The Debate Trap
Biden goads Trump into two debates he should want to avoid
On Friday, I took my Villanova students to NBC News headquarters in Washington. It’s a compact, modern space a couple of blocks from Union Station with a great view of the Capitol, but it lacks the history of the network’s old studio, where John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon in 1960.
The Kennedy-Nixon forum is widely regarded as inaugurating the modern tradition of presidential debates, but in fact it would be 16 years before presidential candidates would debate again. Kennedy and Nixon were locked in a close contest and both believed they could benefit from debating their opponent, but political circumstances were different in 1964 (when Johnson was running away with the election), 1968 (when Nixon, back for an encore after the trauma of 1960, wasn’t about to go anywhere near a debate stage), and 1972 (when Nixon was set up for a landslide victory).
Since then, debates have become a rite of passage for presidential candidates, but the presidential debate tradition is relatively young. And with Donald Trump on stage, it has been reduced to a circus act.
That’s why it was a bit surprising when Joe Biden went on Instagram last week to pose this feisty challenge to his opponent:
Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice. So let’s pick the dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.
Wednesdays, of course, are when Trump’s election interference trial is in recess.
I’m fairly certain this isn’t how Lincoln challenged Douglas to debate.
But within hours, and to my surprise, Trump accepted the challenge. Whether it was an impulsive move, fear of looking weak, or a response rooted in the incorrect belief that Biden isn’t up to it, Trump committed to debate Biden without challenging the conditions Biden proposed.
What I’m hearing in Washington is that Biden issued the challenge because he’s losing the election. Winning candidates don’t need to debate, the thinking goes, so Biden would have avoided the whole thing if he believed he was ahead. From what I can tell, Beltway wisdom views the move as an attempt at a campaign reset.
I think that misreads the situation.
One of my operating assumptions is that Biden will win the election if it is a referendum on Trump. Biden’s strategy all along has been to let Trump take center stage and remind the public why they voted him out of office four years ago.
This debate challenge advances that strategy. In a fragmented media environment where it’s difficult to command the attention of a lot of people at the same time, Biden benefits from a high-profile forum where Trump will be on display.
That makes Biden’s debate challenge consistent with his campaign strategy rather than an attempt to reverse course or change the subject. The tone and timing of the challenge may have been surprising, but it makes complete sense as a strategic move—which in turn makes Trump’s willingness to debate puzzling.
More puzzling still is why he agreed to debate on Biden’s terms.
The debate will be held in June, not October. It will be on CNN, not Fox News. Actual journalists will be asking questions. It will be held in a studio without a live audience. Moderators will have the ability to cut the mike if Trump speaks out of turn.
You see why it’s surprising that Trump would agree to this. Trump draws life from a crowd. He thrives on shouting, applause, and raucous energy. It’s where he finds validation. When he’s reading from a teleprompter he looks flat and disconnected.
His approach to debating—if you can even call it that—is to interrupt and speak over his opponent in a show of dominance. Fueled by the energy in the arena, he asserts himself in the crudest way, dismissing the rules in a show of alpha superiority.
That’s a lot harder to do without a live audience and the ability to talk over his opponent. If Trump actually debates under these conditions, he will surrender his energy supply and his ability to control the room.
Trump has already been squeezed into a subservient role in this debate scenario. Biden issued the challenge—and he did it in a snarky and mocking way. That put Biden in the aggressor role Trump craves. Perhaps in reaction to being upstaged, Trump responded hastily without questioning Biden’s terms.
That doesn’t look like a desperation move by the Biden camp. It seems more like a calculated move designed to put Trump on the defensive and trap him into participating in an event designed to reveal his vulnerabilities to the public.
Biden knows that Trump will do everything he can to break free of the constraints he accepted when he agreed to debate. He will act out and draw attention to himself. When he does, Trump will make himself the center of the conversation—exactly where Biden wants him to be.
The debate is a setup to get Trump to make the election about him, and to do it early enough so that it sets the narrative for the final five months of the campaign. Because Biden knows he can win a referendum on Trump once people are reminded how unappealing he is.
The Trump people may think that Biden can’t handle direct scrutiny. They may believe their public line that Biden is mentally infirm. They may even agree with their candidate’s baseless claim that Biden was “higher than a kite” at the State of the Union address, where he came across as energetic and in command.
If they do, they are allowing Trump to walk into the trap that Biden set for them.
In fact—and it’s hard to believe that Trump’s handlers don’t know this—there is now plenty of public evidence to suggest that it’s Trump, not Biden, who is showing signs of cognitive decay. His inability to remember names and places, recall and formulate words, and express ideas without degenerating into incoherence has been widely documented at his public rallies. A debate promises to put this on display for the country to see.
This is why I’m not convinced the debate will happen. I don’t know how Trump goes 90 minutes without the psychic nourishment of a supportive crowd in a forum he can’t control where he is expected to at least not look and sound like a madman. I admit this is a low bar, but I’m not certain he can clear it.
Maybe that’s why Trump almost immediately began backpedaling, demanding Biden take a drug test before the debate. When Biden refuses, it could give Trump the excuse he’ll need to back out.
For now, the political class will act as if the debate is a done deal. I think we should wait and see. One way or another, this election will turn into a referendum on Donald Trump. He’s going to insist on it. Holding a debate in June will only accelerate that process.
Unless there is a reason for Biden to decline, the idea of Trump peeing in a cup and then Biden mocking him during the debate for the drug test requirement sounds pretty delicious?
“Donald, you must be on something that didn’t show up on your drug test. Here’s why what you just said makes no sense: … … …”