Joe Biden ‘hit a home run’ with powerful DNC speech, Fox News hosts say

Democratic nominee won over various hostile commentators and left others silent

Joe Biden’s speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination last night went down a storm with the party faithful – and even drew praise from Republican commentators not known for praising the other side.

Fox News’s Chris Wallace, who recently interviewed Donald Trump in an encounter that many considered disastrous for the president, concluded that after such a successful turn, Mr Trump’s attempts to frame Mr Biden as a senile joke were clearly unlikely to work.

“Yes, Biden was reading from a teleprompter, and a prepared speech, but I thought he blew a hole, a big hole in that characterisation.”

Referring to the line that “character is on the ballot”, Mr Wallace waxed on.

“He talked about a different path for the country. Not in a deep programmatic sense, but he did talk about plans, from the virus and the economy, for climate change and race and foreign policy. And he talked about what a united America can do to accomplish all of those things.

“It seems to me that after tonight, Donald Trump is going to have to run against a candidate, not a caricature.”

Also giving Mr Biden a good review was Dana Perino, a former press secretary to George W Bush and now a Fox News commentator. “Joe Biden just hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth,” she said.

“He had pace, rhythm, energy, emotion, and delivery. So I think if he looks back, he’s gotta say that’s the best speech of his life. And he really just took the moment, and I love that.”

Less enamoured at first was staunchly pro-Trump Laura Ingraham, who live-tweeted the speech with complaints about policy substance, Mr Biden and Barack Obama’s attitude at the Trump inauguration, and Mr Biden’s diagnosis of social problems.

“We are a good and decent people??” she wrote. “He just said that the country is marked by systemic racism. Did anyone edit this speech?”

Yet even she conceded onscreen later that night that Mr Biden “did beat expectations” – this during a discussion with no less than the president’s son, Donald Jr. “I mean, people were expecting him to flub every line and have a senior moment.”

Others in the network’s high-profile roster kept quiet. Sean Hannity left the speech untouched, despite having hosted a lengthy live phonecall with the president earlier the same night in which Mr Trump claimed nonspecifically that there is “something wrong” with Joe Biden.

Also silent was South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime colleague of Mr Biden’s who has become one of Mr Trump’s most aggressive defenders in Washington – despite having not voted for the president in 2016, instead calling him “a race baiting, xenophobic religious bigot”.

Mr Graham delivered his verdict on many of the convention’s lead speakers throughout the week on Twitter, writing that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “give sore losers a bad name”, that radical left-wingers are pulling the Democrats’ strings, and that the Obama administration left the US in a dire mess. Many of his harsh messages throughout the week have been retweeted by Donald Trump.

However, he did praise Jill Biden as “an outstanding person who has led a consequential life” – and on the Democratic nominee’s headline speech, he held fire completely.