Already made this prediction but making it again to be official: CNN moderators will press Biden on the hypothetical that he will pardon or commute Hunter Biden's sentence, and they will not ask Trump about any of his pardons of Roger Stone, Paul Manafort etc that actually happened.
BONUS PREDICTION: if Trump has a shit-the-bed incoherent performance where he spends the entire time trying to rattle or interrupt Biden like he did in 2020's first debate, centrist critics will describe it as "pugnacious"
Zero housing questions would be my prediction but if they do one it'll be framed around inflation and attributed to Biden's bad policies by the moderators bsky.app/profile/jody...
Possible they will "balance" the Hunter question by pressing Trump to swear he will not pardon himself, which is ridiculous since 1) he has already violated numerous oaths like this because he is a huge liar and 2) he won't need to pardon himself he can just order the DOJ to drop the case
It doesn't matter how Biden answers, the function of the question is to present to low info swing voters the Hunter Biden situation as an embarrassing and potentially disqualifying scandal equivalent to (or worse) than Trump's many scandals bsky.app/profile/apea...
Hasn't Biden already said he would not? And if particularly if they give him 2 minutes to respond or whatever, that seems something of a favor to Biden.
Not sure but I sort of suspect muted mics will only lead Trump to be more aggressive in trying to interrupt or shout at Biden. Someone standing 10 feet away from you shouting at you is just as distracting if their mic is live as if its not bsky.app/profile/roke...
Kinda depends on how the tv director handles it. Typically continuing to talk on a muted mic makes you look like a powerless chump, but if all Trump is trying to do is make it impossible for Biden to speak/think clearly it might work bsky.app/profile/dirt...
The thing Trump will really want to do, and he's quite good at frankly, is bullying the moderates and tv crew into keeping his mic open while he talks over them. The butting-in "excuse me"s and shit. Really just up to the producers how much they want to side with him (I'm pessimistic)
Only if the broadcast shows it. Could hurt Biden if they keep Biden in a single and it looks like he's looking at nothing off screen or being distracted by nothing (even if what he's being distracted by is Trump hollering in his ear just off camera). Like I said, up to the director/producers.
It might be distracting to Biden but it’ll also make trump look unhinged to the person just tuning into the election for the first time. I think it’s one of those things that will defang his blustering tough guy facade, imo
That moment was effective *for Trump* because most conservatives and a lot of swing voters expect their President to look dominant and the goofy leering over Hillary upstage he was doing is a classic playground dominance ploy. They call it "upstaging" someone for a reason! bsky.app/profile/mike...
There’s no way he looks worse then he did shouting down Hillary and creeping up behind her when she was speaking. Being a rude asshole is why Republicans love him. They’re are horrible, horrible people.
Anyway I don't envy Biden's team trying to prep for this. One of the reasons Trump has been good in debates since 2015 is he can throw a lot of different looks at you. He can do the "shout at you and rattle you" bit but he can also be mellow and charming if he wants to.
He was a big TV star and is very used to being on camera and performing and shouldn't be underestimated, even though I suspect his mental decline might make the relatively sharp, charming Trump of the 2016 GOP primary something he can't pull off anymore.
I don't want to puff him up too much, at the end of the day my expectation is still that he's basically unable to keep a coherent train of thought going, but the expectations for the debate are now so framed around Biden avoiding stumbles and appearing "vigorous" that might be enough.
You'd want to at least run a version of the drill football teams do where they pipe in defeaning crowd noise over the loudspeakers to practice what running the two minute drill in an opposing stadium is like. Make sure Biden can still do cogent sentences even with a full Trump tirade in his ear.
Super curious about how they rehears/prep for exactly this situation, because i would think that the Trump stand-in's entire role would be to yell and bark and basically do everything up to and including humping Biden's leg to get him used to that
So they unfortunately went with over prepping, foolishly assuming that substantive answers were the way to go. They should have prepped snark and one-liners.
