Prepare for a presidential debate like no other

Signage for a CNN presidential debate is seen outside their studios at Turner Entertainment Networks on Wednesday in Atlanta, Georgia. President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, will face off tonight in the first presidential debate of the 2024 presidential cycle. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Don’t be surprised if an excited Joe Biden pulls out a pair of handcuffs tonight and says, “These are for you, Donald.” »

That won’t happen, of course.

This goes against CNN’s “no props allowed” presidential debate rules, which CNN, the Democratic-friendly debate sponsors, designed to handcuff Trump anyway.

Instead of resorting to restrictive measures, Biden could repeatedly refer to Trump as a “convicted felon,” hoping to bait and anger him.

Normally, one would expect Trump to respond with something like: “Yes, Crooked Joe, just like your convicted criminal son, Hunter, the guy who made you rich with Chinese money.” »

But Trump would do well not to take the bait, but instead focus on Biden’s dismal record as president and what he will do to make America great again.

It doesn’t matter what Trump says or does during the 90-minute debate. The corrupt Democratic establishment media, along with the two Democratic debate operatives, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, will declare Biden the winner anyway.

All Joe Biden has to do to “win” is show up, don’t fall, stumble, mumble, wander, doze, freeze, or give one of his usual looks. a thousand meters in the void.

Normally, an incumbent president would run for re-election based on his or her accomplishments. But Biden doesn’t have many arguments to present himself.

Virtually everything he has done – from opening the southern border to invading the country by illegal immigrants to waging war on fossil fuels – has only made things worse for the American AVERAGE.

Not to mention his often confusing, contradictory and contrarian foreign policy, which leaves people wondering whose side he is on, especially in Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists.

So, with nothing to run on – and no promising agenda – Biden will go on the attack, acting as if Trump is the incumbent and Biden the challenger.

And his attacks on Trump will be less about policy and more about personality.

That’s all Biden has left.

Biden will attempt to link Trump to the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol and claim that Trump is a threat to democracy, whatever that means.

Some might say that if there is a threat to democracy, it is Biden’s use of the U.S. Department of Justice and Democratic prosecutors to persecute and gag Trump on the most petty charges to prevent him from participate in elections.

Normally, this would be called election interference.

But these are not normal times.

This is the first time in history that a president has run against a challenger whose home he invaded – and then indicted – in search of illegally held classified documents, like those he had. -even stored in its own garage.

One man’s “crime” is another’s merit.

Let’s hope Joe Biden listens to the advice given by John Sasso, a Democratic operative from Massachusetts. Sasso managed Mike Dukakis’ presidential campaign in 1988. He also prepared several candidates for the presidential debates. Sasso knows how to savage a political opponent.

Sasso, in a Boston Globe article on Sunday, advised Biden to take off the gloves and attack Trump as unbalanced and unfit to run compared to Biden’s “strength and fitness.”

This is the same John Sasso, now a Biden supporter, who destroyed Joe Biden’s Democratic primary presidential campaign in 1988 when he leaked to the press a video of Biden plagiarizing a labor speech by the leader of the British Labor Party Neil Kinnock.

This embarrassing revelation eliminated Biden from the race and Dukakis won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Dukakis, who denied any knowledge of the video, fired Sasso when word got out that Sasso was the mastermind behind the dirty trick. Dukakis lost the election to George H.W. Bush.

Sasso would now advise a man he had once destroyed how to destroy his opponent.

Politics indeed makes strange bedfellows.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter who covered the 1988 presidential campaign. Email him at: peter.lucas@boston herald.com