We are just a few days away from a massive, important political debate between former President Trump and President Biden.
This race is extraordinarily tight, and it could go either way.
The outcome revolves around Trump’s performance more than Biden’s; Trump has much more to lose in this debate than Biden.
Everyone perceives Biden for what he is: a bad president. He may be extremely old, he may not be mentally all there, but he can surpass expectations because of that. All he has to do is show up, speak even somewhat coherently, and not fall over. The expectations bar has been set so low by the Trump campaign and the media that if Biden does so it will be deemed a big Biden win.
Trump, on the other hand, has to buck many factors. He has to buck the fact that the moderators hate his guts and do not want him to be reelected. They think he’s an actual Hitlerian figure.
He has to buck the fact that there’s no audience in the room. Donald Trump thrives on having an audience; he responds to the audience.
Some people think that the mics being muted might help Trump because it’ll prevent him from talking over Biden, but the problem with this is that Trump will not be able to jump in and get in a quick quip.
There are a lot of factors that are stacked against Trump here. But the biggest factor that is stacked against Trump is Trump himself because Trump’s tendency is to go extremely hard and aggressive to defend everything he has ever done.
In reality, what Trump needs to be is cool, calm, collected, and meticulous in his attack on Biden’s presidency. That’s because if the debate is a referendum on Biden’s presidency, Joe Biden loses. If this is a referendum on Trump’s character and his foibles, then Donald Trump loses.
Here’s how I think Trump should handle the debate: He needs to shift every attack directed at him back into a jujitsu attack on Joe Biden.
Before Trump even starts, he needs to lead off by setting the predicate for the debate. He needs to say:
Joe Biden is a dishonest man. He lied to you in the last round of debates I did with him. You’ll recall that in the last round of debates, he openly stated that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation and that Hunter had never taken any money from any Chinese source, for example. Those were lies. Joe Biden lies to you all the time. Joe Biden lies to you about the economy. Joe Biden lies to you about illegal immigration. Joe Biden lies to you about foreign policy. Joe Biden lied to you about the solidity of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Joe Biden is a liar. So what he says up here on the stage cannot be trusted because he is not a trustworthy figure.
That would set the groundwork for when Biden says things that are not true, Trump can say, “He’s lying. That’s not true.”
WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show
The second piece of groundwork Trump needs to set about Biden is that he is tyrannical, that he’s used the power of the executive branch in unprecedented ways.
He should say:
Joe Biden has had more executive orders than any president in modern history. He has used the power of the presidency in order to, in his own words, “avoid the rulings of the Supreme Court.” He has threatened 80 million Americans with vaccine mandates he said he would not initiate. He has shut down state attempts to close the southern border. He is tyrannical. Joe Biden does not care about the boundaries of government. He can pretend he’s standing up here for democracy, but he thwarts democracy with every step he takes.
Thirdly, he should declare Biden is an incompetent rube of a president and say:
Inflation reached a 40-year high under Biden and is now embedded in the economy. He has brought you a disastrous foreign policy; there are now two massive ongoing conflagrations across the world. Plus, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping are all hanging out together and plotting their next moves. The enemies of the United States lick their lips when they see Joe Biden in the White House.
Those are the three points Trump should set up as the predicate for the debate: Joe Biden is a liar, tyrannical, and incompetent.
Additionally, if Biden comes to the end of an answer but has time left on the clock, which will undoubtedly happen, and says, “Well, anyway, I don’t want to get into that,” and the moderators turn to Trump, Trump should say, “You know, Joe, you have a minute left on the clock. I really think the American people deserve to hear your thoughts.”
That will completely throw Biden. He won’t know what to do with it. It’ll be a great moment for Trump.
We know the lines of attack that are going to be used by Biden because he has used them already.
The number one line of attack will be January 6. He believes that this is his trump card. He believes it to be his get-out-of-jail free card, to say January 6 over and over.
What Donald Trump needs to say is:
Joe, you and I disagree on what happened in the 2020 election. I think that your party rigged many of the voting rules in advance of the election in order to ensure an extraordinary number of mail in ballots ballot harvesting. I think that you worked with the media in order to prevent the dissemination of a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the last month of the election and you and your son, knowing that the laptop was real, lied about it to the American people.
