The 24 Seven: Debate Me, Bro Edition
24sight News’ twice-weekly newsletter highlighting the seven most important stories shaping the race for the White House
1. Mental Acuity Test
To see what tonight’s possibly pivotal presidential debate will look like, I went back to the first showdown between then-President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the September 29, 2020, debate in Cleveland. Rewatching it for the first time since it happened, way back in the middle of the pandemic, has been interesting indeed.
Their first showdown was acrid.
The two clearly know how to get under each other’s skin. Trump was impeached in 2019 for attempting to force an investigation of Biden’s scandal-plagued son, Hunter, by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His team routinely trashed reporters who wouldn’t touch the Hunter Biden stories they pushed. The elder Biden united the Democratic party around him just as the global pandemic was taking hold by presenting himself as the one candidate who knew best how to take on Trump and reunite the country after four chaotic years.
And that was before Trump flooded the nation with lies claiming he had actually won in November, ultimately resulting in the January 6th insurrection and a series of criminal charges against Trump for attempting to overthrow the election.
Since then it has only gotten worse, with Trump vowing to prosecute his perceived enemies if he gets back in office and Biden seeming to bask in getting Trump’s goat. (After Trump was convicted in the 2016 election tampering case, Biden and his team started hitting Trump directly with the tag “convicted felon”.)
Tonight will be the first time the two have ditched the years-long proxy war in favor of a head-to-head rematch. It’s hard to imagine that much has changed between the two of them, which is why the first battle offers such a good guide of what to expect.
The debate starts at 9pm EST in Atlanta, hosted by CNN and simulcast across all major platforms. You can catch some of my analysis on what to expect on the Sean Spicer Show, airing at 6pm EST and from my latest appearance on LiveNow from Fox with Andrew Craft, which aired Tuesday. I’ll be back on-air tonight with the LiveNow from Fox team recapping everything we learned after the debate wraps at 10:30p.
And make sure to keep it tuned here on Substack for the pivotal recap.
2. Four years older
Watching Biden and Trump from years ago, it’s hard to miss how much both men have aged right before our eyes. They say the presidency takes a lot out of you — whether it’s four years or eight years — and both men look worse for wear.
Biden appears more weathered and tepid than he did onstage in 2020. The inside-the-Beltway chatter on this is that he may pull another State of the Union style performance tonight — getting in fierce digs and roasting his opponent mercilessly. It wasn’t too long ago that he dunked hard on Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as he walked into the House chamber for his annual address.
Trump’s retort to Biden’s surprise breakout performances is that he must be on juicing. Democrats’ retort to that has been if Trump himself isn’t on drugs, why is he so incoherent?
But Trump, too, appears more frail and somewhat gaunt. His skin lacks the dark orange tint he displayed when he was in the White House, and his hair lighter and whispier. And his speech patterns have devolved greatly from 2020.
And each man has slowed down, immensely. The verbal tics and stumbles of September 2020 are now more frequent and pronounced.
Without a live audience in the studio and hard cutoffs of the microphones, much will be gleaned from interpreting the wizened pair’s facial expressions and body language.
3 Shut up, man
In a wild and widely-panned debate, one of the few tirades that has stuck out four years later was Biden losing it amidst Trump’s constant interruptions and snapping, “Shut up, man.” It’s the bumper sticker slogan of the run-up to tonight’s showdown.
But lost in that assessment has been what drove them there.
A good chunk of the debate focused on whether Trump nominating conservative jurist Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court would ultimately end in federal abortion protections under Roe v. Wade being undone. Biden said, “Roe v. Wade, that’s on the ballot as well.” Trump shot back, “There’s nothing happening there,” and said Biden couldn’t know Barrett’s views on abortion. Two years later the conservative majority on the court overturned federal abortion protections.
Anticipating this likely conclusion, Democratic lawmakers floated ending the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees and possibly adding more justices to “pack” the court, a la Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt almost a century earlier. Moderator Chris Wallace, then at Fox News, pressed Biden on whether he would expand the court and end the filibuster.
It was a good pin on Biden, which he attempted to dodge. Trump repeatedly interrupted him with, “Are you going to pack the court?” As it escalated, with Biden saying he didn’t have to answer that question and Trump berating him, Biden finally snapped back, “Will you shut up, man?”
Rather than let Biden twist in the wind before the national audience, Trump repeatedly attacked him making himself look like the bully onstage. The question now is whether Trump will be able to keep his cool on questions which clearly put Biden in a corner.
4 Mask Up
Rewatching the first debate, it’s impossible to miss the social distancing of audience members and the masks everywhere. A reminder of what the country was like deep in the throes of Covid-19, with much of the country locked at home, a malaise of fear about the unknown nature of when the pandemic would end and the nightmare of watching the death count soar through the year. The horror of New York’s struggles with the massive number of dead still linger.
Biden used the sheer national anger and despair to great effect against Trump. Trump’s handling of the pandemic, along with that first debate, is widely credited with carrying Biden to the White House.
Much of it Trump could control, a lot of it he couldn’t — no president could have.
Which is much the same for Biden as he walks into this first debate of the season as the commander-in-chief, presiding over an economy which, on a macro level, seems to be doing great. But Americans on the ground are still angry about inflation and bread-and-butter issues like pricier groceries. Their roles will be flipped now as Trump, who has been hammering Biden on the economy for months, will have the chance to blast Biden for something largely out of his hands.
5 Preppers
Trump was prepped in their first debate. Clearly.
Maybe not in any traditional sense (a la debate prep sessions at Camp David), but in his own way. As Biden hammered Trump on the Covid response, Trump — who’s known for his quick rebuttals, albeit largely inaccurate — fired back “You didn’t do very well in Swine Flu, H1-N1, you were a disaster.”
Fact check or not, it’s clear that Trump — who dismantled the sharpest Republicans in the country nine years ago in debate after debate — knows how to play to an audience.
Look for more like that as Trump, who no longer manages the day to day of the American government, walks in with fresh material tonight.
6 Everything
One reason that so many voters have tuned out this election cycle has been the sheer volume of crises which pack the news. The deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, climate crises, the perpetual swell of migrants at the Southern Border, the price of eggs and milk … all of it.
Four years ago, there was a near-singular focus: Covid. Now there’s a diaspora of disasters for the two to fight over, and for CNN’s seasoned anchors, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, to choose from.
The question now is what will fit into 90 minutes.
7 Will it change anything?
The first debate has been heralded as the official start of the general election. Which is the latest firing gun in the longest-running general election in modern American history, which has left Americans truly, deeply exhausted with politics. The Republican debates (and Trump’s respective competing events) churned fairly low numbers compared to the 2016 cycle, and news outlets which thrived covering Trump nonstop when he was in office have seen precipitous declines in traffic since January 6th.
But the nature of the debate being a concrete item — akin to Trump’s hush money conviction and Hunter Biden’s gun-related conviction — which is also simulcast live across the major networks, cable outlets and other mainstream platforms, gives this debate a chance to frame the race in a way few other events have until now.
But will it change anything?
Will it change public opinions of two men who have dominated national politics for years now and have regularly dotted the national stage for decades?
More on that after it all wraps at 10:30p EST tonight. Cheers.
I’ve always thought Trump used something to spray on that orange tint to his skin, but No. 2 has me thinking it’s natural and is fading?
Also, you are on Fox programs. I don’t watch that “network,” and perhaps you are the token normal. I hope that’s all.
And, I pledge to donate to your efforts to attend the Dem convention IF you use a period after the issue numbers, like No. 1 and 2. Kidding of course, but it looks better than Nos. 3-7 IMO.
I dig this source and will donate anyway 😁