Trump has been lying about Biden’s mental state. And the debate will prove it
To say Donald Trump has ever participated in a debate is to seriously stretch the definition of the word. He doesn’t “debate” so much as scream, interrupt, gainsay, project his own disqualifying flaws onto his opponents, and attempt to kill the person standing next to him. That said, Trump is slated to face off against President Joe Biden next week (and unsurprisingly sans Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) in a lovefest that will surely invite comparisons to either the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates or that time your MAGA uncle whipped a can of fruit cocktail at your head for accurately citing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. But if Trump is bad at debating—and he is—he may be even worse at the delicate expectations game that has preceded every presidential and vice presidential debate since time immemorial. Trump’s poll numbers have slid a bit since his felony conviction—though not as much as his media company stock, which is currently dropping fast—so he and Fox News are leaning heavily into the “Biden is hopelessly senile” canard. But that could be a huge mistake—one that gives Biden a boost going into the debates while threatening to upend the dishonest narrative the right has worked so hard to confect. MAGA-aligned operatives and pundits were already upset earlier this year when Biden delivered a confident and commanding State of the Union performance, which—temporarily, at least—turned the “Biden is senile” trope on its ear. Now, they’ve set up an expectation—among Republicans, independents, and even some Democrats—that a hale and hearty Trump will steamroll his hopelessly overmatched opponent on the June 27 debate stage. And because he’s nothing if not clueless and incompetent, Trump is eagerly feeding into that expectation. The New York Times: The expectations game is a particular challenge for the Trump campaign. Mr. Trump, 78, has spent months casting the 81-year-old Mr. Biden as a husk of a man who can barely walk or formulate complete sentences. Republicans have pumped out a stream of videos of Mr. Biden walking stiffly — some deceptively edited — that are meant to be proof of Mr. Biden’s decline. As anyone who knows even a little about politics is aware, setting low expectations for your opponent prior to a high-profile debate is a cardinal sin, because even a serviceable performance will inevitably be alchemized into triumph in the post-debate media crucible. Recall the 2008 vice presidential debate between Biden and three-quarter-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Expectations were so low for Palin going into that debate, the only way she could have undershot them is if Jesus had spontaneously raptured her to the nearest Cracker Barrel to save her further embarrassment. So because she didn’t do anything off-the-charts absurd or offensive—like signal a domestic terror group to “stand by”—she received less-than-awful reviews for her performance. So what some had expected to be a death knell for the McCain-Palin campaign arguably turned out to be a minor boost. Of course, in presidential debates the stakes are immeasurably higher—and the klieg lights hotter—so even a competent Biden performance could help settle the nerves of voters who for several years have seen little more than the Biden caricature. And if Biden is able to demonstrate the same vigor and command of the issues he did during his March SOTU, he could wildly exceed expectations. After all, based largely on what Trump and his confederates have been saying for weeks, Republicans would scarcely be surprised if Jill Biden rolled her husband out on a dolly, with a pair of mittens safety-pinned to his sleeves. If Biden shows a better grasp of the issues than Trump—and he will, because Trump’s understanding of abstruse policy proposals is pretty much limited to what they’ll do to his hair—this debate could begin to reshape the contours of the race. Even Trump—as non compos mentis as he’s been of late—appears to have some vague understanding of the trap he could be setting for himself. The New York Times: But Mr. Trump was also preparing for his caricature of Mr. Biden to be punctured next week. He openly wrestled with the obvious question: What if Mr. Biden clears the very low bar that Mr. Trump has now set for him? He had answers: If that should happen, it’s only because Mr. Biden will be “pumped up,” he told his followers, suggesting that the president would hoover up a pile of cocaine beforehand, since the narcotic was recently found in the White House by the Secret Service, though investigators never did figure out how it got there and it was not linked to the president or anyone in his family. Ah, yes, the “Biden is on drugs” rationalization. Trump tried this one during the State of the Union as well—essentially conceding that Biden had given a tour de force performance. Of course, if there were a drug that could turn a feebleminded old man into a sly, keenly observant policy wonk overnight, no doubt Trump would be on i
JoriPress
To say Donald Trump has ever participated in a debate is to seriously stretch the definition of the word. He doesn’t “debate” so much as scream, interrupt, gainsay, project his own disqualifying flaws onto his opponents, and attempt to kill the person standing next to him.
That said, Trump is slated to face off against President Joe Biden next week (and unsurprisingly sans Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) in a lovefest that will surely invite comparisons to either the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates or that time your MAGA uncle whipped a can of fruit cocktail at your head for accurately citing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.
But if Trump is bad at debating—and he is—he may be even worse at the delicate expectations game that has preceded every presidential and vice presidential debate since time immemorial.
Trump’s poll numbers have slid a bit since his felony conviction—though not as much as his media company stock, which is currently dropping fast—so he and Fox News are leaning heavily into the “Biden is hopelessly senile” canard.
But that could be a huge mistake—one that gives Biden a boost going into the debates while threatening to upend the dishonest narrative the right has worked so hard to confect.
MAGA-aligned operatives and pundits were already upset earlier this year when Biden delivered a confident and commanding State of the Union performance, which—temporarily, at least—turned the “Biden is senile” trope on its ear.
