Two presidents have never debated before. And neither of these two presidents has debated anyone in nearly four years — not since the last time they faced off.
Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are confident they can take each other out in next month’s CNN debate, people who spoke to them said, and each camp is confident that the other’s decline relative to four years ago will be overwhelming for voters everywhere. 90 minutes of live TV.
Both believe the debate can move the needle for that thin swath of undecided voters who don’t like either candidate and are ready to oppose whoever comes across worse.
But Biden and Trump are preparing in very different ways.
Between the president’s two multi-day trips planned for Europe to commemorate D-Day and for the annual G-7 summit and a fundraiser to California, Biden aides are planning extensive preparation sessions that will likely include a secluded stretch, possibly at Camp David. However, Trump’s advisers insist there have been no formal discussions about preparing for next month’s debate, especially with the candidate himself. Trump, who faces the end of his hush money criminal case in New York next week and awaits sentencing, has planned several events and his own fundraising drive in California.
Biden aides believe the president’s job on stage will be simple: both harass and harass Trump, repeatedly calling on his opponent to answer and explain the comments he has made and the positions he has taken.
They claim they were created to continue to profit from the way they cornered the former president into agreeing to a debate on their terms, format and timeline, and much of what Biden will do is to try to use that to confront Trump.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chairman of Biden’s reelection campaign, said that “in the end it doesn’t matter how Trump responds.”
“We’re not worried about the fact that the more people see the choice, the better it is for us, the more people feel it and hear it, see the crazy things it says,” she said, adding: “ This [debates] There are two moments when the president can stand with Donald Trump and show the strength of his leadership and show that there is only one choice here that can actually make a difference for the people.”
No amount of preparation or rehearsed text can cover these positions, Biden aides said, and even if they don’t get the wildly swinging responses they fantasize about, “the problem is for [Trump] there is no substantive answer to these questions that the American people will agree with,” said Michael Tyler, Biden’s campaign communications director.
Trump aides, meanwhile, said formal practice sessions are unlikely as Trump’s run-up to the debate is likely to look very different from the standard. While they acknowledge that plans could change — and that any change would have to come from Trump himself — they said that from now on there will be no one to play Biden’s role, that they will not ask the former president tough questions, and that they neither will. he practices dealing with moderators. More likely, they said, will be a series of meetings and conversations with close advisors.
Trump’s less structured preparation better suits his freewheeling style, they said, while also being careful not to set the bar too low for Biden, even as the former president regularly attacks his Democratic rival’s suitability.
Biden’s performance during his State of the Union address — which went largely well and led to many public reconsiderations about whether he was too small to run for a second term — is top of mind among some Trump aides. They expect Biden’s team to get him into a similar shape ahead of the debate.
“The American people are dissatisfied with his administration, and he will have to answer for three years of bad policies,” a Trump adviser told CNN.
An important date on the calendar
Biden’s campaign is using the June 27 debate as an organizing guideline, with two key dates on the calendar leading up to it.
The first is June 12, the day in 2016 when 49 people were killed in a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando by a man with the kind of automatic rifle Biden wanted to ban. Then it will be June 24, the anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
That next phase begins with a new ad out Friday, narrated by Robert De Niro, that hits on some of what the Biden campaign believes are their strongest points.
“We knew Trump was out of control when he was president,” De Niro says over a shot of Trump behind the Resolute Desk. “Then he lost the 2020 election and snapped.”
The ad describes him as making a “desperate” attempt to cling to power while showing footage of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The phrases “dictator” and “end the Constitution” flash on the screen, followed by a clip of Trump says: ‘If I don’t get elected, it will be a bloodbath.’
For Biden aides, talking about Trump having “snapped” continues to break the terms of the face even before they get to the debate stage. They said trolling Trump not only increases the likelihood of upsetting the former president; it’s what they need to cheer up the disenchanted in their own base who are struggling to get excited for Biden but can never get enough of hating Trump.
But several prominent Democrats said they worry that Biden will not appear as robust next to Trump. They live a daily nightmare of imagining some kind of stumbling block, literal or verbal, that Biden can’t get out of, and they think the debate stage seems like the obvious place where this could happen.
In 2020, as Biden and his closest advisers tried to figure out what he would face in the presidential debates, top aide Anita Dunn reached out for some insight to Anthony Scaramucci, the chief financial officer who had been serving as communications director for 11 days. Trump had spent. before being fired and then turning harshly on his former boss.
These days, Biden and his team feel like they have Trump so pinned down that they’re laying out much of what they want to talk about, and how they’ll circulate to reporters in a memo Friday, well over a month in advance. when the lights come on in Atlanta.
Trump aides, however, said they are not concerned, and neither is Trump, said people who have spoken to him. They believe that formats and calendars cannot change issues like immigration and the economy, which they believe dominate the race, and certainly cannot change how Biden appears on camera.
Biden and Trump have both previously struggled with debate preparation
Biden enjoys going after Republicans far more than he ever enjoyed going after fellow Democrats during many stumbling primary debate appearances in 2019 and 2020. But “drawn out” is a word often associated with Biden’s preparation.
People who have attended previous debate prep sessions with him said they were tiring and unproductive in the long run. He prefers to sit around a table covered in policy folders, trying to explain himself in long answers in ways he feels he hasn’t been able to do, asking anyone he can make eye contact with, “How could you doing?’
Much of the work goes into focusing him, said these people who prepared with him, and bringing him back to the key point or story the aides have identified.
Biden doesn’t like mock debates, say people involved in those sessions. Staff members built stages for him to use during the 2020 preparations and he stood with him occasionally, but he likes the feeling of having some fresh energy left for the evening itself.
But last time, aides continued to confront him about his Trump stand-in — Bob Bauer, his campaign’s attorney who has since represented Biden in several cases, including his deposition for the classified documents investigation that produced the special counsel’s report . in February. Time and time again, Bauer went after Biden with vicious attacks on his son Hunter and his family, trying to stun Biden for even worse comments than they expected Trump would dare make.
This worked well enough, Biden 2020 campaign aides argued, that Biden had one of his more lauded moments four years ago, when he responded to Trump’s attacks on his son with a firm but emotional statement about families like his struggling with addiction.
Ron Klain, the Democrats’ most experienced presidential debate coach and former Biden chief of staff, is expected to be involved again this time, but several people in the Biden circle are also pointing to longtime adviser and current deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed as a key figure in here. time. With Dunn, O’Malley Dillon and fellow aides Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon, the rest of Biden’s core political team that prepared him four years ago remains largely in place. The only major ones likely to be missing are adviser Antony Blinken, who is now secretary of state, and former communications director and deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield, who has left the White House and is now a CNN contributor, while former policy director Jake Sullivan is now the national security advisor.
As for Trump, several people who participated in his debate preparations in 2016 and 2020 say it was often difficult to keep him focused. Practice sessions would often pass.
His team is substantially different this time. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the top two assistants of this year’s campaign, were not involved in his 2020 preparation.
Catching Covid-19 during debate prep and being hospitalized marked the beginning of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s turn against the former president, and he has been vocal during his GOP primaries in 2024 made it abundantly clear and he hasn’t wanted to be anywhere near him since. Trump this time. Rudy Giuliani, who was also frequently in the White House at the time, is largely sidelined and is busy with his own charges.
CNN’s Steve Contorno contributed to this report.
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