Baiting the Debates

Joe Biden’s surprise announcement was a masterful stroke.

You have to hand it to the Biden Campaign. They sure have learned how to bait Trump into making unforced errors.

For months, Donald Trump has engaged in braggadoccio. At his rallies and on social media, he has thrown down the debate gauntlet.

”ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!” Trump declared, oblivious to the awkward redundancy of WHERE and PLACE.

In his eagerness to sound tough, Trump agreed to a debate under whatever conditions Biden wanted, run by whomever he wanted. “The Debates can be run by the Corrupt DNC, or their Subsidiary, the Commission on Presidential Debates,” Trump threw out. It didn’t matter. He was ready.

On Wednesday, Biden surprised Trump and seized the narrative by accepting the challenge. He taunted Trump by reminding him that he lost the last two debates. “So let’s pick the dates, Donald,” Biden said. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.”

That’s some Dark Brandon there. Wednesdays are the days Trump has off from his criminal trial.

Political observers are widely crediting Biden for a masterful stroke. (The exception appears to be the New York Times, whose analysis predictably led with the false idea that Biden is “trailing in the polls” so he simply had to do this.)  Biden’s surprise announcement, followed by Trump’s quick acceptance and inevitable trash talking, gained Biden three key advantages. I’ll walk through them in today’s piece.

I bring you a perspective and news the mainstream media doesn’t. If you find this of value, please consider becoming a paid supporter!

Defining a two-person race early on

With the presidential contest all but certain to be a rematch, it is to Biden’s advantage to draw as many one-on-one comparisons as he can with Trump, and to do so as early as he can. 

Presently, Biden is running more or less against his own record in the minds of many voters, who remain disgruntled over the lingering effects of inflation and are apparently worried about non-existent migrant crime waves. He stands to benefit when voters actually start comparing him to the alternative.

The CNN Debate is now set for June 27th in Atlanta. If that feels early to you, it is. It falls well before either of the two parties’ national conventions in July and August, and is only possible because the party nominations on both sides are pretty much locked up.

By framing this as a two-person race early on, Biden can force voters to look beyond their misgivings over his record and truly consider a more binary choice. The Campaign is betting that once the spotlight is also on Trump over issues on the minds of many voters—from abortion, to democracy and the rule of law, to support for our allies—the picture will become far clearer, especially to voters who haven’t yet tuned into the race or the danger Trump poses.

A Biden Campaign spokesperson noted that when Trump is on stage at the debates, American voters will also see for themselves just how extreme he is. And when Trump lies, President Biden will be right there and is prepared to call that out—and to talk about what Trump actually did and the extreme things he is pledging to do if elected.

Further, assuming RFK Jr. fails to qualify to be on the stage with them, Biden can push all the third party candidates to the margins and cause voters to consider the two top contenders only, at least in that moment. 

An early debate also gives Biden plenty of time to adjust his strategy and win over voters even if he underperforms, which isn’t likely but is possible. Trump, on the other hand, is singularly incapable of adjusting his style or approach to the election. If he bombs at the June debate, he still won’t be able to course correct for September. 

The format

Trump does better when he can bully and interrupt his opponent, and when there’s a live audience whose energy he can feed off of. But by agreeing quickly to whatever format the networks wanted, Trump bafflingly ceded this advantage completely. Indeed, Trump accepted the CNN debate in June, even though it will be without an audience, and even though mics may be cut off after response times are up.

You may remember the last time Biden and Trump debated in 2020. Trump’s mic was live the whole evening, and he interrupted 148 times. Chris Wallace, who moderated that debate, admitted that he lost control of it. The format frustrated many voters, who couldn’t hear anything but Trump interjecting. Joe Biden famously, and exasperatingly, complained, “Will you shut up, man?”

This time around, Wallace, who is now at CNN but will not be moderating the June debate, remarked that not having an audience present will make for a “cleaner” experience for the candidates and for the viewers at home. He also opined that it would be “suicidal” for Trump to constantly interrupt Biden again like he did in 2020.

Let’s hope instead that the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, don’t allow such interruptions and that the sound engineers really do cut Trump’s mic when his time is up.

The expectations game

On top of ribbing Trump about his trial schedule, Biden taunted him over his ride. Responding to the invitation to debate by ABC, Biden stated,

I've also received and accepted an invitation to a debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday, September 10th. 

Trump says he’ll arrange his own transportation. I’ll bring my plane, too. I plan on keeping it for another four years.

The Biden Campaign is taking a page from the Lincoln Project, as commentator Ron Filipkowski noted. This kind of taunt has an audience of one in mind, and Trump took the bait again. 

On Truth Social, in response to Biden’s taunts, Trump went on a characteristic rant. He declared, without irony, that “Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced - He can’t put two sentences together!”

Generally speaking, before going into a debate it is advisable to lower expectations about your own performance while raising them for the other guy. If America is prepped by Trump to expect a man who can barely talk, they are going to be very surprised by Biden’s actual abilities, just as many were after each State of the Union address. 

Biden is in fact a strong debater. It’s one of his strengths. He comes off as reasonable, affable and likable. That’s how he was able to own the Republicans at the last two SOTU addresses and sail past voter expectations. 

Many Fox watchers (and quite a few New York Times readers) have been told again and again that Biden is low energy, ancient and feeble-minded. After the debates were announced, Fox host Laura Ingraham even played into this further, claiming rather incredibly that “all Trump has to do is stay calm during the entire debate and let Biden rant and rave, because Scranton Joe is sounding meaner, more petty by the day. Trump, by comparison, he easily appears presidential, cool, confident, and yeah, possessing a lot of common sense.”

No, she didn’t get the two names mixed up. Welcome to the upside down.

The June debate will be an opportunity to hold that statement and others like it up to live scrutiny. Many of Ingraham’s viewers will tune in to see Biden in action against Trump expecting to see what Ingraham has described, and they may come away shocked.

Fox’s Sean Hannity, who understands a bit more about how this works, has already sought to blunt any strong debate performance by Biden. He suggested, again without irony, that “jacked up Joe” would be on stimulants.

Accusation meet confession. 

Will Trump bail?

Now that Trump rather foolishly has accepted the terms of the two debates, his acolytes in the GOP are already complaining and alleging that the whole thing is a Democratic/media set-up.

Tweeted Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT):

With CNN moderating, is it even a debate?

It seems like it should be called something else.

It’d be a far more accurate description of CNN’s intentions to call it something like:

“Live From CNN: Let’s Make Biden Look Presidential While Turning Trump Into A Piñata.”

And VP hopeful and one-time presidential candidate who was too-brown-for-Ann-Coulter-to-ever-vote-for Vivek Ramaswamy even suggested a ruse was in the works:

Call me cynical, but why is Biden suddenly so willing to debate? It could be because he’s desperate, or it could be because it’s a set-up. Keep an eye on the details of how all this comes together. You don’t often see a sudden 180 like this unless there’s more to the story.

All this may give cover for Trump to eventually reconsider and back out of the debates, especially if his aphasia is becoming more pronounced. The Biden Campaign is prepared for that possibility. Said campaign chair Jen O’Malley,

Donald Trump has a long history of playing games with debates: complaining about the rules, breaking those rules, pulling out at the last minute, or not showing up at all— which he’s done repeatedly in all three cycles he’s run for president. He said he would debate President Biden anytime, anywhere, anyplace. In fact, he’s said and posted it dozens of times with varying degrees of comprehension and basic grammar. President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms. No more games. No more chaos, no more debate about debates. We’ll see Donald Trump on June 27th in Atlanta—if he shows up.