Trump versus the moderators

It’s almost here… the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will take place tomorrow night on CNN. It is quite early in the election cycle, which is by design to account for the fact that many voters now cast their ballots via mail or in an early voting period. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Biden agreed to debate this early, which could signal his campaign’s uneasiness with polls showing the president trailing in most swing states, losing by double digits on the issues that matter most to voters and hemorrhaging support among various key voting blocs, despite what they may say in public (When First Lady Jill Biden was asked about polls showing Biden losing battleground states, she sharply replied, “No, he’s not!”)

While it would be easy to straightforwardly classify the debate as Biden versus Trump, these fights promise to be more impactful: Biden versus himself and Trump versus the moderators.

Biden’s perceived success in the debate almost entirely depends on his ability to make it through the ninety-minute-plus-two-commercial-breaks live event. There have been multiple viral videos of Biden in the past few weeks during a D-Day commemoration in Normandy, a Juneteenth event at the White House and a campaign event in LA that show him looking stiff and confused. The White House has rejected these clips as “cheap fakes,” a term coined by a former Harvard disinformation researcher that hasn’t landed well with the public. Of course, low expectations work in the president’s favor — and the Trump campaign has warned that Biden may be on performance-enhancing drugs. There will be no drug test, of course, but we also know that the president has taken a full week off of presidential duties in order to debate prep in private. Some conservatives have speculated that the week out of the public eye is being used to adjust Biden’s sleep schedule so that he is at his most alert during the debate. We don’t have any way of verifying that theory, but we do know that Trump did not take a seven-day break ahead of the first 2020 debate; just three days prior, he held a Rose Garden event to announce that he was nominating then-judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court. 

While Biden battles himself, Trump is going to war with the CNN moderators, particularly anchor Jake Tapper. Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, described CNN as a “hostile” environment and the moderators as “biased” during an interview on the network. Leavitt urged viewers to “Google ‘Jake Tapper Donald Trump,’” prompting anchor Kasie Hunt to cut her mic and end the segment. “Ma’am, I’m going to stop this interview if you continue to attack my colleagues,” Hunt said before making good on her promise. The moment sparked social media threads and articles about Tapper’s bias against the former president, including a compilation video of Tapper comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Hitler and clips of Tapper elevating the Russian collusion conspiracy theory and referring to the Trump presidency as a “time of cruelty” and “utterly avoidable failures.” Bash, meanwhile, described it as “[unfortunate] for America” that the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could not be removed from the ballot by state-level actors. With microphones being cut off between answers, the questions these moderators choose to ask of the candidates will play a larger than usual role in determining the tenor of the debate. 

For real-time debate coverage tomorrow night, find our live-blog on The Spectator’s home page. 

-Amber Duke

On our radar

SEEN BUT NOT HEARD The Supreme Court dismissed Murthy v. Missouri, a high-profile case about government censorship and free speech rights in the social media era, on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have the proper standing to sue. 

ELECTION INTERFERENCE? The Trump campaign hit a progressive super PAC with a cease-and-desist letter over the group’s ad that requested “MAGA patriots listen to our president” before playing old clips of Trump railing against voting early or by mail. Trump’s lawyers described the Pennsylvania Values ad as a “civil and criminal conspiracy” to prevent Trump supporters from casting their ballots. 

‘I’M HUMAN, RIGHT?’ Ohio senator J.D. Vance said there would be “a little bit of disappointment” if Donald Trump did not pick him to be his running mate. Trump previously said he would announce his vice presidential choice closer to the Republican convention, but reports indicate the announcement could come this week. 

Boebert blows opponent away as Bowman bows out

The primaries for Colorado, Utah and New York took place on Tuesday with a massive disappointment for the progressive “Squad.” 

In Colorado, Representative Lauren Boebert easily won in her Republican primary after switching districts. The Trump-endorsed Trent Staggs lost to the more moderate John Curtis in the primary to replace Senator Mitt Romney in Utah. 

The big story, though, was in New York, where incumbent Jamaal Bowman lost to a more moderate Democrat, George Latimer. The race between Bowman and Latimer cost a hefty $25 million in ads, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

Latimer entered the race at the urging of Jewish community leaders as Bowman came under fire recently for his antisemitic rhetoric and profanity. In October of last year, Bowman pleaded guilty to pulling a fire alarm in the Capitol, which some speculated was meant to prevent lawmakers from voting on a spending measure that would stop a government shutdown.

In a speech to supporters after losing the primary, Bowman yelled at a member of the audience. After Bowman acknowledged, “I’m speaking way longer than I expected but I want to say a couple more things,” a member of the audience piped up with something unintelligible. Bowman responded, “Why you messing me up?… Why you messing up? Damn, I’m in the zone!” 

Unfortunately for Bowman, he won’t get a pension due to serving only two terms in Congress. Perhaps he can return to his work as an “educator,” which he was eager to remind Representative Thomas Massie of during a viral shouting match about gun control — but not until the school gives him a refresher on its fire alarm policies. 

–Ella Johnson

DC explores reparations

The DC Council has approved funding for a reparations commission with the goal of studying the impact of slavery and racism on black residents of Washington. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie distributed $1.5 million in pre-funding to the task force in order to get it up and running. His legislation, the Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act, was co-sponsored by nine members, making its passage likely if it gets a vote. 

McDuffie says this legislation will allow the city to address housing wealth inequalities in order to reduce violent crime, which he says are heavily intertwined. He referred to a 2016 Urban Institute study finding that white households in DC have eighty-one times the wealth of black households.

And just days before the Juneteenth holiday, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson also announced the formation of a task force focusing on reparations to black residents of his city, setting aside a $500,000 investment in the Windy City’s budget to create the task force. It will conduct a study to see how policies have “harmed black Chicagoans from the slavery era to the present-day.” 

But neither of these initiatives have defined under what form the reparations would be and who would be receiving them. 

Regardless of the merits of these proposals, when it comes to DC, perhaps another apology is in order. This time to the residents of the supposedly upscale Navy Yard, where in October 2023 three men in masks carjacked Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar at gunpoint. And this is just one among the many incidents plaguing citizens recently. An end to lawlessness should maybe appear higher on the list of the council’s priorities…

–Elisenne Stoller