Trump’s Debate Strategy: Make Biden Look Like the Crypt Keeper - Vanity Fair

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Even as Trump appears stunningly incoherent on a regular basis, his campaign is aiming to portray Biden as out of it by getting him flustered and frustrated on the debate stage.

By Eric Lutz

September 4, 2020

Of the many ugly and unrooted narratives Donald Trump has been running with this race, his insinuation campaign about Joe Biden’s faculties has been perhaps the most persistent. He’s seized on other themes when they’ve been convenient to do so—his inflammatory racist appeals to “law and order” have come to define this late stage of his reelection bid—but always he returns to “Sleepy Joe.” This line of attack allows him to deflect questions about his own cognitive capacity; it also allows him to pin on him all manner of “Radical Left” policies, whether the typically moderate Democrat actually supports them or not. Biden, veering on senility, would be “the puppet of the Left,” according to Trump.

That he and his allies have had to resort to fakery—doctored videos, doctored photos—to push this narrative is perhaps indicative of how baseless it is. And yet, it remains one of the president’s main campaign tacks, and, it seems, will figure heavily into his debate strategy against the former vice president. Trump allies told Politico Friday that they have been studying past Biden debates, searching for vulnerabilities the president can exploit to fluster his opponent and make him look senile and confused. “I take his knowledge and skills seriously,” an outside Trump campaign adviser told the outlet. “That said, I do think he’s lost a step.”

The idea, Trump’s advisers explained, is to find areas where Biden becomes frustrated, based on his telling phrase of exasperation, “C’mon, man,” or subject matters on which he is less confident, so the president can capitalize, “bolstering a key Trump argument against Biden built around his age,” Politico reported. “Biden has been debating for a half-century. He is very good. Part of the reason he is very good is that he gives the same answers over and over again to questions for the last 30 years,” senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, who is helping to lead the president’s debate preparations, told Politico. “But he does have certain tells that he uses when he is not confident in his answer or trying to change the subject or make viewers forget what the actual question is.”

Biden, at 77, would be the oldest person elected president if he wins in November; still, he is not much older than Trump, 74, and is about a hundred times more cognitively nimble than the current president. A strategy built around triggering Biden gaffes might have some success, but has some obvious shortcomings. For one, Biden has traditionally kept his verbal stumbles off the debate stage, showing more discipline and dexterity, as evidenced in his vice presidential debates against Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin. For another, all these attempts to portray Biden as “sleepy” and “slow” only serve to lower the bar the Democratic nominee needs to clear to appear agile and articulate. “Joe Biden has had mixed results of speaking off the cuff in the last few months, but he has been elevated by such low expectations,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Politico. “I don’t understand why the Trump people and Trump himself make fun of Biden’s inability to complete a sentence. That makes it easier for him to claim victory.” (Mark McKinnon, who helped with debate prep for past Republican presidential campaigns, too, warned in Vanity Fair about lowering expectations for one’s opponent).

Of course, the biggest obstacle to backing Biden into a corner is Trump himself, whose stunning incoherence and amazingly disordered thinking is worsened by his steadfast refusal to prepare himself for anything at all, including debates. Indeed, like many a delusional narcissist, Trump seems to labor under the belief that what he has to say is compelling by virtue of his having said it and sensible thanks to his immense genius. That fallacy, of course, is how we end up with planes from unnamed cities “loaded with thugs” and protesters beating cops with “big bags of soup” and other head-scratchers like them. Uttering laughers like these in this year’s debates, which he absolutely will, could indeed throw Biden off his game; though Hillary Clinton bested Trump in matters of logic and common sense and decency, her bouts with him in 2016 illustrated the difficulty in delivering a retort to someone whose answers are not rooted in recognizable reality or readily decipherable. The mere act of sharing a debate stage with Trump is to be lessened by it. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time Biden has debated a bonkers opponent; in facing Trump this fall, the former veep can draw on his experience batting down the barrage of lies, empty sloganeering, and general nonsense put forth by Palin, Trump’s political forebear, in 2008. If he can once again avoid being roped into the crazy, Biden can draw a further distinction between his calm and command and the lack thereof on the part of his rival, just as he did in his strong convention speech.

That tight address stood in stark contrast with the president’s dark, interminable rant at his own convention a week later; rambling, as Trump did outside the White House that night before a crowd of enthusiastic supporters, is his preferred mode of communication. That ad hoc style he prefers, an inability to make sense, and a lack of anything new to say may work in front of the true believers, but could quickly prove ineffective in the debate format. “Debates are all about practice, practice, practice, and Trump does not like to do that,” Ed Rollins, chair of the pro-Trump Great America PAC, told Politico. “He needs to spend a lot of time and resources to get this ready. It is a 90-minute debate, and you probably have 30 minutes of you talking. You need to have something precise to say.” Precision has never been Trump’s thing.

Then again, his willingness to say literally anything, however deranged, and to say it with confidence, has served him maddeningly well politically. His act might not convince whatever undecideds remain, if any such voters actually exist two months out from election day. But his advisers are hoping that if he can exceed expectations, and hinder Biden from meeting his, the president can gain some late momentum in his uphill race for reelection.

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Trump’s Debate Strategy: Make Biden Look Like the Crypt Keeper - Vanity Fair

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