Advice to Donald Trump for the debate: Just let bumbling Biden talk!
Former President Trump speaking at a campaign rally in the Bronx on May 23, 2024. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump held a rally in his home state Thursday evening for the first time since the election in 2016.
It follows on from the record-attendance rally he held two weekends back at Jersey Shore.
These rallies are impressive, certainly. But they could also be misleading.
Watching the Jersey rally I kept thinking of a Trump rally I attended in Pensacola, Florida ahead of the 2020 election.
It was outside in the local airport and packed with thousands of people. The atmosphere was happy, more than enthusiastic, and Trump was both entertaining and serious.
Around the same time, Joe Biden was giving “COVID-compliant” rallies where — if you remember — about 12 people would sit in chairs in carefully demarked circles.
Biden’s team said that it was just following social distancing guidelines. But this felt like an excuse. It seemed more like the public wanted to socially distance from Biden than from one another.
And that’s why these latest Trump crowds make me nervous. They undoubtedly show a great motivation and energy on Trump’s side.
Is Biden really likely to put anything similar together this year? Anymore than he did in 2020? I doubt it.
But then of course you go back to the results. And though Trump got a record vote in 2020, Biden got more. Trump may have had all the enthusiasm behind him. But that wasn’t enough.
Which brings me to the debates.
In 2020, I watched the first Trump-Biden debate like most people. Through my fingers.
Trump was not just too aggressive. He wouldn’t shut up. “Let him talk” I kept shouting at the screen. But Trump wouldn’t.
He got out of his own way a bit in the second debate. But it was the first one that set the tone in the public mind. America had had enough. It wanted to change the channel.
But this time Trump might be able to show he has learned from that experience.
You have to be careful giving advice over debates of such size and importance. Almost nobody who does knows what they’re talking about. Or what it’s like on such a stage.
And as I know from bitter experience — you can never please everyone.
One person will claim you’re too aggressive, only for the next person to tell you you weren’t aggressive enough.
One person will say you punched too low only for another person to say you should have hit your opponent harder. It’s never easy.
Still I would offer a couple of pieces of advice to the former President.
The first is — for God’s sake let Biden speak.
Even the best zinger of a line from Trump cannot do more harm to Biden than Biden can do to Biden.
Lead him onto something like the Himalayas. Encourage him to reminisce about the time he met people he never met or just spoke to people who’ve been dead for years.
Let Biden fall away into one of those strange silences and then one of his recovery mechanisms (“Anyway, you don’t want to hear about that”).
And say, “Oh, but we do want to hear. Please continue, Joe. Finish your thought.”
Every time Trump has gone up against Biden he has underestimated his opponent and overstated his fragility.
But there is a saying in debate. “Show, don’t tell.” Don’t build expectation about Biden’s decline.
If you do then, like last time, Biden merely has to show up and remember his name for half the country to think “Oh well he seems to be doing better than I thought.”
Another thing is to show Biden’s nasty side. People like to focus on Trump’s nasty side — and he certainly has one.
But Biden has a nasty temper on him The Biden who Trump should want to tease out is the crotchety, nasty, mean Biden.
The one whose darkly narrowed eyes — like piss-holes-in-the-ice — were so in evidence at Morehouse College last week.
Let Biden talk down America, while Trump talks it up.
Most of all, President Trump — don’t make the debate about you.
If Biden tries to coax you onto your legal travails just remember that polls show that most of the country aren’t following these trials and don’t much care. They’ve made up their minds on that.
Make it a debate about America and Americans. After all, they’re the ones listening. And who this is all about.
Hamas thanks its useful idiot friends
Congratulations to the student protestors at Columbia and other colleges. You just got a shout-out from Hamas!
That’s right. This week the leader of Hamas abroad, Khaled Mashal, gave a speech about how “annihilating Zionists is good for humanity.”
He talked with pride about the October 7th massacres his group carried out. Hamas call this atrocity the “Al Aqsa flood.”
But in his speech this week the terror leader took care to thank American students for their part in what he called the “great student flood.”
And he thanked the International Criminal Court (that just announced it wants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) for the “legal flood.”
Oh — and he also thanked all the helpful international media for their “media flood.”
Together with the “Jihadi flood,” Masal said that Hamas and their allies could destroy Tel Aviv and eliminate “this worm” of the Jewish state.
So well done American students. And the ICC. You wanted attention. And now you’ve got it. You’ve got praise from Hamas in response to your praise of them.
In other news this week the Israelis released new tapes of captured Hamas terrorists from the 7th.
A father and son confessed on camera that they had raped an Israeli woman of around the age of 30 on the day.
The son raped her, then his cousin raped her. And then the man’s father raped her. And when he’d finished he shot her in the head.
They say you can tell a person by their friends. So again —well done the class of 2024. You’ve really fallen in with a great crowd. Hope you’re proud of yourselves.