ATLANTA (NewsNation) — In the wake of the first presidential debate for the 2024 election, President Joe Biden has found himself faced with calls to drop out of the race for the White House after a poor performance against former President Donald Trump.
Even some Democrats and aisle allies have implied that Biden should bow out of the race after he came off as slow, incoherent and almost sleepy at times.
Trump, on the other hand, held back his tongue more than voters expected, trying to control his outbursts to contend with the rules set for this debate match-up.
NewsNation spoke with several body language experts to get a better sense of what the two candidates were saying without having to speak.
Biden: ‘A deer in the headlights’
“We really saw President Biden in trouble. And we saw that he didn’t make sense often,” Body language expert Dr. Lillian Glass said Friday on “Morning in America.”
Glass said that Biden looked down and stammered quite a bit and his body language did not match with the words he was saying. She even compared him to looking like a deer in the headlights with his eyes wide and mouth open.
“He looked frightened. He looked like he didn’t know where he was, at times. He looked away. He didn’t know what was going on. He kept staring at Trump,” Glass said.
Plus, many were left worrying about the president’s health after his weak-sounding voice, the verbal gaffes and memory lapses.
Susan Constantine, president of The Human Behavior Academy, explained that Biden’s stare could really just be a side effect of high cognitive load, where he’s trying to memorize every single word that he’s scripted.
“That stared look, that zombie look everybody’s talking about, was high concentration trying to recall as hard as he could his words that he already rehearsed to state,” Constantine said.
Constantine said Biden needed to be more authentic and fluid. She also noted that he lost energy halfway through because there was no movement, he just stayed still for the majority of the debate. Whereas Trump was moving, building off the energy he was emitting.
Scott Taylor, the managing director of Praesidium Risk and Resilience, said physical elements such as Biden’s hard swallows, some lip compressions and gripping onto the podium in front of him displayed the discomfort he felt during the debate.
Overall, Taylor said he doesn’t think Biden’s body language was very effective, especially when it comes to winning over voters.
Trump’s most contained moments
The former president, however, had a much better showing. Ahead of the debate, there was worry that Trump would repeat his previous mannerisms and behaviors seen during the 2020 debates.
Both were quite reserved when it came to hand gestures, but it was the facial expressions that were quite telling.
However, Trump worked to maintain self-control and would often smirk when he disagreed with Biden to prevent himself from making outbursts like in previous debates.
“He was trying to contain himself. This was the most contained we’ve seen him,” Glass said. “And it worked. His body language matched what he was saying and he made sense.”
Glass continued, “He was just very bold. But he came across as very confident and reserved in terms of Trump.”
Although Trump still had his moments where he would make comments toward Biden, and his facial expressions said it all. It was especially prevalent when Trump spoke about his health and how he has the best health of everybody.
“This was the most contained we’ve ever seen him,” Glass said.
Constantine said she believes it was the lack of an audience that helped the former president keep control over himself.
“I think he did a lot of work on his own discipline,” Constantine said.
All three body language experts agreed that Trump’s body language matched what he was saying and that his arguments made sense.
