Let’s cut to the chase: Thursday night’s double dumpster fire of a debate came down to two simple realities.

Joe Biden didn’t take enough meds. 

Donald Trump didn’t do enough homework.

Slumpy Joe shuffled in with the jerky gait of a bad dancer doing “The Robot.” And couldn’t even stumble and slur his way through talking points and zingers so carefully rehearsed during a week of isolation with 16 of his closest advisers at Camp David. 

While The Donald’s long, disconnected rambles demonstrated that he didn’t have any carefully rehearsed lines or zingers.

Excerpts from a head-scratching exchange over who was “the worst president in history” are especially instructive. 

Biden: “And, by the way, worst president in history, 159 presidential scholars voted him the worst president in the history of the United States of America.”

Trump: “He is the worst president, he just said about me, because I said it. But look, he’s the worst president in the history of our country. He’s destroyed our country. Now, all of a sudden, he’s trying to get a little tough on the border. He come out, came out with a nothing, a nothing deal, and it reduced it a little bit … like this much. It’s insignificant. He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed or he wants to pick up those people as voters.

“And I don’t think we … we just can’t let it happen. If he wins this election, our country doesn’t have a chance, not even a chance of coming out of this rut. We probably won’t have a country left anymore. That’s how bad it is. He’s the worst in history by far.”

Biden: “The idea that we’re talking about worst presidents. I wasn’t joking. Look it up … 159, or 58 don’t know the exact number [NOTE: actually 154]. They’ve had meetings, and they voted it was the worst president in American history, one for best to worst. They said he was the worst in all of American history. That’s a fact; that’s not conjecture. He can argue they’re wrong, but that’s what they voted.”

Trump: “We have polling, we have other things that do they rate him the worst, because what he’s done is so bad, and they rate me, I’ll show you, I will show you, and they rate me one of the best, okay.

“And if I’m given another four years, I will be the best. I think I’ll be the best. Nobody’s ever been in an economy like us. Nobody ever cut taxes like us. 

“He’s the only one I know … he wants to raise your taxes by four times … he wants the Trump tax cuts to expire, so everybody, including the two of you, are going to pay four to five times. Nobody ever heard of this. Before, all my life, I grow up, and I see politicians talking about cutting taxes, when we cut taxes. As I said, we did more business: Apple, and all these companies, they were bringing money back into our country. 

“The worst president in history by far, and everybody knows it.”

Gracious. Do you want ranch or vinaigrette with those word salads?

Here’s where a disciplined candidate has a hand grenade ready that blows away the opponent, Lloyd Bentsen I-knew-Jack-Kennedy style:

“Oh, 159 political scientists rating me the worst president. How convenient. Is that anything like ‘50 former national intelligence folks’ who before our previous debate delivered the lie from hell about Hunter’s laptop from hell?

“Or 16 ‘Nobel-winning economists’ who just claimed my policies would cause inflation? Thirteen of whom wrote earlier that your blowout spending would reduce inflation? 

“Maybe we should let our records – on food prices, the border, and ‘10% for the big guy’ from the laptop – speak for themselves instead of calling on your so-called ‘experts.’”

Or when Biden ran roughshod with charges of Trump praising “Nazis … carrying swastikas on torches” in Charlottesville – because The Donald was unspecific about how such accusations had been refuted.

What if Trump had been armed with: “The very liberal Snopes website became the latest to debunk that myth this week, Joe. Maybe you should debate with them”?

Yes, it sounds canned. But like historic sports plays, “defining moments” in debates are rarely spontaneous. Luck, legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey insisted, is the residue of design. And “rehearsal.”

Granted, The Orange Man jumped on Mr. Amtrak’s cognitive slip that he “beat Medicare” and strange acknowledgment of rapes by illegal aliens. And, reacting to one especially jumbled disquisition, quipped he didn’t know what his successor was saying and Biden didn’t, either.

But 45 so often wandered through vague, disjointed and surprisingly “inside baseball” discourses that one needed Google Maps to find the main points. On abortion. Veteran care. Foreign policy. And especially in failing to demonstrate that his statements that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO and that he had the right to “go after” his political opponents were also taken out of context.

Leaving the door open for Biden, who remained sufficiently conscious to gaslight by capitalizing on Trump’s reputation for untruthfulness and inappropriate behavior:

“Every single thing he said is a lie, every single one.”

“I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my whole life.”

“I’ve never heard so much foolishness.”

“The only person on this stage that is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.”

“No president in our history has spoken like that before.”

“You have the morals of an alley cat.”

“… something snapped in you the last time you lost.”

Meanwhile, my brethren here at I&I were half-correct in asserting that Biden’s closing statement was perhaps the sorriest ever. In fact, America witnessed two such denouements. Where in left field did “space-age materials” for the terminally ill or soldier “choice” come from? Inexcusable in the one opportunity completely in each candidate’s control.

Ninety minutes in Atlanta didn’t resolve which candidate was the “worst president in history.” But the worst presidential debate? Settled hands-down.

Bob Maistros is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.