Full Trump vs Biden Debate Guide - The New York Times
Category: News & Politics
Via: tig • 4 years ago • 106 commentsBy: Shane Goldmacher and Adam Nagourney
The first half hour should answer most of the questions.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Unfolding in a stable presidential race and a tumultuous election year, the debate may be less likely than past ones to sway voters. But it is still an opportunity for President Trump in particular.
The first presidential debate, which will take place in Cleveland, is one of President Trump's best chances to jostle the current dynamic in the race.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Shane Goldmacher and Adam Nagourney
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The first debate between President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and run for 90 minutes without commercial interruptions.
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The Times will livestream the event, accompanied by analysis and fact-checking from our reporters. The debate will also be carried on channels including ABC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC.
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Chris Wallace, the anchor of "Fox News Sunday," will moderate the debate. He played that role in one of the 2016 debates between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton.
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The moderator chooses the debate topics. For Tuesday night, Mr. Wallace chose Mr. Trump's and Mr. Biden's records, the Supreme Court, the coronavirus pandemic, the economy, race and violence in cities and the integrity of the election. There will be 15 minutes to discuss each topic.
For Trump and Biden, the debate comes with different incentives.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden will walk onto the first presidential debate stage of the 2020 general election with a very different set of political incentives.
For Mr. Trump, it is a much-welcomed chance to shake up a race in which he is currently behind. For Mr. Biden, the debate is a risky but necessary step, a close encounter with an unorthodox rival who can and will say almost anything.
After complaining for months about Mr. Biden's "basement" strategy, the debate is Mr. Trump's biggest opportunity to reframe the election as a choice between two competing visions. The Biden campaign continues to cast the race chiefly as a referendum on Mr. Trump's failures in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
Two things can be true at once about the stakes of the debate.
First, the presidential race so far has been an extremely stable affair, with little disrupting Mr. Biden's consistent polling lead — not a pandemic, not record joblessness, not mass protests over policing and racism, and not an unexpected Supreme Court vacancy. A 90-minute debate will be hard-pressed to move the needle more than those factors.
Second, the debate still represents one of Mr. Trump's best opportunities to jostle the current dynamic, his first chance to speak directly to an audience of tens of millions of Americans alongside Mr. Biden.
How quickly does it go off the rails?
Mr. Trump has always been a showman, and debates have been some of his biggest stages as a politician. He jawbones, interrupts and lashes out in unusually personal ways, and he generally exerts an intense gravitational pull toward whatever he wants the spectacle to be about.
He is all but certain to attack Mr. Biden. It's also possible he will go after the moderator, Mr. Wallace, whom the president has repeatedly compared unfavorably to his father, the former TV correspondent Mike Wallace.
What past campaigns have shown is that the first half of the first debate often sets the tone — and the tone of news coverage.
Mr. Biden has been pretty clear that he believes that Mrs. Clinton erred four years ago in her debates with Mr. Trump by getting into a back-and-forth argument about character. "She did what every other candidate probably would have done," Mr. Biden said in January. The resulting debate was an ugly spectacle and, he said, "it all went down the drain."
Mr. Biden wants to avoid that — and he has been stress-tested by advisers not to respond to Mr. Trump's obvious provocations if they are not central to his own message.
"I hope I don't get baited into getting into a brawl," Mr. Biden said this month.
One wild card is how Mr. Trump's tactics and antics will play — and how the president, who feeds off the feedback of a crowd, will respond in a debate hall without a large audience.
Biden could benefit from greatly diminished expectations.
For months, Mr. Trump and his surrogates have distributed unflattering and sometimes manipulative clips of Mr. Biden pausing awkwardly, stumbling verbally or just looking lost. It has been part of a concerted campaign to insinuate — and sometimes say aloud — that Mr. Biden's mental faculties are too diminished for him to serve as president.
This is not typically how expectations-setting works.