We can disagree about what happened in 2020, but none of that matters to the American people because right now the calendar reads June 27, 2024. No one in America is thinking about January 6, and the only reason you are is because you are a cynical actor attempting to avoid the consequences of your own failed presidency. Most Americans are concerned about how they put food on the table today. And that’s your fault because you’re the president. It doesn’t matter who I think won the presidency. You are the president. You’ve been the president since January 2021, and you’ve been terrible at it.
The second issue that Biden presumably is going to bring up is a corollary of the first, which is that Trump is a threat to democracy. He’s going to suggest that Trump wants to overturn the election and he’s threatened to be a dictator on day one.
Trump’s proper response on the “threat to democracy” is twofold. He should say:
Joe, you keep saying I’m a threat to democracy because I don’t believe I lost the 2020 election. I notice that Hillary Clinton doesn’t believe she lost the 2016 election, and that’s apparently just fine. And she keeps saying that it was Russian disinformation or that I stole the 2016 election.
You seem just fine with that. Half your party is fine with that. But put that aside. In reality, you are the threat to democracy. Democracy means, in the United States, a democratic republic with two elected branches of the legislature who are supposed to initiate bills and then you are supposed to effectuate those bills once you have signed them.
But that is not how you run the government. You set your political allies on me in the courts. You’ve had your party’s members from New York to D.C. to Florida to Atlanta target me for political reasons. I had zero criminal investigations into me into my eighth decade of life until I decided to run for reelection, at which point I got inundated with them. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. So I want you to explain, Joe, why it is that your DOJ let you off the hook and tried to get a sweetheart deal with Hunter before they were caught, but has been sicced on me in every jurisdiction you can find? Does that sound democratic to you? Trying to use the courts to go after your political opponent?
You used OSHA to mandate vaccines for 80 million Americans. You violated the Constitution to try to allow people to skate on their student loan debt so you can let a blue collar plumber pay for the tuition in the future of some gender theory major over at Wellesley. You violated your constitutional oath by keeping the border open and letting through at least seven million illegal immigrants.
That sounds like a threat to democracy to me and you’re baking all of these regulations into the administrative state so that even if I’m elected, it makes it difficult for me to change your policy. You have effectuated the establishment of a fourth unelected branch of government, independent of even the executive, unless the executive happens to be a Democrat.
That is response number one to the democracy issue.
The second response would be to say, “You have been a dictator the entirety of your presidency,” and then list the litany again.
The third issue will be the criminal conviction of Trump.
I think if Trump brings up Hunter Biden in response that would be a mistake, and he’ll walk right into a trap because Biden will throw his son under the bus and say, “I respected the justice system for my own son, so I certainly respect it for you.”
What Trump should say is:
Joe, you’re right. I was convicted by a Democrat judge and a Democrat prosecutor who coordinated to set up a series of specious charges in a district that you won overwhelmingly in an extraordinarily blue district in Manhattan, which is why the case was filed there. You’re right. I was convicted in that case. But at least I was found competent to stand trial. Your own Department of Justice refused to prosecute you for mishandling classified information, for keeping classified documents in your drawers, telling your ghostwriter about them, and keeping them in your car and garage. Your own DOJ refused to prosecute you because they effectively found that you are too old and too wavering mentally for a jury to convict you.
And now your own DOJ is stonewalling. They won’t even release the tape of you talking to them for a prolonged period of time. Why? Answer it, Joe. Why? Why won’t you authorize your DOJ to release the tape? You’re the president. You can release the tape today. Release the tape. If you say that you are so coherent and that Robert Hur’s a liar about your mental status, why not just release the tape of the interview?
Finally, the issue of style. This is going to be the most important element for Trump because he’s going to have to contain himself. And when Trump contains himself, he can be quite good at this. The truth is that in debates, Trump has historically done well in situations in which he has been more contained. If you remember the debates with Hillary, he was more contained.
The first debate with Biden in 2020 was disastrous because he wasn’t contained, but he likely won the second one because he was more contained.
Let Biden talk. That’s all. If he lets Biden talk for prolonged periods of time, people are going to see that he can’t even realistically defend his own policies.
The whole purpose of a debate is to be pointed and bring people’s attention where you want it. Trump needs to spend the entire debate redirecting attention from him to Biden — but that runs against Trump’s grain because he believes that when people are talking about him it means he’s winning.
But that was not true in 2020 and is not true in 2024.
Focusing on Biden and his record is the road to victory.
