OuttaNowhereWregget wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:58 am
The muting of the mics will benefit Trump more than Biden. My thinking is Trump won't be able to interrupt Biden if Joe loses his way in what he intends to say. He'll be left alone to stumble over or mix up or forget his words. Of course, Trump doesn't need any help to step in it all by himself when his mic is on. The 9pm broadcast is too late for me as I'm up with the birds, but it could end up being quite a spectacle.
Not-so-great expectations: For first presidential debate, Trump sets a very low bar for Biden
By Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, June 24, 2024
WASHINGTON — When Donald Trump agreed to President Biden’s proposal for two debates — the first coming on Thursday night — he immediately began to predict how his rival would perform. And while candidates often try to set high expectations for their opponents, to make it tough to exceed them, Trump went low.
Extremely low.
“Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on May 15 in accepting the debate plan. “He can’t put two sentences together!”
Trump and his allies have continued to hammer away at Biden’s mental acuity, including circulating misleading video clips purporting to show the president wandering aimlessly at a gathering of world leaders and having to be led around at recent events. The strategy builds off months of Republican mockery designed to amplify voter concerns in polls that Biden, 81, the oldest president ever, isn’t as capable of serving another term as Trump, who is just three years younger.
But the tactic carries a major risk. Setting the bar so low for Biden means he could clear it simply by finding his way on and off the CNN debate stage and answering questions coherently.
“It’s kind of a gamble,” acknowledged Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican. “If he has a good day, then he’ll exceed expectations. If he has a bad day, then I think it will accentuate the concern.”
Presidential debates often are as much about expectations as they are about performance, said Aaron Kall, an expert on presidential debates at the University of Michigan. That’s why candidates often try to raise expectations for their opponents.
In 2004, a top adviser to President George W. Bush praised his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, as “the best debater since Cicero.” The head of the Democratic National Committee returned the favor by calling Bush a “great debater” who had never lost one.
And before the 2016 debates, Democrat Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson said on Twitter that “Trump’s showmanship, as [an] ex-TV star, makes him a formidable debate foe.” In turn, Trump adviser Jason Miller highlighted Clinton’s experience and extensive preparations, saying she “has more debates under her belt than almost any presidential candidate in history.”
This year — a tight 2020 rematch brimming with bad blood — has been the reverse.
Biden recently called Trump “a little bit unhinged,” which could backfire if Trump is more restrained than when he repeatedly heckled and interrupted Biden in their chaotic first 2020 debate. In response to that, the microphones will be muted at the 2024 debates when it’s not a candidate’s speaking time.
But Trump has been the one relentlessly pounding down expectations for his opponent this time, declaring he was ready to debate Biden “any time, any place” and couldn’t “wait to wipe the floor with him.”
“The bar’s been lowered tremendously by Trump, his campaign, his surrogates, and that’s tremendously beneficial for Biden,” said Kall, editor and coauthor of the 2016 book “Debating the Donald.”
Republicans set similar low expectations for Biden in his State of the Union address this year, and he exceeded them.
The speech followed a special counsel report that declined to recommend charges for his mishandling of classified documents and referred to Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” But after a feisty and well-received performance, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found 29 percent of respondents said Biden did better than expected compared with 24 percent who said he matched their expectations and 12 percent who said he fell short.
“We saw him come out swinging at the State of the Union address,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. “I think he will be successful [at the debate] because people have traditionally, even decades ago, underestimated Joe Biden.”
Trump frequently derides Biden’s mental state, including pretending at rallies to be Biden unable to find his way off the stage.
“He’s no good with a teleprompter. He’s the worst I’ve seen. But could you imagine if the teleprompters went off?” Trump said in Las Vegas on June 9. “Here’s Biden: ‘Ohh. Ohh.’ He wouldn’t even say anything because he’s incapable.”
Six days later in Detroit, Trump claimed Biden was confused when watching skydivers at this month’s meeting of Group of Seven world leaders in Italy. “He had no idea where the hell he was,” Trump said. ”He’s watching a parachute land and he turns around to look at trees.”
In fact, Biden had turned to watch other landing skydivers. But the Republican National Committee posted a video clip that did not show the other skydivers and some conservative media jumped on the story as well.
Trump and Republicans also have pointed to a video clip circulated on social media to assert that Biden froze at the end of a June 15 Hollywood fund-raiser and had to be led off the stage by former president Obama.
“He looked like Jack Nicholson at the end of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ ” Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters last week, referring to a character in the 1975 movie who undergoes a lobotomy.
The White House said Biden paused to take in the applause from the crowd and called the video another example of Republicans trying to deceive the public. “They are cheap fake videos,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “They are done in bad faith.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung denied the videos were manipulated or misleading
“We post these videos unedited for the entire world to see, and they make their own judgement — which overwhelmingly is that Joe Biden is weak, incompetent, and a failure,” he said in a written statement to the Globe.
He accused the Biden campaign of being the one using misleading video for an ad featuring Trump saying there would be a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win. Cheung said the clip cut off the context that Trump was talking about the auto industry and the economy, although Trump appeared to go beyond that in his comments.
Brett O’Donnell, a Republican strategist and veteran debate coach, said Trump was taking a risk with his strategy.
“I worry that trying to just focus on the president’s age and his ability to perform could potentially be lowering the bar too much for Joe Biden,” O’Donnell said. A Fox News poll released Wednesday found 50 percent of respondents thought Trump would win the debate and 45 percent thought Biden would prevail. Those are similar to poll numbers ahead of the first 2020 debate, when Trump also tried much less aggressively to lower expectations for Biden.
A Biden campaign spokesperson would not comment on the debate expectations.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and Trump ally, said he recently told the former president to just focus on making his case to the American people.
“I think no matter what they say or do, the bar is going to be pretty low. I mean, he makes it through the debate he’ll be declared the winner and I told President Trump, ‘Don’t worry about that,’ ” Graham said. “People will make up their own mind about his physical abilities and his mental abilities.”
Trump recently tried changing tactics and seemed to boost debate expectations a bit for Biden. Trump called Biden “a worthy debater” and said he didn’t want to “underestimate him” in a podcast released on Thursday. Two days earlier, Trump repeated his frequent contention that Biden would take cocaine or other drugs to enhance his performance.
But the overwhelming message from Trump has been that Biden will be a disaster on the debate stage. And those low expectations will be more “fuel for the fire” for Biden, said Bill Russo, who was deputy communications director for Biden’s 2020 campaign.
“I’m sure he’s seen all the Trump stuff about him being senile and he can’t string a sentence together and all of that,” Russo said. “As they say, living well is the best revenge. And I’m sure doing well [in the debate] is the best revenge for him.”
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Never say never...