Mr. Trump has lowered the bar so far — even demanding Mr. Biden take some kind of drug test — that his supporters are primed to expect a blowout on Tuesday. But Mr. Biden, even if he meandered onstage at times, ultimately won his party's nomination after navigating 11 primary debates.
Mr. Biden was memorably knocked off guard by the rival who would become his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, when she attacked him for his opposition to busing decades ago.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly benefited in news coverage from an expectations gap of his own: Whenever he tones down his bombast — however fleetingly — some praise tends to come in for a new tone.
"Any time he utters a complete and calm sentence, people fall over themselves to call him presidential," said an exasperated Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist who helped run Pete Buttigieg's debate preparations during the 2020 primary.
Can Trump get under Biden's skin?
Will Mr. Trump successfully goad Mr. Biden into losing his temper? Or will Mr. Biden be able to avoid walking into the trap?
Democratic and Republican strategists who have gone up against Mr. Biden in debates have long identified this as a weakness, though there is more evidence of this on the campaign trail, where he has teed off on the occasional voter, than on the debate stage.
When provoked, Mr. Biden is prone to getting rattled and angry and to losing his train of thought, and he risks coming across as condescending.
"If Trump gets under his skin and Biden starts to do that preachy thing — 'Let me tell you what this is,'" said Mark Wallace, who helped prepare Sarah Palin for her vice-presidential debate with Mr. Biden in 2008. "That just doesn't fit the time."
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I suspect this debate will be extremely well watched.
Agreed. Popcorn and cold beer ready, let the slugfest begin...
Well, that was entertaining...
I was only going to watch the 1st 15 minutes or so. 90 minutes later, and I was still laughing.
Biden seemed not to be able to decide what to say at times and wandered while Trump could not keep his mouth shut. I think there's no winner tonight. It think it was a draw. I was laughing myself.
It looked to me like Biden was expecting a debate, and was taken aback by the shouting match Trump turned it into.
I wonder how anyone could deal with a character like Trump and remain presidential. It is like engaging someone in a boxing match who kicks you in the groin, hits behind the head, tackles you, punches the referee, bites your ear, etc. No respect for the rules of engagement, decorum, etc.
I felt sorry for Chris Wallace. How do you moderate with this going on?
By cutting his mic. They must have that ability for the next one.
That was my thought during the debate.
Same here.
half hour, that is as far as joe can go without a break.
I am getting a sense that you are not approaching this with an open mind.
I have no interest in going back to the politics of the last 47yrs.
Well it is extremely unlikely that such will happen with either candidate.
Further left? Haha...The republicans have a supreme court majority, nominated so many judges the judicial will be conservative for years to come, deregulated everything, massive tax cuts...
But by god, we cannot tilt to the left...
Neither party seeks to go back to 1973.
so, the right should just capitulate from this point on?
we also like secure borders and hate shit trade deals.
no compromises and no surrender
My point is, at this point in time, any shift to the left would move us more towards the center.
Also seem to love throwing children in cages, rape of immigrants and supposed unwanted hysterectomy's.
The so called trade deals are about what we had before...
Why do republicans act like it is only their country and sound like they would willingly go to war.
So far, about the same
OOooo... Trump being rude!
Joe's response: Wrong guy, wrong night, wrong time.
GO JOE!
Great line!
shocking
The moderator has no control over this debate. That is sad.
What can he do? donald will not shut up and let Biden talk.
Have the sound guy cut his mic.
Wallace tried to tell him to shut up. Now his voice sounds shaky like he is scared.
Who...Trump or Wallace?
Wallace. After he told him to stop, donald was glaring at him. He sounded shaky at first. A little scared.
What I thought, knowing Wallace. Having his as the Moderator is a huge mistake, but, I bet Trump asked for Wallace because he can intimidate him as he is doing.
Are you watching the same debate as the rest of us?? He's so leaning Joe..................
Yep.
No way to flag him, no ticketing and no suspensions.
The debate needs a good software engineer to keep them in line!
Would love to engineer a mute function for the moderator to use.
