem ever used by one candidate to get the other to clobber himself.

Even with the information embargo being enforced by America's "free press," news of former Biden associate Tony Bobulinski's spilling the beans about having personally witnessed Joe selling influence to the Chinese was breaking out into the open.  President Trump personally invited Bobulinski to attend the debate as one of his guests, and the former navy lieutenant conducted a press conference detailing the Bidens' corrupt dealings with the Chinese just an hour before the debate's start.  

Old Joe had just taken four days off from, well, whatever his handlers have him do to memorize canned one-liners and build up enough stamina to last an hour and a half.  And after the president introduced the world to Mr. Bobulinski, you know that Joe was doing everything he could to practice and remember how to respond to the explosive corruption allegations now hanging over his head.  He surely thought President Trump would come out swinging with the news that he was a bought-and-paid-for Manchurian stooge; instead, the president quietly and calmly answered questions from the left-leaning debate moderator while barely alluding to Chinese payoffs or Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" at all.  Old Joe looked pale and distracted and disoriented, and then he just couldn't control himself anymore and pre-emptively blurted out that there was another Russian intelligence operation out there trying to make him look like a Chinese asset.  I've never seen a dope hang himself so effectively on live television.

If that weren't enough, the added pressure of having to answer for his allegedly unreported income from China seemed to be too much for Joe's active brain cells.  He remembered to lie about not wanting to ban fracking in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but he forgot that he wasn't supposed to endorse Bernie Sanders's Green New Deal promise to end the oil industry over the next few years.  So fracking's okay, but all fossil fuels must go.  Whoops!

I think Biden meant that he had no plans to ban the word "fracking," but every intention of ending America's use of oil, natural gas, and coal during his presidency.  "You can frack all you want, boys, so long as you're using wind power from the heady energy days of the Middle Ages."  Look out, America; the "progressive" party wants to drag us back to an age when cutting down forests and burning wood for heat were necessary for survival.  Nothing says "clean energy" like a hundred million campfires sending enough soot into the air to remind everyone what real pollution looks like.   

Trump immediately saw Biden's unprotected jaw and went for the uppercut.  "Basically, what he is saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry," President Trump said calmly for effect.  "Will you remember that, Texas?  Will you remember that, Pennsylvania?  Oklahoma?  Ohio?" 

It was a one-two punch that put Biden on the mat. 

Chalk this one up to a lesson the Democrats should have learned back when Hillary hit her head on the glass ceiling: never bet against Trump.  Just don't.  Save your money and go with the thoroughbred, not the candidate meant for the glue factory.  Can you imagine any other politician contracting the Chinese coronavirus, recovering, campaigning nonstop for the next two weeks, and showing up at a make-or-break debate looking healthier and more energetic than the guy holed up in his underground assisted living facility?

The Democrats always underestimate Donald Trump.  Every time they succeed in hitting him with fire, they're too busy celebrating and gloating to realize that the president's already taken up a position behind them and lined up his sights.  His feedback loop for learning, adjusting, and preparing for re-engagement is faster than anything the Democrats have faced.

"Momentum" is everything in the final days before an election.  It's the secret sauce of winning campaigns, and the president might as well put his brand on the label because he owns it going into the home stretch.  The polls are trending in Trump's direction, the economy is experiencing unprecedented growth, and Biden is hiding from a corruption scandal that proves he's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party.  

The president's out doing five rallies a day and demonstrating to Americans that the country is stronger than China's coronavirus, while his opponent hides away to recover from the strain of standing for ninety minutes on a debate stage.  Trump's crisscrossing the country, running up steps like Rocky Balboa, and rallying the labor force.  Biden's teaching a generation of mask-shaming Karens to be so afraid of their own shadows that their only reaction to leaving their basements is "we just can't."  

One candidate is full of life and vigorously encouraging Americans to reclaim their country before local Democrat mandates kill it off for good; the other candidate has spent the entire campaign in hospice and thinks Americans should join him.

There's no doubt which American future our enemies in China, Iran, and Russia prefer.  No wonder they have Joe's family on retainer.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.