| Six questions for … Philippe Reines: A longtime aid to Hillary Clinton, Reines is one of the few people who have been intimately involved in presidential debate prep. During Clinton’s 2016 campaign, he played Donald Trump in her mock-debate sessions. With the first debate between President Biden and Trump less than a week away, we spoke with Reines about how he would advise Biden. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This debate is earlier than any general-election debate. What should the goals be? Should Biden appeal to persuadable voters or engage his base? You can’t think in those terms. You’re just onstage with a malfunctioning appliance. I mean, you can’t. You can’t assume that you’re going to get done what you want to get done unless you do it in the context of using the malfunctioning appliance to make your point. The debates are a moment where everyone tunes in more, but they’re not distinctly that different from the rest of the campaign. The debate is an opportunity to do a few things. One is to talk to a much larger audience than you will at any other point. It is the most acute opportunity to provide an actual visual contrast to your opponent. This idea that every time he’s convicted of a felony or his house is raided by the FBI, or he loses an election somehow, is in his favor is silly. So to apply that to the debates. The idea that Donald Trump doesn’t make mistakes or things don’t hurt him [politically]? It’s pretty silly concerning the fact that he’s lost an election in large part because of many mistakes he made. How high are the stakes for Biden? This is not doing my duty as a Democrat, but there is an unfortunate pattern of sitting presidents not doing well in the first debate. It’s legit. They just don’t like prepping. It is an unpleasant process. You’re the president of the United States of America. You are, without exaggeration, the most powerful person in the world, and then suddenly you’ve got a roomful of people telling you everything you’re doing, everything you’re saying, every way you’re saying it is either wrong or needs to be better. Plus, you’ve got some idiot pretending to be an even bigger idiot who’s barking at you. I mean, this is not why you became president. So it’s a tedious process. I think a couple times people have had to be scared straight. I remember vividly the Kerry-Bush first debate. I don’t think the Democrats were ever more down the morning of that debate. They were one step away from just forfeiting — and then the next morning you would think that it was like Kennedy-Nixon.
How much should we expect Trump to highlight Biden’s age? I get pretty worked up when people talk about Biden’s disposition and his appearance. I will say this video stuff gets my blood pressure even higher. I think [Biden] is at his best when he talks about this general point: rule of law. In his announcement speech in 2019, he said four years [of Trump] is one thing, eight years would be like, existential. I think he believes that now as much as then. And it really animates him, and I think the trial is under that umbrella. It is wanton disrespect for the law. It is just steamrolling anything close to playing by the rules. It’s also an excuse to talk about all four trials. The word “strategy” is not operable with Trump. The question is, what’s on his mind. And I think it’s pretty clear what’s on his mind. By and large he’s pretty mad. And he’s got his list of grievances. And what I think that’s going to do is have the opposite effect of what he wants to do. Like, if I were him and I wanted to show that my opponent was cognitively impaired, I would get up there and I would whisper. I would read a lullaby. He’s going to get up there and he’s going to lose the s--- because that’s what he does. It might take six minutes or 16 minutes, but he’s going to basically be shock paddles for Biden. Trump is going to be motivation for Biden? He’s going to be a cattle prod for Biden. The Biden that they make fun of all the time wandering around Normandy, that’s not with someone yelling at him. If they want to re-create that for 90 million people, then don’t put Donald Trump in there yelling at him. That’s not how it’s going to work. Trump is likely to bring up Biden’s son Hunter. How should Biden address it?
I’m not sure. I think it’d be a mistake to go after the president’s child. The president’s son being found guilty is helpful politically in that it undercuts a lot of arguments about politicizing the justice system, but I don’t even know what [Trump’s] argument would be unless it is: “If it was my son … I’d pardon them. And I think you should. If you don’t do it after you lose, then I’ll do it on my first day.” What advice would you give to Biden? Donald Trump has had a horrible four years. There’s no reason to believe he’s gotten better. The real problem for Joe Biden is that there is no expectation of Donald Trump. He is not expected to do well. He is not expected to abide by anything. How do you lose? In these situations, two ways: One, the other person does so well that they flat-out beat you. And the second way you win is that he just absolutely beats himself, which is what [Trump] did in the first debate in 2020. |
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