By Trevor Hunnicutt, Nandita Bose, Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland
(Reuters) – Chairman Joe Biden‘s train wreck debate with the Republican opponent Donald Trump followed a series of decisions by his top advisers that critics now view as misguided, according to interviews with Democratic allies, donors and former and current aides.
Trump, 78, repeated a series of threadbare, blatant falsehoods during Thursday’s 90-minute debate, including claims that he actually won the 2020 election.
Biden, 81, has failed to refute them, and his bumbling, vacillating performance has led to calls from Democrats for him to end his search for a second term and to “self-examination” or resignations among top aides.
“My only request was to make sure he was rested for the debate, but he was exhausted. He was sick,” said one person, who said they had reached out to Biden’s top advisers in the days leading up to the debate to no avail. “What a poor decision to make him look sick and exhausted.”
Others were even sharper.
“I believe he’s over-coached and over-trained. And I believe [senior aide] Anita Dunn … put him in a position that was favorable to Trump and not to him,” said John Morgan, a Florida lawyer and key fundraiser for Biden.
Morgan said Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s lawyer who played Trump during the debates, “should be fired for good and never allowed anywhere near the campaign again.”
Biden’s debate strategy was signed by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to fuel an uneven reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former campaign strategist for Barack Obama, supported that strategy.
Confidence prior to the event was high. Trump was convicted of falsifying documents by a jury in New York on May 31, while Biden made successive visits to Europe.
To the surprise of some Biden aides, his stubbornly low poll numbers began rising nationally in the weeks that followed.
Advisors drew up a rigorous debate preparation calendar, with Biden confined to Camp David for six days.
A number of inner circle members, some of whom had been close to Biden for decades, were involved: Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, Dunn, former White House counsel and longtime adviser Mike Donilon, and a dozen other policy and political experts.
Biden’s campaign said Friday that no personnel shake-up is being considered. The preparation involved several aides, not just Dunn and Bauer, said a campaign official, who also noted that Morgan was not there.
In an email to supporters on Saturday, O’Malley Dillon said internal polling and focus groups after the debate showed no change in the opinions of voters in the battleground states. She warned that “exaggerated media stories” could lead to “temporary dips in the polls,” but said she was confident Biden would win in November.
FACTS AND SINGERS
Biden’s trips abroad, especially to France earlier this month, produced Republican clips on social media that mocked his age, but his team believed it also showed him as a strong leader on an international stage.
White House staffers traveling with the president were in good spirits when he arrived at Camp David on June 21. They believed Biden was entering the debate with the most valuable political asset: momentum, the wind at his back.
Biden flew to France, back to the United States, to Italy and to the West Coast, among other places, over a period of 14 days, after which he rested for a few days at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
According to several people who observed him during this period, he dragged himself along.
When Biden and his aides gathered at Camp David six days before the debate, the aides figured he had a lot to accomplish, more than his opponent. Trump could simply complain about the current administration — and Biden would need the facts and some pronouncements at his fingertips.
They expected Trump to be much more disciplined and prepared than in 2020 and believed they would have to unmask a series of barrages of lies.
In lengthy preparatory sessions, they peppered Biden with details and then followed them with mock debates.
Critics now say that the preparation should have focused on the bigger vision he has to sell to the country, and that Biden did not have enough rest in the debate.
If he is exhausted, Biden would also come down with a cold, White House aides said, as he has done regularly during his tenure after long periods of time-zone-bending.
The result, critics say, was candidate Biden at his worst: He appeared on stage with a pale face, his hair disheveled at his collar and his voice hoarse. He was often incoherent.
“I’ve never seen him act like this before,” said Michael LaRosa, a former special assistant to President Biden and spokesman for the first lady. Jill Biden.
“He can circle around most people when it comes to complicated policy issues,” LaRosa said. “This was always going to be a matter of presentation and cosmetics, and of superficial judgments about his performance. And he was unable to raise the bar.”
NEW DEBATE FORUM
Earlier this year, some Biden aides debated whether he should debate Trump at all, arguing that doing so would give Trump a broad public platform that would be detrimental to Biden.
Then Biden himself, in an April interview with shock jock Howard Stern, made a decision about the Trump debate that surprised some advisers. “I’m somewhere,” he said.
The triumphant memory of his State of the Union address in March was fresh in everyone’s minds. Biden’s team prepared for the debate but took radical steps to control the conditions.
They decided to cancel three long-planned presidential debates in September and October, hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates, still angry over the group’s handling of the 2020 debates.
Trump repeatedly violated the rules of what would become a chaotic first debate of 2020, showing up despite testing positive for COVID-19 and constantly talking about Biden.
His team tried to run the match on their own terms, with what they saw as a more flexible anchor on CNN. No audience cheering Trump’s invective. Networks and moderators inclined to challenge Trump. No Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A mute button.
The day after the debate, Biden returned with a powerful speech in North Carolina and a promise to keep going. Many donors and Democrats rallied behind him.
But the damage has been done.
When asked Sunday whether the Democratic Party was discussing a new candidate for 2024, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC, “There are very honest, serious, thorough conversations happening at every level of our party, because it is a political party and we have different points of view.”
Raskin added: “Whether he is the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he will be the keynote speaker at our convention.”
(This story has been corrected to accurately reflect who Morgan believes should be fired in paragraph 7, and to correct attribution to campaign official in paragraph 13)
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Nandita Bose, Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Diane Craft)
