All the talk about debate prep for tomorrow’s first 2020 presidential debate in Cleveland boils down to common sense. While the Trump campaign has been raising expectation about 77-year-old former Vice President and Democrat nominee Joe Biden, there’s a few things to keep in mind. Biden was a below-par debater in all Democrat primary debates, winning the nomination not because of his superior debate performance, quite the contrary. Biden was mediocre at best, at worst showing every bit of his 77-years-of age. Biden’s campaign is in full-on panic mode before the first debate and they should be. Joe’s been shielded, insulated from the media for months, even while he was running as the anointed one for the Democrat Party. Everyone knew that Joe would receive the nomination not because of his debate skills but because he was the last man standing for the general election.
No one, including all 20 presidential candidates, had much respect for whom 74-year-old President Donald Trump calls “Sleepy Joe.” Trump calls the former Vice President “Sleepy Joe” because he’s slow on the uptake, often getting surly, even combative, when asked easy questions he doesn’t like. Any time he’s asked about his son Hunter, Joe takes it personally often attacking reporters. Even though Trump touts Joe’s 47-years in politics, he hasn’t been challenged by the press on any subject. It’s a well established fact that the U.S. press has an ax to grind in the 2020 election defeating Trump. There’s no fig leaf on the press extreme bias against Trump. What that’s done to Joe is given him softball questions, much like direct examination by your own attorney in a legal proceeding. Joe and the press have been preaching to the choir, facing no cross- examination by a press with tough questions.
As a result, Joe’s more than behind the Eight Ball heading into tomorrow night’s debate. When asked how Trump would prepare for the debate, senior Adviser Jason Miller says Trump isn’t planning to prepare at all. Facing the biased, hostile press almost daily, Trump has been baptized by fire, taking the harshest, most unfair questions imaginable, often accusing him of fake news stories about things he’s never done. Every time the New York Times publishes a fake defamatory story, like the one about disparaging WW I American war dead, Trump faces a hostile media. When Covid-19 cases hit new death tolls, Trump takes the heat, knowing the president has nothing to do with how many Americans die in a global pandemic. When Woodrow Wilson presided over the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, the press didn’t hammer him daily for the rising U.S. death toll at 675,000.
Yet Trump listens daily to the antagonistic, accusatory questions from the press, actually writing talking points for Biden. It’s the anti-Trump press, including such former journalists-turn-political hack as 77-year-old Bob Woodward, who says Trump is responsible for today’s 209,672 deaths. When you talk about debate preparation, you’re talking about life’s preparation, what happens to a person on a daily basis. Biden has been isolated, pretending to interact with the press, when the press has played along with his campaigns parameters, namely, the campaign controls the questions-and-answers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged Biden in the strongest possible terms to not debate Trump, not because she thinks Trump’s a pathological liar but because she thinks it opens up Biden to serious gaffes. Biden was never tested in any Democrat debates not in his Q&A with the press.
Yes of course the Biden campaign is panicking now that it’s prime time, requiring a battle-tested soldier to perform at the highest level. If you want to get some clue in advance of the debate, watch Trump’s performance in 2016 against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary was a far more detailed, thoughtful, prepared, long-term student of foreign and domestic policy than Joe. Yet if you look over the past debates, when Trump was a relative novice, and you’ll find him holding his own with Hillary. That tells you everything you need to know about what happens tomorrow night. Joe’s going to be in big trouble trying to shout his way out of answering tough questions, even though the Fox New moderator Chris Wallace despises Trump. Wallace would like nothing more than to see Joe win the debate. But Trump has been crucified daily by the press and is over-prepared.
Biden’s got a real challenge tomorrow night hoping that Chris Wallace gives him some help against what promises to be a more than ready President Trump. Trump can thank a hostile press for preparing him to go toe-to-toe with Joe, having handled all of Joe’s attacks because they all derive from the Democrat-friendly press. Trump’s seen nothing new, including the New York Times latest so-called “bombshell” about his taxes. Hillary hammered Trump about his taxes four years ago and we all know how that turned out. Biden thinks he can blame the Covid-19 crisis and rising U.S. death toll on Trump. Any rational voter knows that the Covid-19 crisis is not Trump’s making, having done everything within reason to battle the deadly infectious disease epidemic. “The president prepares by being the president,” Tim Murtaugh told CBS News, one of the anti-Trump networks that prepared Trump for the debate.