Now, they’ve set up an expectation—among Republicans, independents, and even some Democrats—that a hale and hearty Trump will steamroll his hopelessly overmatched opponent on the June 27 debate stage. And because he’s nothing if not clueless and incompetent, Trump is eagerly feeding into that expectation.
The expectations game is a particular challenge for the Trump campaign. Mr. Trump, 78, has spent months casting the 81-year-old Mr. Biden as a husk of a man who can barely walk or formulate complete sentences. Republicans have pumped out a stream of videos of Mr. Biden walking stiffly — some deceptively edited — that are meant to be proof of Mr. Biden’s decline.
As anyone who knows even a little about politics is aware, setting low expectations for your opponent prior to a high-profile debate is a cardinal sin, because even a serviceable performance will inevitably be alchemized into triumph in the post-debate media crucible.
Recall the 2008 vice presidential debate between Biden and three-quarter-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Expectations were so low for Palin going into that debate, the only way she could have undershot them is if Jesus had spontaneously raptured her to the nearest Cracker Barrel to save her further embarrassment. So because she didn’t do anything off-the-charts absurd or offensive—like signal a domestic terror group to “stand by”—she received less-than-awful reviews for her performance. So what some had expected to be a death knell for the McCain-Palin campaign arguably turned out to be a minor boost.
Of course, in presidential debates the stakes are immeasurably higher—and the klieg lights hotter—so even a competent Biden performance could help settle the nerves of voters who for several years have seen little more than the Biden caricature. And if Biden is able to demonstrate the same vigor and command of the issues he did during his March SOTU, he could wildly exceed expectations. After all, based largely on what Trump and his confederates have been saying for weeks, Republicans would scarcely be surprised if Jill Biden rolled her husband out on a dolly, with a pair of mittens safety-pinned to his sleeves.
If Biden shows a better grasp of the issues than Trump—and he will, because Trump’s understanding of abstruse policy proposals is pretty much limited to what they’ll do to his hair—this debate could begin to reshape the contours of the race.
Even Trump—as non compos mentis as he’s been of late—appears to have some vague understanding of the trap he could be setting for himself.
The New York Times:
But Mr. Trump was also preparing for his caricature of Mr. Biden to be punctured next week. He openly wrestled with the obvious question: What if Mr. Biden clears the very low bar that Mr. Trump has now set for him?
He had answers: If that should happen, it’s only because Mr. Biden will be “pumped up,” he told his followers, suggesting that the president would hoover up a pile of cocaine beforehand, since the narcotic was recently found in the White House by the Secret Service, though investigators never did figure out how it got there and it was not linked to the president or anyone in his family.
Ah, yes, the “Biden is on drugs” rationalization. Trump tried this one during the State of the Union as well—essentially conceding that Biden had given a tour de force performance. Of course, if there were a drug that could turn a feebleminded old man into a sly, keenly observant policy wonk overnight, no doubt Trump would be on it—and his rants about whale-murdering windmills would suddenly be meticulously footnoted and duly submitted for peer review.
But Trump’s rancid cognitive paella essentially precludes the processing of new information. As Steve Benen of the MaddowBlog notes, Trump keeps making the same mistake one election cycle after another. In 2020, Trump took an unconventional (i.e., addlepated) tack, promising to DESTROY Biden in the debates. But what he actually did was set Biden up for an easy win:
The results were predictable: National polling found that a plurality of Americans expected Trump to win his 2020 debates against Biden. The Republican set out to convince the public that he would bulldoze his Democratic challenger, and many voters believed him.
But the plan backfired: When Biden and Trump actually met for their debates, post-event polling found that most Americans thought Biden won, thanks in part to the low expectations he was easily able to clear.
Four years later, Trump, apparently a slow learner, is making the identical mistake. The more he tells the public that Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” the easier the task for the Democratic incumbent. If Biden is lucky, the former president will stick to his current strategy, indifferent to the fact that he’s inadvertently helping the opponent he’s trying to hurt.
Meanwhile, reports are Trump is taking his upcoming debate with Biden seriously. According to The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Trump does appear to understand that Biden is more formidable than either he or Trump’s media surrogates have been letting on.
“Trump doesn't like prep. I mean, he considers it school,” Haberman recently told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “So the fact that they’ve gotten him to do it this way is actually pretty revealing and also speaks to the fact that I think he knows that this has to go well for him. He has said to people multiple times that he knows that he interrupted too much in the first debate with Biden in 2020. And having just rewatched that debate recently, it’s really striking. I mean, we all talked about it at the time, but Biden could barely get a word in edgewise and Biden was kind of smiling throughout as this was happening.”
Of course, CNN has adopted rules that appear designed to curb some of Trump’s more feral instincts—moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be able to mute the participants’ mics and will “use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion.” That’s certainly a good start, though the network might consider adding tranq guns, holy water, and garlic (or, really, any vegetable that’s not a fried potato) to their ordnance if they truly want to keep the Yellin’ Felon at bay.
As we get further into campaign season and voters start paying closer attention, President Biden has an opportunity to fight against the dishonest caricature that’s been created by Trump, Fox News, et al. At the same time he’ll expose Trump, who almost never makes sense, for what he really is—a cognitively challenged candidate (and criminal) with impulse control problems and lots of really terrible (and transparently un-American) ideas.
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