President Joe Biden and his rival, former president Donald Trump, are finalizing details to address the first presidential debate this Thursday, considered the most momentous in decades and with the ability to reshape the race for the White House, since it occurs before the official start of the campaigns and everything indicates that it will focus on personal attacks.
The debate organized by CNN for Thursday, June 27 in Atlanta will mark the third time that Biden and Trump have met to debate.
But this time the two meet before being nominated as official candidates at the national conventions of their respective parties and represents a change from the tradition of previous years.
The president traveled to Camp David on Friday, where he is meeting with his advisors, while the former Republican president spent the weekend speaking to his supporters at meetings in Washington and Philadelphia, where he created expectations about who his new vice presidential candidate will be. say that he has already decided who it will be, but he will not reveal it.
Trump asked his audience this weekend in Philadelphia if he should be “tough and nasty” in the debate and asked them to choose the insult they like best: ‘Corrupt Joe’ or Sleepy Joe’, while refocusing in criticizing his rival for the increase in immigration and crime, something he will repeat face to face.
After saying for months that President Biden was a man incapable of articulating two sentences, Trump has changed his tone days before his first debate.
“I assume he will be someone worth debating,” the former president and presumptive Republican presidential candidate said in an appearance on “The All-In” podcast last week.
“I don’t want to underestimate him,” he added.
The change in rhetoric marks a drastic shift from how Trump typically describes the man he will face again at the polls in November.
The disqualification of the independent presidential candidate leaves the CNN debate open only to the two leading candidates: Biden and Trump.
In his rallies and speeches, Trump often describes the current Democratic president as a “person of low intelligence” and as “the worst, most incompetent and most corrupt president” in the history of the country, and often imitates Biden, who appears lost on stage.
The attempt to adjust expectations ahead of Thursday’s matchup in Atlanta comes amid concern among some members of his party that Trump has set the bar so low for Biden that he will surely surpass it.
And it underlines what is at stake for both men in a race that has seemed largely static for months.
Millions of people are expected to follow the debate on Thursday, offering a unique opportunity for both sides to try to gain momentum in a race that will likely be decided by a small fraction of voters in a handful of battleground states.
Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, has remained tight-lipped about the details of how it is preparing, but reporting from CBS revealed that Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, is playing the role of Donald Trump in the mock debates.
The president intends to hit Trump by reminding him that he is a “convicted felon”, a “deranged man” and “the architect” of the end of federal protections for the right to abortion.
Biden’s team is also ready to simultaneously deny the incorrect data that the former Republican president uses in the debate.
And both campaigns know that part of the success of their candidate’s presentation will be the viral moments on social networks, regardless of whether the data offered or the accusations are based, leaving behind the proposals on important issues.
This week Trump hopes to continue meetings at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida with advisors and allies to review key and recurring points in his attacks against Biden such as foreign policy and inflation.
He will surely make immigration his main issue and will again use the recent murder and rape cases in which immigrants have been accused.
He has also been studying how to address the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, which Biden has called an attack on American democracy, The Hill newspaper reported.
“He’s thinking about how to translate these really important issues into a message that works,” Senator JD Vance, who is part of the list of possible vice presidential candidates, told Fox News.
The White House reported that Biden will depart from Camp David on Thursday for Atlanta and will be accompanied by the first lady, Jill Biden. On Friday the presidential couple will travel to North Carolina for a campaign event in Raleigh.
Meanwhile, former President Trump plans to hold a rally on a Virginia farm a day after the debate in which he will be accompanied by the governor of that state, Republican Glenn Youngkin.
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