Biden’s debate mistake: He calls for campaign overhaul

By Trevor Hunnicutt, Nandita Bose, Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland June 30 (Reuters) –

The botched debate between President Joe Biden and Republican challenger Donald Trump follows a series of decisions by his top advisers that critics now say were misguided, interviews with Democratic allies, donors and current and former aides show. Trump, 78, repeated a series of hackneyed and blatant lies during Thursday’s 90-minute debate, including claiming that he actually won the 2020 election.

Biden, 81, failed to refute them, and his faltering performance prompted calls from Democrats for him to end his quest for a second term and do some soul-searching or resign among his top aides. “My only request was to make sure he rested before the debate, but he was exhausted. He was sick,” said one person who said he had appealed to Biden’s top aides in the days leading up to the debate, to no avail. “What a bad decision to send him out looking sick and exhausted.”

Others have been even more directive. “I think he was over-coached, over-trained. And I think (his top aide) Anita Dunn … put him in a place that was conducive to Trump and not conducive to him,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.

Morgan suggested that Dunn and other aides “be fired forever and never allowed anywhere near the campaign.” Biden’s debate strategy was endorsed by campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to boost a lopsided reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former campaign strategist for Barack Obama, supported the strategy.

Confidence was high before the event. Trump was convicted of falsifying documents by a jury in New York on May 31, while Biden was on back-to-back trips to Europe. To the surprise of some Biden advisers, his stubbornly low poll numbers began to climb nationally in the weeks that followed.

The advisers put together a rigorous schedule of debate preparation, with Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days. A tight circle, some of whom have been close to Biden for decades, was involved: Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff; Dunn, former White House adviser and Dunn’s husband Bob Bauer; and his longtime adviser Mike Donilon; and a dozen other policy and policy experts.

Biden’s campaign said Friday that no staffing changes were planned. A spokesman for Dunn said several aides had been involved in the preparation and noted that Morgan was not there. In an email to supporters Saturday, O’Malley Dillon said internal polling and focus groups showed no change in voter sentiment in key states after the debate. She warned that “exaggerated media narratives” could lead to “temporary dips in the polls,” but expressed confidence that Biden will win in November.

Biden’s trips abroad, including to France earlier this month, drew backlash on social media from Republicans who mocked his age, but his team said they also showed he is a strong leader on the world stage. White House advisers who traveled with the president were in good spirits when he visited Camp David on June 21. They believed Biden was approaching the debate with that most valuable political asset: momentum, the wind at his back.

Biden traveled to France, the United States, Italy and the West Coast, among other places, over a 14-day period before taking a few days to rest at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He was loitering, according to several people who observed him during that time.

As Biden and his advisers settled into Camp David six days before the debate, their advisers believed he had a lot on his plate, more than his opponent. Trump could just complain about the current administration — and Biden would need facts and a few barbs at the ready. They expected Trump to be far more disciplined and prepared than he had been in 2020, and they believed they would have to counter a rapid-fire series of lies.

In lengthy prep sessions, they bombarded Biden with details, then followed them with mock debates. Critics now say the prep should have focused on the broader vision he has to sell to the country, and that Biden didn’t rest enough before the debate.

Biden, exhausted, would also catch a mild cold, White House advisers said, as he has regularly done during his term after long periods of jet-lagged work. The result, critics said, was a candidate Biden at his worst: He appeared on stage with a pale face, his hair disheveled at the collar and his voice hoarse. He was frequently incoherent.

“I’ve never seen him behave like this before,” said Michael LaRosa, a former special assistant to President Biden and press secretary to first lady Jill Biden. “He can run most people’s noses into trouble on complex policy issues,” LaRosa said. “It was always about presentation and cosmetics and superficial judgments about his performance. And he wasn’t able to get over the hump.”

NEW DEBATE FORUM Earlier this year, some Biden aides questioned whether he should debate Trump, arguing that it could give Trump a large public platform that would put Biden at a disadvantage.

Biden himself, in an April interview with talk radio host Howard Stern, made a decision about the debate with Trump that surprised some advisers. “I’m somewhere,” he said. With the triumphant memory of his March State of the Union address still fresh in their minds, Biden’s team prepared for the debate but took drastic steps to control its terms.

They moved to reject three long-scheduled presidential debates in September and October, hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates, still angered by the group’s handling of the 2020 debates. Trump repeatedly violated the rules of what was going to be a chaotic first debate in 2020, showing up despite having tested positive for COVID-19 and talking relentlessly to Biden.

His team tried to run the debate his way, with a CNN anchor they saw as more compliant. No audience to applaud Trump’s invective. Networks and moderators inclined to challenge Trump. No Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A mute button. The day after the debate, Biden responded with a forceful speech in North Carolina and pledged to keep going. Many donors and Democrats are rallying behind him.

But the damage is done. Asked Sunday whether the Democratic Party was discussing a new candidate for 2024, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin told MSNBC: “There are very honest, serious, rigorous discussions happening at every level of our party because it’s a political party and we have different points of view.”

Raskin added: “Whether he’s the nominee or someone else is, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention.”

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)