I've always wondered why they, the moderators, or, the technicians don't just shut their mics off when not their turn.
I have to agree with you Jim. This is out of control.
If donald is going to continuously talk over others, I would do the same.
Wallace is too chicken and cowardly to use it if he had it.
They both are Ender. FFS bias much/
I still stand by what I said.
Personally, I think Wallace did the best he could under the circumstances.
I agree.
Wallace said he was not going to be active as Moderator. If his intention is to negate the debate by allowing Trump to cut Biden out entirely for any response of his own, then Wallace should be removed as Moderator for any further debates.
If he is that scared of Trump he is useless for the job. Trump thinks that as long as he can keep Biden from making any comments or responses of his own then he will be the winner.
However....that shoe does not always fit the foot intended. No problem for his stooges, but, Trump will be losing a good many voters with his run-a-muck mouth and hostile attitude. But...we know he is only interested in his small legion of minions who have no power to think rationally for themselves, so he thinks he is going to win.
But, in these kinds of debates there are no winners, both sides just make fools of themselves while trying to prove their Viagra works better than the other guys.
Have I told you lately that I love you Raven?
Joe " I am the Democratic Party" Biden: Elect me but I won't tell you if I'll pack the Courts or support ending the filibuster. And stop asking me to take a position.
Biden 2020 "I am not going to answer the question. Will you shut up?"
Wow.
Joe to Trump: Get out of your bunker, get out of your sandtrap.
trumpturd is blaming the Co-Vid response on Joe Biden when it is not on Joe Biden. Also blaming it on China.
And now Biden is attacking vaccines...
Shut up and get off my lawn man doesn't like science now
Just imagine a Republican becoming an anti-vaxxer in the middle of a pandemic. The media would explode.
But orange man bad so...
Biden against shutdowns and against reopenings...
What I am finding amazing is how we are all watching the same thing, yet what we see is so different. It goes to show why eyewitness testimony is so "weak" LOL!
We all see the same thing, just some people are motivated to try and obscure the facts.
Perrie, there is only one side to this issue. Trump proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is unfit to hold office in the United States of America.
After bizarrely refusing to answer whether he'll pack the Court, at least Biden admitted he'll raise everyone's taxes..
And Trump is still waiting for his tax returns to come out...
Sean, the commentators for ABC have all said now that this debate was a disgrace
and almost all of them laid the vast portion of the blame on trump
matthew dowd, a long time ABC pundit who is famous for taking both sides of every issue , said the american people looked at this debate and concluded they dont want four more years of this
it was an unmitigated disaster for trump
Yes, unsurprisingly, Trump behaved like a junkyard dog. If one ignores the rules and does not care about behaving presidential, no debate will go well.
Yeah I remember the debate. I saw it while on vacation in New York City. Biden did indeed interrupt and dismiss Ryan.
Trump did what I expected him to do. He did not rattle Biden the way he hoped (no doubt). At this point, I do not think this made much of a difference in the election.
Why toss in crap like this MUVA?
When there is no adherence to the rules, it is never going to be of any quality.
It looks like there was an argument on grammar. You were not part of it though so I would not have brought it up here.
... more like the complete lack of it.
Look man, when someone writes an incoherent sentence and another asks for clarity, the normal course of action is to simply restate. It was not a typical grammatical error, the sentence made no sense. Just rephrase so that your readers can understand rather than blow a gasket because an incoherent sentence could not be understood.
Here you engaged me normally and coherently and I gave you a thoughtful answer. After posting my response, I see snark from you regarding another article and about another person. Why do this?
Apparently, some people do not believe you when you say you're asking for clarity and they get defensive. Just a thought.
(pissed off and wanted to vent)
Matthew Dowd is your neutral pundit? Jennifer Rubin’s “Trump is worse than Hitler and Stalin combined” take not published yet?
biden embarrassed himself. It’s amazing for all your trump hatred you blindly support his twin. Good old name calling, lying joe Biden.
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The irony. Good grief.
