Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

This week, I shared an article about U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks claiming in a televised interview that President Joe Biden would step onto to the debate stage, high on drugs to cover up his “cognitive decline.” I described her comments as “dirty politics scraping the bottom of the barrel,” and her efforts to curry favor with Dictator-for-a-day Donald as a sign of her own “moral & ethical decline.”

Well, after anguishing through Thursday night’s debate, I have to admit that Miller-Meeks had it partially right. It was obvious that Biden was on something when he stepped onto the debate stage: cold drugs. His hoarse, gravely voice, his obvious congestion, his partial brain fog gave ample testimony to every speaker’s and performer’s nightmare of falling ill and being medicated just before having to step on stage before an audience.

Even so, while Biden failed to deliver the knock-out punches that Trump deserved, he was able to counter the litany of outrageous lies with facts—feebly delivered, but facts nonetheless.

As disgusted as I was by Miller-Meeks’ defamatory attacks on the president the day before the debate, I was equally disgusted, if not more so, by the many commentators, journalists, and fellow Democrats who were so quick to throw Biden under the bus after the debate. Many floated or demanded his removal as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Friday morning, turning to the editorial page of the New York Times, it was disgraceful to witness such calls coming from op-eds writer I greatly respect.

First, a Times Opinion roundup: “‘God Help Us’: 12 Writers Rate Biden’s Performance at the First Presidential Debate.” (Later on June 28, the lead editorial declared, “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race.”)

Thomas Friedman: “Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race.”

Frank Bruni: “Biden Cannot Go on Like This”

Nicholas Kristof: “President Biden, I’ve Seen Enough”

Is this the way America repays a person who has led our nation with dignity, integrity, wisdom, and compassion for the last four years? One bad night and out he goes?

Is this how we repay the man who accomplished so much in his efforts to bring us out of the dark days of the COVID-19 epidemic, doing it in spite of a hostile Republican stranglehold on the U.S. House? Imagine how much more he could have accomplished if the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for the past two years.

Are we so ready to forget the horrors of the Trump presidency, with the cruelty of its family separation policy, its feeding the fires of white supremacy hate, and its COVID denialism that cost so many American lives?

Are we to be a nation ungrateful for exemplary service, ready at a moment’s notice to toss aside a tested defender of the rights of all Americans, and surrender our democracy back into the hands of a hateful aspiring despot who proudly proclaims his intention to exchange our freedoms for an autocracy based on the governments of the most despicable tyrants of our day? The man is literally selling the powers of the presidency to the highest corporate bidders. Shame! Shame! Shame!

And why are we doing this? For one bad performance on the debate stage? Not how one has “performed” their duties while in the Oval Office, but rather how one has “performed” on a stage. The show they put on to entertain an audience.

Is that what presidential debates have become about? Shouldn’t they be more about the messages, ideas, and ideals expressed than about the stage presence of the presenters? The very idea that Trump won that debate by telling lie after lie after lie after lie makes me want to puke.

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels famously said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Is this what the U.S. is becoming, a land where victory is handed to a well-spoken liar rather than to the messenger of truth? If so, God Help America!