ATLANTA — With the presidential election rematch still incredibly close and every vote potentially counting in November, it’s fair to say there’s an incredible amount at stake in the first of two debates between President Biden and former President Trump on Thursday.
The two presumptive major-party candidates will face off on the same stage at the CNN presidential debate, held at the cable news network’s studios in Atlanta, the largest city and capital of Georgia, a key battleground state in the southeast.
“This is a close race, and the next debate is more than two months away. This matchup will set the tone and the narrative going into the convention this summer,” Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and communications adviser, told Fox News, referring to the earliest presidential debate in modern history.
Gorman, a veteran of many Republican presidential campaigns, also stressed that the debate, which will be simulcast on Fox News Channel and other networks, “has the potential to significantly change the narrative” as Biden and Trump “try to break away from the status quo.”
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Signage for the next presidential debate is installed at the Media File Center near the CNN Techwood campus, Tuesday, June 25, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
The debate will begin at 9:00 pm ET and will last 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.
Because third-party and independent candidates seeking the White House — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — failed to meet the qualification threshold, only the sitting Democratic president and his Republican predecessor will take the stage.
To advance in the race, a candidate needed to receive at least 15% support in four approved national polls and win votes in enough states to secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
How to watch the CNN presidential debate simulcast on the FOX News Channel
Trump and Biden bypassed the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized the quadrennial showdown for more than three decades, and instead mutually agreed to rules and terms.
Specifically, there will be no studio audience, each candidate’s microphone will be muted except when they are answering a question, props or notes will not be allowed on stage, and opening statements will not be allowed.
Closing statements will be made and a coin toss will determine that Trump will have the final say.
The debate came as polls show a very close race between Biden and Trump, with many national polls and surveys giving the former president a slight lead in about a half-dozen battleground states that are likely to decide the election outcome.
“Simply put, debates move numbers in a way that other events rarely do. That’s it,” Gorman said. “With more than two months until the second debate, [an ABC News hosted showdown scheduled for Sept. 10]The narrative that formed on Thursday night could solidify into something concrete, so it’s really important that we go out there in Atlanta and perform well.”
Both candidates go into the debate with a plethora of issues that will give their rivals ample ammunition.
At 81 years old, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, but for months voters have raised serious concerns about his age and his physical and mental durability. Biden has also struggled with low approval ratings for nearly three years as he struggled to deal with stubborn inflation, a crisis on the southern U.S. border and numerous hot spots overseas.
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Meanwhile, President Trump made history for all the wrong reasons last month when he became the first former or current president to be convicted of 34 felony counts in a criminal trial.
Three and a half years after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory, Trump is facing criminal charges for attempting to overturn the results of the last presidential election. After provoking a backlash for promising retribution for a second term against his political opponents, and two years after the Supreme Court overturned the decades-old Roe v. Wade decision, Trump, along with many other Republicans, is still struggling to address the hot-button issue of abortion.
Perhaps the biggest question surrounding Thursday night’s debate is which version of Trump will emerge.
On October 22, 2020, then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump debated at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. (Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Will he be the undisciplined candidate who interrupted Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace dozens of times during the first debate of the 2020 election?
Trump appeared to lose his cool and failed to condemn white supremacists, and the performance was widely panned by political commentators and viewers.
Or will it be the Trump of the second debate in 2020, when the then-president rethought his strategy and delivered a much improved, disciplined and measured performance?
“It would be a very good night for Donald Trump if he repeats that performance,” Brett O’Donnell, a longtime Republican consultant and veteran debate coach, told Fox News.
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O’Donnell said her advice to Trump would be to “watch the second debate with Joe Biden in 2020 and recreate that performance. Watch it over and over again and recreate that performance in this debate.”
“He’s measured but firm,” O’Donnell said of Trump, “without being aggressive or passionate or offensive.”
O’Donnell knows a thing or two about coaching presidential candidates before a debate, having helped prep George W. Bush in 2004, Republican presidential nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain in 2008 and Republican standard-bearer and then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 2012.
During this election cycle, O’Donnell coached Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ahead of his performance in a Republican presidential debate.
O’Donnell said Biden “needs to be careful not to fall into the incumbency trap. Many, if not most, incumbents, whether it be Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush or Barack Obama, have performed poorly in the first debate seeking a second term.”
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“So my advice to Biden is to avoid the incumbency trap, because if he falls into it, it will be twice as bad because of the age argument,” he added.
O’Donnell also stressed that Biden “has to position this race as some kind of choice in order to defend what he’s done over the last four years. That’s a tall order, but it’s one he has to do to justify choosing him over Donald Trump.”
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