Trump just asked, "Can I be honest?"
In a word, no.
Did anyone hear Trump condemn Militia or extreme right-wing groups? I might have missed it.
No, but I sure heard Biden say Antifa did not exist as a organization. It's just an idea....
Biden said that because that is what the Director of the FBI said a few days ago.
This link might explain that statement.
It includes the FBI statement and this one from a Rutgers Un Prof.
This definition is important since it defines how the FBI would deal with Antifa. They can't raid their headquarters and arrest the leaders. It's composed of decentralized cells.
Al Qaeda and ISIS, on the other hand, have organizational structure that can be attacked.
Be that as it may, but even cells can eventually be found and infiltrated. Just have to try hard enough.
Since a lot of what they are doing involves research and exposure of "fascists", some of the cells may be composed of 13 year olds.
Irregardless of who said it first, Biden still chose to quote it during the debate, so he must believe that!
Technically I think he said he would - but no - I did not hear him actually do it. Wait for the transcript.
No, but he did tell the Proud Boys to "stand by". Chilling.
No he didn’t.
Who do we believe? You [deleted?]
Trump said "stand back and stand by" in a sentence referring to the Proud Boys. That is on the video and is incontrovertible.
I tend to think Trump got a little tongue tied at that point, but others think he was signaling his base. maybe it was one of those senior moments you like to try and attach to Biden.
Sure sounds like someone giving orders to their troops.
"stand back and stand by"
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Your white supremacist supporting autocrat said used those exact words Sean.
"Stand Back and Stand by"
This is going to be a fun day, watching the Trump apologists try to find some way to spin last night's debate into a win for Trump.
Will they simply deny the evidence recorded on video for anyone to watch (i.e. Sean), or is it going to be a whole lot of, "this is what he 'meant' excuses"?
Trump supporters will —and I suspect most will also believe this— present all of Trump's negatives as positives. His junkyard dog demeanor will be presented as command of the debate, portraying Trump as a powerful leader.
The inability to be objective is the worst aspect of our heavily party-dominant system. It is like a sports contest where one's own team can do no harm. Where an improperly called strike is umpire bias if against your team but a perfect strike if it falls in your team's favor.
Thing is, it does not matter.
Trump tried to rattle Biden and failed. Thus Biden won. That is the key takeaway from last night IMO.
Trump spent half his time arguing with the mediator.
I see him as a petulant child who must have his own way, who has to be the center of attention, and throw a tantrum if he doesn't. This doesn't portray him as a strong leader. It shows that he is insecure and lacks confidence, and is also afraid. Junkyard dogs act the way they do because they are afraid and insecure
I am pretty sure that his performance did him no favors.
Observe the Trump supporters here. I bet you they will see Trump's performance as a good thing.
My view is that Trump planned to be this aggressive as a tactic to cause Biden to make a mistake. I think his plan failed.
Proud Boys are celebrating his performance.
Proud Boys celebrate after Trump's debate callout
I watched under duress.
My big take away was the President Trump is counting on the Supreme Court, with his soon to be new Justice, to decide the election in his favor.
Just in case you wondered why the Republicans are in such a hurry to appoint a new justice.
I don't remember Trump disagreeing when Biden called him Putin's Puppet - maybe I was laughing to hard to hear his denial.
90 minutes out of my life I will never get back.
Was it puppet? I thought he said Putin's puppy.
On reflection, I'm pretty sure you are correct.
The Supreme Court can be torn down brick by brick!
Just have to say, the quote of the night. (paraphrased)
Wallace: Mr. President, why did you cancel racial sensitivity training?
Trump: It is racist.
Just to be equal I will also include Biden's quote of the night. (paraphrased)
Biden: This clown, I mean president.
there seemed to be a few times where trump appeared visibly shaken by something biden said.
Trump handles the truth, the way vampires handle sunlight.
Good! i didn't watch, as iv'e taken a break from the embarrassment Trump so gleefully embraces
Good one!😁