[#item_full_content]
[[{“value”:”
We are just a few days away from a massive, important political debate between former President Trump and President Biden.
This race is extraordinarily tight, and it could go either way.
The outcome revolves around Trump’s performance more than Biden’s; Trump has much more to lose in this debate than Biden.
Everyone perceives Biden for what he is: a bad president. He may be extremely old, he may not be mentally all there, but he can surpass expectations because of that. All he has to do is show up, speak even somewhat coherently, and not fall over. The expectations bar has been set so low by the Trump campaign and the media that if Biden does so it will be deemed a big Biden win.
Trump, on the other hand, has to buck many factors. He has to buck the fact that the moderators hate his guts and do not want him to be reelected. They think he’s an actual Hitlerian figure.
He has to buck the fact that there’s no audience in the room. Donald Trump thrives on having an audience; he responds to the audience.
Some people think that the mics being muted might help Trump because it’ll prevent him from talking over Biden, but the problem with this is that Trump will not be able to jump in and get in a quick quip.
There are a lot of factors that are stacked against Trump here. But the biggest factor that is stacked against Trump is Trump himself because Trump’s tendency is to go extremely hard and aggressive to defend everything he has ever done.
In reality, what Trump needs to be is cool, calm, collected, and meticulous in his attack on Biden’s presidency. That’s because if the debate is a referendum on Biden’s presidency, Joe Biden loses. If this is a referendum on Trump’s character and his foibles, then Donald Trump loses.
Here’s how I think Trump should handle the debate: He needs to shift every attack directed at him back into a jujitsu attack on Joe Biden.
Before Trump even starts, he needs to lead off by setting the predicate for the debate. He needs to say:
Joe Biden is a dishonest man. He lied to you in the last round of debates I did with him. You’ll recall that in the last round of debates, he openly stated that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation and that Hunter had never taken any money from any Chinese source, for example. Those were lies. Joe Biden lies to you all the time. Joe Biden lies to you about the economy. Joe Biden lies to you about illegal immigration. Joe Biden lies to you about foreign policy. Joe Biden lied to you about the solidity of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Joe Biden is a liar. So what he says up here on the stage cannot be trusted because he is not a trustworthy figure.
That would set the groundwork for when Biden says things that are not true, Trump can say, “He’s lying. That’s not true.”
WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show
The second piece of groundwork Trump needs to set about Biden is that he is tyrannical, that he’s used the power of the executive branch in unprecedented ways.
He should say:
Joe Biden has had more executive orders than any president in modern history. He has used the power of the presidency in order to, in his own words, “avoid the rulings of the Supreme Court.” He has threatened 80 million Americans with vaccine mandates he said he would not initiate. He has shut down state attempts to close the southern border. He is tyrannical. Joe Biden does not care about the boundaries of government. He can pretend he’s standing up here for democracy, but he thwarts democracy with every step he takes.
Thirdly, he should declare Biden is an incompetent rube of a president and say:
Inflation reached a 40-year high under Biden and is now embedded in the economy. He has brought you a disastrous foreign policy; there are now two massive ongoing conflagrations across the world. Plus, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping are all hanging out together and plotting their next moves. The enemies of the United States lick their lips when they see Joe Biden in the White House.
Those are the three points Trump should set up as the predicate for the debate: Joe Biden is a liar, tyrannical, and incompetent.
Additionally, if Biden comes to the end of an answer but has time left on the clock, which will undoubtedly happen, and says, “Well, anyway, I don’t want to get into that,” and the moderators turn to Trump, Trump should say, “You know, Joe, you have a minute left on the clock. I really think the American people deserve to hear your thoughts.”
That will completely throw Biden. He won’t know what to do with it. It’ll be a great moment for Trump.
We know the lines of attack that are going to be used by Biden because he has used them already.
The number one line of attack will be January 6. He believes that this is his trump card. He believes it to be his get-out-of-jail free card, to say January 6 over and over.
What Donald Trump needs to say is:
Joe, you and I disagree on what happened in the 2020 election. I think that your party rigged many of the voting rules in advance of the election in order to ensure an extraordinary number of mail in ballots ballot harvesting. I think that you worked with the media in order to prevent the dissemination of a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the last month of the election and you and your son, knowing that the laptop was real, lied about it to the American people.
