US election debates: Biden compares Trump to Nazi Goebbels before first clash
- Debate on Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio will be the first time Joe Biden faces president he has promised to unseat
- Biden may need to steel himself against a barrage of attacks by a provocative President Trump
US President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, were set to meet on Tuesday for their first debate, a highly anticipated event in a highly unusual election year.
Trump has decided to skip any formal preparation. And while Biden’s team believes the significance of the debate may be exaggerated, the Democratic nominee has been aggressively preparing to take on the president.
The debate in Cleveland, Ohio will be moderated by Fox News host Chris Wallace. The 77-year-old veteran politician Biden and the 74-year-old president will meet again for two more debates before the November 3 election.
Biden’s campaign has been holding mock debate sessions featuring Bob Bauer, a senior Biden adviser and former White House general counsel, playing the role of Trump, according to a person with direct knowledge of the preparations.
Biden said he expected “personal attacks and lies” from Trump, comparing the Republican president to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
“He’s sort of like Goebbels. You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge,” Biden said in an interview on MSNBC that aired on Saturday.
Adolf Hitler and Goebbels, his minister of propaganda, espoused a technique known as the “Big Lie”, which involved repeating a colossal falsehood until the public came to believe it was true. Hitler coined the term in his 1925 book Mein Kampf.
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“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Goebbels was often reported to have said, although the source of the comment is unclear.
Biden had compared Trump to Goebbels once before, when he called for the president’s impeachment in October 2019.
Trump has gleefully compared the debate to an MMA cage fight, telling Jorge Masdival, a real UFC champion, it’s the “same kind of thing”.
“A little bit less physical – slightly,” he added.
Trump was not entirely joking.
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Take it from Hillary Clinton, the last person he pommelled in the presidential debate ring.
“He could have cared less about answering the questions or even giving accurate information,” she recalled in The Atlantic about their 2016 encounters. “He came prepared to insult, to bully.”
Opinion polls scored the intellectual Clinton as winner of the three debates. But real momentum – and eventually the election – went to the hard-hitting newcomer from New York.
Now Trump is behind and hoping his debate prowess will help him catch Biden.
His fans muse that he may deliver a knockout blow. Certainly Trump is confident: he pushed, unsuccessfully, for a fourth debate.
“It is going to be difficult,” Biden acknowledged.
“My guess is, it’s going to be just straight attack. They’re going to be mostly personal. That’s the only thing he knows how to do,” he said of Trump.
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Some of his supporters fear that Biden, who is prone to blunders and slip-ups, may waver in these televised duels under the rhetorical blows of the Republican billionaire – who is also prone to blunders and slip-ups, but who is far more aggressive.
Trump is “unique,” said Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan and co-author of Debating The Donald.
“There is no playbook on how to debate him.”
Wallace, the moderator of the first debate, outlined the main topics they’ll cover, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the economy and racial tensions. Wallace is a skilled questioner. Trump, though, is equally handy at ignoring constraints.
Continuing with his pugilistic metaphors, Trump says he’s ready to “take the gloves off”.
For months he has been insulting Biden as everything from a closet communist to practically brain-dead. What more he can do is unclear.
But he’ll do something.
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At one of the debates with Clinton, Trump pulled an unheard of stunt by inviting several women who had accused her husband, former president Bill Clinton, of sexual impropriety.
In another unsettling trick, he wandered from his designated spot to loom menacingly behind Clinton.
“No matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces,” Clinton wrote in her book What Happened.
“It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”
Against Biden, Trump is likely to push hard on accusations that the former vice-president’s son Hunter was involved in corrupt business deals in Ukraine and China.
If that doesn’t rile up Biden, who would bet against Trump daring to ask his opponent whether he took performance-enhancing drugs? Trump and his aides have repeatedly called Biden senile, claiming he uses something to improve mental acuity during debates.
“I think he should take a drug test,” Trump said on Fox News.
On Sunday, Trump repeated the claim, saying he will be “strongly demanding” that Biden take a drug test.
Biden acknowledges that keeping his cool will be essential.
“I hope I don’t get baited into a brawl with this guy, because that’s the only place he’s comfortable,” Biden told supporters.
Trump has spent so long tearing Biden down that even a moderately smooth performance by his opponent could end up being portrayed a triumph.
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Cue the president on the eve of the debate trying to shift expectations by insisting career politician Biden actually has the advantage.
“He’s been doing it for 47 years and I’ve been doing it for three and a half years, so he should be able to beat me,” Trump told a rally this week.
Biden “knows his way around the debate stage,” Trump’s campaign communication chief Tim Murtaugh said. “He’s actually quite good. That’s the Joe Biden we expect to see on debate night.”
Trump being Trump, he doesn’t want to spend too long extolling an opponent – even if there are sound tactical reasons to do so.
No sooner does he promote the idea of Biden as a fearsome debater than he quickly reverts to old insults.
It’s as if the street fighter can’t stand the idea of a man he considers weaker ever coming out on top.
“I will have lost to the worst presidential candidate in the history of politics,” Trump lamented to a crowd of supporters last week.
Associated Press, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse
