When it was Donald Trump’s turn to speak, Joe Biden’s mouth would often drop open and stay that way, as if in disbelief over his opponent’s words. It’s what he was doing when Trump said, “I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy,” Meanwhile, users on X, formerly known as Twitter, were furious that the debate moderators didn’t push back when Trump told a falsehood. But again, what a lot of people were concerned about was optics, and the open-mouth look was doing Biden no favors. “The mouth opening stares at Trump made him look confused. It was not good,” one person tweeted. Others pointed to it as evidence supporting the conspiracy theory that Biden would take some sort of performance-enhancing drug ahead of the debate — Trump had promoted it himself by calling for Biden to be drug-tested before their showdown. “Biden definitely seemed like he was on something. He couldn’t even keep his mouth closed,” one person wrote.
However, it’s possible that Biden was having a hard time keeping his mouth closed, not out of utter shock at Trump’s words or because he was experiencing the side effects of a drug, but because he was simply trying to breathe.
