Alabama's Morning News with JT
Jared Halpern preps us for the Trump and Biden debate
Jared Halperk's correspondent in B.C. Jared, I was just talking to Ryan Schmeltzmann to go about the debate coming up on Thursday. And I'm going to tell you, you know, there's some things that could go squirly, some things that could go right if I think everybody's saying if Donald Trump doesn't get triggered and he just stays on policy, he'll do better and not setting the bar too high or too low for Joe Biden setting it lowers actually kind of disruptive because if he just keeps a sentence together, he's going to be a winner in a lot of people's minds. But your thoughts on the preparation I want you to do and how you think this thing may go. Well, President Biden's taking a pretty traditional debate trap if you look kind of at what most presidents have done who are running for re-election. They usually try and take a week or so of debate trap. They go off somewhere. President Biden's spending this week at Camp David and listen, I think that's for two reasons. One, this is a very important debate, right? It's very early in the cycle, to your point, it is an opportunity to kind of dissuade kind of these, or put aside some of these concerns over age or mental acuity. And you know, you're also trying to get the rust off. Recall, neither of these candidates have debated since the last time, the two of them debated almost four years ago, right? They did not debate in any of these primary debates, and debating is a little bit different than having robust conversations in the Oval Office, right? I was reading some analysis from David Axelrod, who helped prepare Obama for his debates. And he's like, there's a difference between debating and kind of having heated conversations where there's always a little bit of deference to the office of the presidency, right? And so that does take a skill, that does take a little bit of practice, and you're seeing, I think, the seriousness that President Biden and his team are taking this event. Yeah, and I don't know if you saw this, but Representative GOP guy from Georgia, Buddy Carter, who's also a pharmacist, wrote a letter to Jeff Sines, the White House Chief of Staff, and is asking for Joe Biden to take a cognitive assessment test over concerns of his fragile mental state. And he says, look, after numerous examples of this president declining mental acuity, it's imperative that the White House remains transparent about what this guy is all about, and be honest about his ability to uphold the duties of the office. So the request going into the White House from this guy in Congress, it's probably falling on deaf ears if it's not in the trash can already. I don't think they're going to be putting him through a cognitive test between now and Thursday. Isn't that what a debate is? That's right. There'll be one way. I mean, it's serious. It's 90 minutes of rapid fire Q&A. Right. I mean, that's the, and that's certainly the argument that folks, you know, close to the president have made, right? Every time there's been like the suggestion that he submit that some kind of cognitive function, they've kind of made the point like every day that you're in, that you're the president is kind of that test. And I think that, you know, that was something that we've talked a lot about after the state of the union. And I think that's one of the reasons that this is such a high stakes kind of high-risk, high-reward debate for both the president Biden and president Trump. Yeah. I think also for Donald Trump. Your point as well, because the president, former president Trump, you know, there are questions, obviously, about his temperament and to your point, you know, as long as he doesn't get triggered, like that, that would be something that could dissuade some of those independent or kind of double-hater kind of voters, right? I think as long as Donald Trump stays on point as far as how was it when I was president and how is it now and sticks with the plan to make things better that have become worse with Biden in office that he shines and he lets Biden just kind of self-destruct if he's going to do it on himself. Because when it comes to, you know, Joe Biden's speeches out there lately, it's all about attacking Donald Trump, not about how well I've done for you American people and how well it's going to be if I'm reelected. It's all about you can't bring this guy back into the White House. You just can't. He hates democracy. He's going to take away every right you've gotten. He's always on the attack. And I think as long as Donald Trump points out how wonderful things were when he was president versus how they are now, you know, he shines. I hope he doesn't get dragged into the, you know, but Donald Trump can be Donald Trump sometimes. Well, I think that's what's going to be interesting, right? It is both candidates or I should say both camps with, you know, I don't talk directly to the candidates necessarily, but both camps, I should say, have said that they want this to be comparing and contrasting each of their four year records, right? So how much of that is controlled by the candidate? How much do they kind of see if they can needle each other over New York convictions and funds being convicted and all of the other stuff, right? I'll be curious to kind of see what that strategy looks like and how much of that happens versus how much to your point is about, you know, inflation, the border. Yeah. I mean, that's plenty of that sort of percolated up to the top. Right. That's plenty to talk about, you know, the downside of what Biden's presidency has brought. I mean, that you can land on that and stay on that all night long and point that out. Well, it'll be interesting. I'm excited to watch it myself. Jared Halpern, NDC.