Inside Joe Biden’s secret debate rehearsals ahead of next week’s showdown with Donald Trump

Joe Biden is locked in an intense five-day debate camp as he prepares to face his hated rival Donald Trump in Thursday’s televised fight.

Trump is expected to goad, insult, heckle and heckle the president, and the man who plays him in practice sessions won’t take it any easier on Biden.

Bob Bauer, the president’s longtime personal attorney, is expected to fill in for Trump as he did before the successful 2020 debates.

Biden left for Camp David on Thursday night and will use the favorite presidential retreat for top-secret debate preparation.

Such is the code of silence around the debate fields that Bauer did not even confirm that this time he would reprise his role as a villain.

But he did share some behind-the-scenes details of preparations for 2020 and some of the mistakes he and Biden need to avoid both in practice and on Thursday.

Bauer said he had to immerse himself in what the opposing candidate said, along with their tone and style of argument, to recreate the experience of debating them.

“I, like Donald Trump, played my part by lying, bluffing, and bullying during the mock sessions,” he wrote in his book The Unraveling.

‘To prepare, I watched hours of tapes of the 45th president, as a businessman, a 2016 candidate, and then in office.

“We booked special sessions during which I was expected to be at my worst Trump moment: as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be.”

The first rule, which is particularly important for Trump, is that he cannot stop attacking Biden in the nastiest way possible.

“You can’t be afraid to put something on the table that the candidate you’re preparing this for doesn’t like,” Bauer told Politico.

‘That might be something that’s personally insulting. That is something that may be completely false regarding the political positions they have taken.”

Another big mistake is using an argument that the opposing candidate could make, but had never made before, as he did in 2020.

Bauer described how, in a mock debate before the last election, he had Trump effectively call for Roe v Wade to be overturned.

He noted that Trump later took credit for appointing judges who in 2022 actually overturned the 1973 precedent upholding the constitutional right to abortion, but had not done so in 2020.

‘That was a mistake. “You have to avoid those types of mistakes because we don’t want the candidate to prepare for an argument that he is not going to hear,” she said.

Biden’s advisers said the president hoped to use the debate to hold Trump accountable for his role in helping overturn Roe v Wade.

In the past, other candidates have had their Trump doppelgänger dress like him, but Bauer said that was something he avoided.

‘This is not a Saturday Night Live impression. “You don’t want to downplay the serious task of preparing the candidate,” she said.

Biden 2020 campaign aide Bill Russo said another mistake Biden needed to avoid in the live debate was getting drawn into a smear argument with Trump.

“I think the big challenge here is how to make sure that you call out the falsehoods, the lies and the half-truths that you can expect Trump to reveal, but without getting dragged into just playing on Trump’s turf,” he said. the Wall Street Journal.

Instead, Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, predicted that Biden would try to push Trump’s buttons to make him look bad.

With the right motivation, he said, Trump would “offend, upset and upset the vast majority of Americans who already voted against him.”

Some campaign insiders worried that using Bauer to play Trump meant Biden’s team was playing too safe.

‘It’s no surprise that Bauer is back in line with most of the other usual suspects. “Biden likes having his security blanket around him,” one told the New York Post.

‘This team knows how to handle it and how it wants to be handled in these exercises.

‘Will they do the debate preparation like a Bravo reality show? Because they should.

‘Will they be innovative and creative enough in preparation to teach him to expect the unexpected and the unconventional? That’s all that matters.’

The source said Biden was the most experienced debater in American politics and felt at home behind the podium, but needed to get creative this year.

He will be ready to discuss both of their records. But can the old dog be taught new tricks? Does Bob have the tricks and tools to teach in a debate against such an unpredictable opponent? they said.

Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain will oversee Biden’s debate team in his fourth election cycle involved in the process.

Klain now works as an Airbnb executive and will take time off to lead Biden’s debate preparations.

The first debate, held in Atlanta and televised by CNN, will begin at 9:00 p.m. on Thursday. Around 73 million people watched the first debate in 2020.

Biden, who prefers briefing kits and practice sessions, will focus on holding Trump accountable for his record and coming up with one-liners to throw the former president off track.

Meanwhile, Trump has been trying out new slogans and bits of rhetoric, ready to hit his rival with his words.

He is not expected to hold mock debate sessions that require someone to play the role of Joe Biden.

Next Thursday’s debate in Atlanta is believed to be the first time the two men will be in the same room together in four years, since their last presidential debate on October 15, 2020.

Biden’s campaign has already downplayed expectations, noting that the president has been busy with his day job rather than preparing for the debate stage.

“The president will have less time for debate preparation than 4 years ago due to his day job, so preparation will be largely limited to the moment immediately before,” a campaign official told DailyMail.com.

Biden is coming off a hectic two-week travel schedule, having spent five days in France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and a state visit. She then traveled to Italy for 48 hours to attend the G7 conference. She spent the weekend fundraising on the West Coast.

But the biggest hurdle the 81-year-old will have to overcome are concerns about his age.

Meanwhile, Trump has also been downplaying the upcoming showdown.

At a rally in Wisconsin this week, he argued that he will not only debate Biden but also the two CNN debate moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who he says don’t like him.

“I’m going to debate with three people instead of half one person,” he said.

The debate will last 90 minutes with two commercial breaks and Biden will have the first word and Trump the last.

The president will focus on attacking Trump for “taking away reproductive rights, promoting political violence and undermining our democratic institutions, and doing the bidding of his billionaire donors to fund tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy and corporations while harming older people and middle class”. ‘said a Biden campaign official.

But neither of them He has refrained from attacking his rival.

Trump claims Biden is physically and mentally unfit for office, while Biden has called his Republican rival “unhinged” and a danger to democracy.

Biden supporters also point to Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his May 30 conviction on 34 felonies for his role in a scheme to cover up an alleged sexual encounter with a porn actress. public star.

Meanwhile, Trump could attack Biden’s son Hunter, who was convicted last week of three felonies related to a 2018 gun purchase.