Debate coaches reveal what Biden should avoid during his Trump matchup on CNN to avoid ‘serious discussions’ about fallout

A trio of debate experts agreed that President Joe Biden can’t afford to have a senior moment during Thursday night’s first presidential debate — but are divided on whether the format helps Biden or former President Donald Trump.

Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, will face off in Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday evening in a debate hosted by CNN and moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

The Biden and Trump campaigns agreed that there will be no audience and microphones will be turned off when the other candidate is speaking.

“If Biden makes a mistake, it’s over. That’s it for him because he has a lot more to lose in this debate than President Trump does,” GOP debate coach Gail Gitcho told DailyMail.com.

Brett O’Donnell, who has also coached Republican presidential candidates, agreed that Biden could not afford a major blunder but argued that it was just as much “high-stakes” for Trump.

“Remember, the rule of debates is: You can’t win an election in a political debate, but you can lose it,” O’Donnell told DailyMail.com. “Donald Trump is winning right now. The only place he can go is down.”

For months, Americans have been showing in opinion polls that they fear Biden – the country’s oldest president – will be ineffective in a second term.

While there are also concerns about the age of Trump, who celebrated his 78th birthday earlier this month, Biden’s polls were worse.

If elected to a second term, Trump will be the oldest president ever sworn in.

Todd Graham, a professor of debate at Southern Illinois University, argued that Biden could put an end to concerns about old age by having a successful debate on Thursday.

“I think Biden, if he comes out and has a strong debate, can take four years of stories and flush them down the toilet,” Graham told DailyMail.com.

On the other hand, if Biden has a bad debate, Graham speculated, “serious decisions” might have to be made.

“Maybe it will wake him up,” Graham said. “If he has a bad debate, he may reconsider a debate strategy or reconsider its conduct.”

“I don’t think Trump would do that,” the academic added.

O’Donnell echoed the sentiment.

“If Joe Biden flops, like if he has a major meltdown, what is the Democratic Party going to do? Are they going to allow him to stay on the ticket and hand the race to Donald Trump?” said the president of O’Donnell and Associates.

‘What happens if Donald Trump debates the same way he did in the first debate? Does that change the direction of the race, which now seems to be in his favor?,” he added.

Trump and Biden faced off on the debate stage twice in 2020 — after a scheduled second debate was canceled because the Republican refused to participate virtually after recovering from a bout of COVID-19.

The first debate was memorable because Trump interrupted Biden, Trump went after moderator Chris Wallace, a veteran of Fox News Sunday, and Trump was rumored to have already been infected with COVID at the time.

There was a small audience present, but attendance was limited due to the ongoing pandemic.

Gitcho believed cutting the microphones on Thursday would benefit Trump.

“I think they really mishandled the format part because they were only thinking about their candidate,” Gitcho said of the Biden campaign. “I don’t think they thought about the impact this would have on Trump.”

“Because their whole campaign is about President Trump being unhinged and unpresidential and all that. Well, they have chosen a format that will curb exactly what they call President Trump’s greatest weaknesses,” she argued.

O’Donnell agreed.

“Cutting off the microphones actually benefits Donald Trump because it prevents him from interrupting and interfering with Biden.”

Graham thought there might be some tricks on stage when the microphones were off.

“Yeah, so without a microphone on Trump he could literally interrupt Biden, we wouldn’t know it, but we would see Biden stumble and hear him and just think, “Oh, look at that.” And that would affect mental fitness and age,” the professor suggested.

At the same time, Graham said a lack of audience could hinder Trump’s performance.

“100 percent Trump campaign should not have agreed to it,” he said. “Because he plays to the audience, he speaks to gatherings and interviewers who are nice to him.”

“Without an audience, he won’t know if these jokes work or not,” Graham added. “Some of the humor will seem mean-spirited.”

O’Donnell partially agreed with this assessment.

‘I think the lack of audience could hurt Trump, but you know, the man has been doing television for a long time,” O’Donnell said. “They didn’t shoot The Apprentice in front of a live audience.”

This week, Biden is holed up at Camp David, where he’s engaged in traditional debate prep, while Trump is reportedly skipping having someone play the Democrat and is instead receiving policy briefings.

Graham called it a mistake for Trump not to mock the debate.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Graham said.

He pointed out that when candidates have a mock debate, they can practice their timing.

“So it’s super important to get your answers in on time,” he noted. ‘We practice timing speeches. I mean, down to the millisecond.”

O’Donnell and Gitcho did not find Trump’s lack of traditional debate preparation concerning.

“If I were his team, I wouldn’t feel the need to do this as a formal debate camp either, because you’re debating Joe Biden, you just have to compare presidencies,” Gitcho said. “It’s not like you’re debating Newt Gingrich,” she said, referring to the former Republican House Speaker.

O’Donnell said every candidate he’s worked with approaches debate preparation differently.

“We never had a sham debate with John McCain,” he shrugged.

The late Senator John McCain won the Republican nomination in 2008, but was defeated by President Barack Obama in a closely fought race.

As for what the candidates should actually say once they get on stage, Graham had some helpful advice for Biden.

“Man, would I quote Trump’s inner circle,” Graham said.

A number of former Trump Cabinet officials — as well as former Vice President Mike Pence — have declined to endorse Trump again.

‘So Trump cannot answer that with anything, because these are simple information points. He can’t argue with it because it’s simple facts. And he can’t just say, ‘Oh, that’s just you or the Democrats talking,'” Graham said.

Gitcho predicted that Biden would “compare personalities” while Trump would “compare presidencies,” a strategy he thought would end in the Republican’s favor.

“What President Biden wants to do is make voters believe that President Trump and January 6 and this threat to democracy will affect them more than housing costs, inflation, border security, national security, our place in the world and foreign affairs.” policy,” she said. . “That’s never going to work.”

Looking at the bigger picture, O’Donnell noted that debates are about “a candidate’s ability to deliver a message and create moments that capture the imagination of the press.”

“The goal is to create moments where you can leverage competitive advantage over your opponent and control the media narrative,” he said. “So everyone should look forward to those moments.”

But unless something really bad happens, Gitcho was the most skeptical of the trio that the debate would actually matter.

She argued that this early in the cycle, it would be mostly Democrats and Republicans cheering on their teams.

“At this level it’s out of morbid curiosity,” she said.

“If there’s no large-scale event happening, and a huge event has to mean someone literally falls on his or her face, then it doesn’t matter,” she added.