We can disagree about what happened in 2020, but none of that matters to the American people because right now the calendar reads June 27, 2024. No one in America is thinking about January 6, and the only reason you are is because you are a cynical actor attempting to avoid the consequences of your own failed presidency. Most Americans are concerned about how they put food on the table today. And that’s your fault because you’re the president. It doesn’t matter who I think won the presidency. You are the president. You’ve been the president since January 2021, and you’ve been terrible at it.
The second issue that Biden presumably is going to bring up is a corollary of the first, which is that Trump is a threat to democracy. He’s going to suggest that Trump wants to overturn the election and he’s threatened to be a dictator on day one.
Trump’s proper response on the “threat to democracy” is twofold. He should say:
Joe, you keep saying I’m a threat to democracy because I don’t believe I lost the 2020 election. I notice that Hillary Clinton doesn’t believe she lost the 2016 election, and that’s apparently just fine. And she keeps saying that it was Russian disinformation or that I stole the 2016 election.
You seem just fine with that. Half your party is fine with that. But put that aside. In reality, you are the threat to democracy. Democracy means, in the United States, a democratic republic with two elected branches of the legislature who are supposed to initiate bills and then you are supposed to effectuate those bills once you have signed them.
But that is not how you run the government. You set your political allies on me in the courts. You’ve had your party’s members from New York to D.C. to Florida to Atlanta target me for political reasons. I had zero criminal investigations into me into my eighth decade of life until I decided to run for reelection, at which point I got inundated with them. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. So I want you to explain, Joe, why it is that your DOJ let you off the hook and tried to get a sweetheart deal with Hunter before they were caught, but has been sicced on me in every jurisdiction you can find? Does that sound democratic to you? Trying to use the courts to go after your political opponent?
You used OSHA to mandate vaccines for 80 million Americans. You violated the Constitution to try to allow people to skate on their student loan debt so you can let a blue collar plumber pay for the tuition in the future of some gender theory major over at Wellesley. You violated your constitutional oath by keeping the border open and letting through at least seven million illegal immigrants.
That sounds like a threat to democracy to me and you’re baking all of these regulations into the administrative state so that even if I’m elected, it makes it difficult for me to change your policy. You have effectuated the establishment of a fourth unelected branch of government, independent of even the executive, unless the executive happens to be a Democrat.
That is response number one to the democracy issue.
The second response would be to say, “You have been a dictator the entirety of your presidency,” and then list the litany again.
The third issue will be the criminal conviction of Trump.
I think if Trump brings up Hunter Biden in response that would be a mistake, and he’ll walk right into a trap because Biden will throw his son under the bus and say, “I respected the justice system for my own son, so I certainly respect it for you.”
What Trump should say is:
Joe, you’re right. I was convicted by a Democrat judge and a Democrat prosecutor who coordinated to set up a series of specious charges in a district that you won overwhelmingly in an extraordinarily blue district in Manhattan, which is why the case was filed there. You’re right. I was convicted in that case. But at least I was found competent to stand trial. Your own Department of Justice refused to prosecute you for mishandling classified information, for keeping classified documents in your drawers, telling your ghostwriter about them, and keeping them in your car and garage. Your own DOJ refused to prosecute you because they effectively found that you are too old and too wavering mentally for a jury to convict you.
And now your own DOJ is stonewalling. They won’t even release the tape of you talking to them for a prolonged period of time. Why? Answer it, Joe. Why? Why won’t you authorize your DOJ to release the tape? You’re the president. You can release the tape today. Release the tape. If you say that you are so coherent and that Robert Hur’s a liar about your mental status, why not just release the tape of the interview?
Finally, the issue of style. This is going to be the most important element for Trump because he’s going to have to contain himself. And when Trump contains himself, he can be quite good at this. The truth is that in debates, Trump has historically done well in situations in which he has been more contained. If you remember the debates with Hillary, he was more contained.
The first debate with Biden in 2020 was disastrous because he wasn’t contained, but he likely won the second one because he was more contained.
Let Biden talk. That’s all. If he lets Biden talk for prolonged periods of time, people are going to see that he can’t even realistically defend his own policies.
The whole purpose of a debate is to be pointed and bring people’s attention where you want it. Trump needs to spend the entire debate redirecting attention from him to Biden — but that runs against Trump’s grain because he believes that when people are talking about him it means he’s winning.
But that was not true in 2020 and is not true in 2024.
Focusing on Biden and his record is the road to victory.
“}]]
