How Trump Is Trying to Dodge a Debate Trap That Republicans Often Fall Into With Biden

What message do you think Donald Trump would like to broadcast about President Joe Biden ahead of the first presidential debate on Thursday? We don’t need to think too hard about this one. Trump would like to brag about how he’s going to destroy Biden in a victory that will be scored unanimously by the punditry. He’d like to boast about how Biden won’t be able to find words, so powerful a force will he be facing in Donald Trump. He’d like to project certain excellence.

This, however, would be a direct violation of the predebate playbook, and Trump—perhaps recognizing a future involving a jail cell should he lose the election—is running more of a controlled campaign than in runs past. A trap that Republicans, including Trump, often fall into with Biden is lowering expectations to the point that Biden can declare victory afterward by maintaining a consistent respiratory cycle for 90 minutes. Members of Team Trump, as well as the candidate himself, have recognized this tendency and are attempting to raise Biden’s expectations.

In a podcast interview last week, Trump said of Biden, “I assume he’s going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater,” adding that he does not “want to underestimate him.”

In the interview, he repeatedly referenced Biden’s performance in his 2012 vice presidential debate with Paul Ryan. “I watched him with Paul Ryan, and he destroyed Paul Ryan,” Trump said. “So, I’m not underestimating him. I’m not underestimating him. It is what it is. We’ll see what happens.” Needing to hype up Biden mustn’t have been the easiest pill for the Trump campaign to get its candidate to swallow. Promising he could do so by taking a shot at Ryan, though, likely made it a little more palatable.

Among the Trump surrogates making the case that Biden is actually one of America’s finest debaters is North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, the current betting favorite to be Trump’s running mate. “When he needs to, he can step up,” Burgum said of Biden on CNN this past weekend. “This guy has got the ability—and we’ve seen it, we’ve seen him in debate four years ago, we’ve seen him in the State of the Union this year—that when he needs to, he can step up.”

There’s a touch of shade in there: that Biden can, once in a blue moon, become not actively terrible. And yet it’s hard to avoid the observation that what Trump and Burgum are saying in the debate run-up contradicts the campaign’s central point of attack against Biden: He’s senile. And so, the way they’ve harmonized these two competing thoughts—Biden is great at debates, but also he has no idea where he is or what’s happening—is by saying that he’s on drugs.

“Right now, Crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’ ” Trump said at a rally this past weekend, referring to Biden’s debate prep at Camp David. “He’s sleeping now because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass.” He then said, “I’m sure he’ll be prepared,” adding, “Whatever happened to all that cocaine that was missing a month ago from the White House?” (That incident actually occurred last year, so the powder could by this point be a little tainted.)

Now, that’s a little more like it. And the Trump orbit’s refrain Biden will be on drugs has gone a little further than Trump talking shit at a rally. Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as the White House doctor under multiple presidents before going just insane enough to land a seat in Congress, sent a letter to Biden (cc’d to the entire Cabinet), saying, “I demand that you submit to an appropriate and clinically validated drug test prior to and after the upcoming debate.” He pushed this demand over the weekend too, in a Fox News interview.

I am posting the clip here, and I encourage you to watch it because it’s well past the line of people making a few gags. Jackson is saying, with a straight face—to a deeply credulous Maria Bartiromo—that what Biden was really doing at Camp David was “experimenting with just getting the doses just right” on his drug cocktail. In Jackson’s opinion, the blend included something to “help him think straighter,” something to “wake him up,” and something to take “the edge off” so he’s not quite so agitated. He then names medications that he believes that Biden is taking. It’s understandable Jackson would assume that White House doctors sling around drugs this liberally, given that Jackson was reportedly nicknamed “the Candyman” for doing so himself during his tenure there. Yet this speculation is presented as an actual news report. They are dead serious. I know that this is a naïve thing to be saying in 2024, but it’s surprising that this was cleared by even a perfunctory standards department at any television network whatsoever. Another zero on that $787 million settlement with Dominion could’ve made a world of difference.

So, to recap, the Trump message is: Biden stinks. Well, Biden doesn’t stink at debates. Well, Biden doesn’t stink at debates because he’s on drugs, mixtures of which are being tested on him at the Camp David apothecary. But even if the team can’t get the president’s humors in balance, Trump’s team argues, there is one more Biden advantage: The moderators are rigged against Trump.

On Monday morning, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt appeared on CNN, the network hosting the debate, to raise hell about its choices of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as moderators. “President Trump is knowingly going into a hostile environment on this very network, on CNN, with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known over the past eight years in the biased coverage of him,” Leavitt said to host Kasie Hunt. After Hunt defended the moderators, Leavitt continued, over Hunt’s objections: “It would take someone five minutes to google ‘Jake Tapper Donald Trump’ to see that Jake Tapper has consistently, frequently likened President Trump to Adolf Hilter.” (She meant Hitler.) After a little more cross talk, Hunt booted her off the air.

I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that being kicked off didn’t hurt Leavitt’s feelings. She immediately went on Fox News Radio to argue that the episode “just shows that exactly what we’re saying is true—that CNN is not a friendly Trump network and it won’t be friendly to him on Thursday night.”

The railing against CNN, which has not been limited to Leavitt, serves a few purposes. It’s an attempt to work the refs and force Tapper, Bash, and the network itself to go to extra lengths to prove they’re not “biased.” It allows Trump, after the debate, to say that he either did well in spite of a rigged setup or did poorly because of a rigged setup. And lastly, it gives Trump an excuse to back out of the debate, either before or during it, should he get bored and decide to blow everything up for kicks.

It’s a lot.

It’s exactly what you’d expect.