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Ryan Schmelz talks the debate coming up next week
Ryan Schmels, our Fox correspondent, NDC, joining us now as we take a little preview as to what is expected with the debate coming up next week on Thursday, and also the planning stages happening this weekend. Ryan, welcome in. Thanks for being here. >> Of course. Thank you. >> Happy Friday. I know you're prepped and ready to rock and roll for the weekend. Anything major on the Ryan Schmels calendar when it comes to your job this weekend? >> Yeah, we've got the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference going on right now, so we'll have a number of high-profile leaders, including a couple of vice presidential contenders speaking today like Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, Elise Stefanik from the House Republican conference here, and we also have Dr. Ben Carson, and then Trump's going to be here tomorrow, actually. >> Awesome, man. All right, so he'll just have to interrupt the schedule of planning for the debate, but I would imagine these two are kind of taking very different approaches to preparing for the first head-to-head debate next week. >> All right, so it looks like President Biden is headed to Camp David and is going to remain there until the debate as part of his debate preparations, and former President Trump is going to be out and about. He's going to be campaigning, obviously, tomorrow here at the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and then might do a couple of events over the weekend as well. >> Well, the previous preparations, they both did mock debates with some folks. I think Biden did it with a lawyer friend of his, and Trump actually did some mock debating with Chris Christie. >> Yeah, yeah, sorry, one more time, Jay Jay. >> Yeah, Trump kind of worked it out and did a little mock debating with Chris Christie, and Biden, on the last get-together, you know, back in, what, 2020, Bob Bauer, who's one of Biden's longtime lawyer buddies, you know, stood in for Trump, and they kind of did some preparation that way. It doesn't sound like it's going to happen that way again. >> Well, we'll see. I mean, I'm sure that he has plenty of people that he's substituted in to do a mock debate with him and kind of go from there. So we'll see. I, one thing that's interesting is we've kind of talked to some Republicans about what the strategy should be and how Donald Trump should go about this, and how they feel. He should be focusing his debate, and I think a lot of them say, you know, that he needs to remain focused on the issues, not try to bring back or air out any old grievances. And one thing that was interesting, I think Guy Benson from the Fox Radio Network kind of said this too, which was that Donald Trump's team needs to be careful to not set the bar so low for President Biden that you make it so easy for him to exceed those expectations. And I think you can kind of reference the state of the union address as an example of that, where the Republicans were consistently saying, you don't even know if President Biden should be able to make it through the entire speech. And then, of course, he ended up doing that, and Democrats really seized on that opportunity. Right, right. And if he finishes a sentence in this go around, oh my gosh, what a success. He held his act together. So there's some different ramifications, or I guess qualifications and different parameters in this debate in that when the time's up, they're going to pull the microphones down. You can't be interrupting people. CNN will be doing the first one, ABC's got the next one. So with that said, I kind of agree with Donald Trump sticking to the policies that he wants to bring and changing how it will be better for all of us. And let Joe Biden self-destruct right before America's very eyes on the stage. I don't think Biden will need any help from Donald Trump in as far as Donald Trump taking shots at him, ripping him down. I'm sure he'll talk about his policies, of course. But the normal, taking it from high road to middle road, even low road, sometimes that Donald Trump likes to do with his opponents, if he stays middle road to high road on this thing. That's Biden's self-destruct, I think you're right. It'll show the American people that this is not a fake video, you're watching it live, and it is happening. Yeah. And I think what's interesting too is that we haven't seen President Biden in a position where he's going to be a brawler. President Biden has been kind of a political brawler able to go toe to toe with other people, whether it's at a committee hearing on the Senate floor throughout his political career. And we kind of saw that during the last election cycle. But, you know, does he still have that in him and what kind of reaction will that entail from him? And then what would that look like? I think that's going to be interesting seeing President Biden in a contentious situation where there could be some back and forth. Now, of course, the moderator is going to have microphone privileges this time so they can turn down the mics on either candidate whenever they're speaking. Yeah. And we saw, you mentioned the state of the union address, Biden came out like he'd had like 10, you know, five hour energy drinks before he walked out on the podium there. So I'm not sure how they prepare him physically for this because let's just call it sleepy Joe's been sleepy lately. They're not allowed to have notes. They're not allowed to have propters. Will there be an earpiece in Joe's ear? Who knows? I mean, they come up with some pretty technology, good technology. Yeah. We don't see these things. Will he be a fed from, you know, off stage left somewhere? It's pretty much ad lib, the whole thing, right? You can't pull up your note card and start going to it like you jump here. Corrine? Yeah. You gotta just be ready to roll and you gotta be ready to take whatever question the moderators give you. So yeah, no, it's going to be a, yeah, I mean, I don't know who that favors specifically, you know, ask whatever political analyst you will. But I do believe they will get some type of break in between like for commercials and everything like that. So I think that will be a possibility for, you know, them to recharge in between segments. Yeah, what are your, what are your thoughts just quickly on the fact that Joe Biden had so many demands to even consider doing this debate like I want CNN to handle it, I want ABC to handle it, I don't want Fox around, I want his microphone pulled down when he's done speaking. I anticipate softball questions coming from CNN moderators in this one for Joe Biden. Yeah, we don't know what to expect. You know, Jay Capper's always kind of been somebody who kind of focuses on the issues. You know, he moderated a, the Democrats debate during the last primary election cycle and they, that they had in 2020 cycle. And Bernie Sanders actually accused Jay Capper of using Republican talking points. So we'll see what that leads to at this debate. All right. Very good. It's next Thursday. And Ryan, have a great weekend.