- Trump and his allies set the bar very low for Joe Biden in next week’s first debate
- But now they are changing tack and talking about their debating skills.
- READ MORE: Democratic strategist offers brutal assessment of Biden’s chances
After weeks of setting the bar low for President Joe Biden in the first presidential debate, Donald Trump and his allies are changing course.
Gone are the taunts that simply standing tall would be a victory for the 81-year-old Biden.
Instead, they are now talking about their debate prowess or implying that a strong performance could be due to chemical assistance.
‘He will be very excited. “He’ll be fired up,” Trump, 78, told his supporters at a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday, before hinting that cocaine would be the secret to a high-energy performance.
—Do you know all those things that were missing a month ago in the White House? What happened?
Donald Trump and Joe Biden will face off in the first presidential debate next week. Trump has begun to talk about the strength of Biden’s debate after weeks of defeating him.
‘Someone didn’t pick up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine. I wonder who it could have been. I don’t know. Actually, I think it was Joe.
Biden and Trump are scheduled to face off in Atlanta next week.
Meanwhile, Biden is holed up at the Camp David presidential retreat immersed in debate preparation, while Trump is taking a less focused approach, honing his attacks at rallies and calling on advisers.
Until this week, the former president had been downplaying Biden’s chances of overcoming him.
During a recent speech to the National Rifle Association in Dallas, he talked about his own speaking style, before referring to what he called the “low-IQ individual” he will face in the debate.
“If this horrible individual ends the debate, which I think he will… if he shows up, if he shows up, they’ll say it was a brilliant performance,” Trump said, before imagining the criticism.
‘It was a brilliant performance. They’ve never seen anything like it… very reminiscent of the days of FDR.
Biden and Trump with their wives after the first presidential debate of 2020
JL Partners surveyed 500 likely voters June 10-11, asking them what they expected to happen when Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
The narrative that Biden is a fragile man with a diminished ability to hold the public’s attention during speeches has taken hold of the voting public.
A survey by JL Partners found that 49 percent of respondents think they will forget where they are during the debate and 41 percent said they hope they get off the wrong side of the stage.
About 50 percent said they expected Trump to win the debate, compared to just 39 percent who believe Biden will emerge victorious.
But that carries a risk for Trump. What if Biden exceeds such low expectations?
This week Trump took advantage of an appearance on the ‘All-in’ podcast to begin raising the bar for Biden.
“And he beat Paul Ryan, so I don’t underestimate him,” Trump said of the 2012 vice-presidential showdown.
“Well, all I can say is this: I watched him with Paul Ryan and he destroyed Paul Ryan,” Trump said, referring to the 2012 vice presidential debate.
He brought up that debate again later in the interview. “And he beat Paul Ryan, so I don’t underestimate him.”
Allies have also floated the idea that caffeine pills, energy drinks or something else could be the key to Biden’s performance.
“Whatever Joe drank or ate or took before the State of the Union, maybe it was just Red Bull and caffeine pills,” Fox News host Sean Hannity recently said.
‘I don’t know. Whatever it was, that wasn’t normal Joe.
‘We never saw it before, and we haven’t seen it since. But we will see it in the debate.”