The two candidates face each other in the first of two face-to-face meetings they will hold before the November 5 elections.
The campaign for the White House enters decisive hours. At 9 p.m. Atlanta time (3 a.m. Spanish peninsular time), the two candidates – the president, Joe Biden, and the candidate Donald Trump – face each other in the first of the two debates which they will hold before the elections on November 5. Tomorrow, Friday, at 10 a.m. in Washington (4 p.m. in Spain) the Supreme Court must issue its ruling on whether Donald Trump can be tried for attempting to steal the 2020 election.
These two days – today and tomorrow – could therefore be the ones that mark the most four months of campaigning still left. The first main course is the debate that, paradoxically, may be overshadowed by what the Supreme Court decides tomorrow. So all the attention tonight – in the US – or tomorrow morning – in Spain – can take a backseat depending on what the Supreme Court judges decidealthough many believe that its resolution will be favorable enough towards Donald Trump to delay the only one of the three remaining trials and that it could be held before the elections, for after them. It would thus be an indirect way of support trump but without making it too blatant.
The debate comes with Trump and Biden tied in the pollsalthough the first has a minimal advantage that, in the American elections, gives him about a 66% chance of winning the election, according to experts in electoral statistics. But, apart from that, the meeting is marked by a key question, created by Donald Trump: the drugs. The Republican candidate has decided accuse Biden of taking drugs to improve their mental agility and their dialectical ability in the event, which will last 90 minutes and has been organized by the CNN television network.
Trump has insisted in recent days that Biden is going to be “on a drug high,” including “a very big shot in the ass,” although on Saturday, at a rally in Philadelphia, he upped the ante and talked about cocaine. His adviser Marianete Miller Meeks has said that the president will receive Adderalla drug used to treat narcolepsy and improve concentration, and Missouri Congressman, Eric Burlisonhas suggested that what Biden is going to do is drink a lot Mountain Dewa perfectly legal drink but with enough sugar to kill a blue whale.
SAME ATTACKS, DIFFERENT OPPONENTS
All these accusations follow exactly the 2016 pattern when Trump also accused his then Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of taking drugs on the eve of the third and final debate before the election. On this occasion, however, Trump’s campaign is much more organized that then – and also in 2020 – so the message is more coordinated. Likewise, the Republican candidate and his advisors have directed their attacks towards the television channel that organizes the debate, CNN, and towards the two moderators of it, Joe Tapper and Dana Bash.
The Trump team’s criticism is based on CNN’s Democratic editorial line, the criticism that Tapper dedicates to the former president almost daily (although Bash has been a Republican for most of her life) and on the debate format – 90 minutes without interruptions, without an audience, without advisers and with the microphones connected only when it is each person’s turn to speak – which is not favorable to the Republican candidate.
The presence of the public is always an injection of energy for Trumpwho is usually very aware of the reactions that his words and gestures provoke in the audience. The Republican candidate also tends to interrupt his opponents, which led Biden, in September 2020, to exclaim “But, for the love of God! Is this man never going to shut up?”
The great paradox is that all of these conditions were proposed by Joe Biden’s team in May and immediately accepted by Donald Trump’s team. Likewise, the fact that there will be no advisors and that the candidates cannot step on one another when speaking should favor Trump if he, as his campaign claims and public opinion shares, has his cognitive abilities in good conditionunlike Biden.
What it seems, rather, is that Donald Trump’s campaign is lowering expectations of victory ahead of the debate. It is possible that after having stated practically since 2020 that Biden is suffering from a clear mental deterioration, Trump and his advisers have come to the conclusion that, if the president has a good night in the debates – as already happened to him in the campaign four years ago or in the State of the Union Address-, the psychological impact on public opinion will be greater.
