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President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are meeting in Cleveland on Tuesday for the first presidential debate.
The topics are "The Trump and Biden Records," "The Supreme Court," "COVID-19," "The Economy," "Race and Violence in Our Cities" and "The Integrity of the Election." Fox News host Chris Wallace is the moderator. The debate comes as a report on Trump's tax avoidance has shaken up the race, and Republicans are working to speed up the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
The two contenders have strongly divergent governing philosophies and temperaments. Newsweek columnists and guest contributors, who will be live-blogging the event, shared their opinions on what the candidates need to do to succeed.
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Gordon Chang
Trump will succeed tonight on the COVID-19 topic if he can make this narrative stick:
China made COVID-19 a global pandemic. Beginning in December, Xi propagated the false narrative that the coronavirus was not contagious and pressured countries to not impose travel restrictions or quarantines on arrivals from China. He knew or had to know these steps would lead to the disease spreading beyond China's borders.
There are now over 200,000 Americans who have succumbed to the virus. We must impose costs on China so Beijing will never again spread another pathogen.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China*. Follow him on Twitter:* @GordonGChang.
Frank Donatelli
As I have said, the important points for Biden are to project calm and a sense of normalcy; keep his focus on Trump and reminding the public why the president is so unpopular; stick to the game plan, in terms of the issues and themes he is already successfully using to his advantage; and speak to the future. After all, presidential elections are still about hope.
Trump is the underdog. We'll see if he has done some preparation to avoid factual errors; is able to bring focus to Biden, rather than himself; attacks the status quo and successfully ties Biden to it; and emphasizes his fight to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.
Frank Donatelli served as assistant for political affairs to President Ronald Reagan and as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain.
Nigel Farage
To stand up and debate for 90 minutes is a tough task, and the only question in my mind is if Joe Biden can get through this without a serious stumble. Trump needs to reassure suburban voters that the country will be safer in his hands. I make Trump favourite with his quick-witted responses.
Nigel Farage is senior editor-at-large of Newsweek*'s "The Debate" platform and leader of the U.K.'s Brexit Party.*
Caroline Glick
On issues related to foreign policy, Trump will win the debate if he compels Biden to discuss the content of the Obama-Biden foreign policy. From the nuclear deal with Iran, to the Obama-Biden administration's hostility toward Israel to its "reset" policy with Russia, its pro-China industrial policies and its support for the Chavez/Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela, the Obama-Biden presidency was a disaster for America and its allies and a boon for its greatest enemies worldwide.
The Democratic foreign policy argument stands on the party's refusal to discuss the content and consequences of its foreign policy positions. The more President Trump hones in on the substance of Biden's positions and past actions and how they harmed American and will harm America again if they are reinstated, the better he will do in the debate.
Caroline B. Glick is a senior columnist at Israel Hayom and the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East (Crown Forum, 2014). From 1994 to 1996, she served as a core member of Israel's negotiating team with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Tom Rogers
Trump needs to use the debate to somehow change the trajectory of the race. Being behind in the swing states, and having created such a low bar for Biden, and with most voters unlikely to be swayed by the debate, Trump has a very high burden to meet here. His trademark debate performance style of bullying and ridicule are unlikely to be characteristics that convince any voters who can be swayed.
Biden needs to do the obvious - avoid any noteworthy stumbles that become the key highlights of the debate, particularly any that suggest he has meaningfully lost a step. Given the characterizations of Biden as too old and feeble minded, any performance which shows him in command of the issues and steady in his temperament will make it extremely difficult to upset the increasingly commanding swing state lead Biden appears to have.
Tom Rogers is an editor-at-large for Newsweek*, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, currently executive chairman of Engine Media and is former senior counsel to a congressional committee.*
Ben Weingarten
If you believe, as I do, that there are few undecided voters in this presidential election, and therefore that the race will come down to intensity and turnout, President Donald Trump will succeed tonight if he is able to energize his base, make a compelling case to swing state voters, and expose former Vice President Joe Biden's myriad weaknesses. To do so, President Trump must create a contrast with former VP Biden substantively and stylistically—defining himself, his opponent, their contrasting visions for America, and demonstrated ability to achieve them.
On substance, the president should frame his message around three central questions:
1) Who is better positioned to lead America back to prosperity from the Chinese coronavirus: the president who did it before and has started doing it again, or the candidate who has never done it in nearly 50 years in Washington? President Trump should contrast his pro-American worker, tax, and deregulatory policies—leading, pre-coronavirus, to rising pay, a booming job market, and growth rates the Obama-Biden administration said could never be achieved again—with the Obama-administration-led worst economic recovery in American history, and threats to do far worse under the radically socialist Biden-Bernie Sanders "unity vision." He should focus here on issues like Biden's flip-flopping on fracking, overall economy-crippling enviro-radicalism, and the Obama-Biden anti-suburb vision.
2) Do you want peace through strength to the benefit of America's national interest, or danger through weakness and appeasement to the benefit of our worst adversaries? President Trump should contrast his rebuilding of the military, confronting of our greatest adversary in Communist China, maximum pressure campaign against Iran—including historic efforts to build Israeli-Arab peace—crushing of ISIS, countering of Russia, combined with bringing our troops home and starting no new rudderless forever wars—with the Obama administration's aiding, abetting, and enabling of our worst adversaries. On China, the president should emphasize that former VP Biden helped create the world in which China could inflict so much pain on the American people via the coronavirus—which President Trump has sought to unmake—while calling out the Biden family's sketchy, potentially corrupt and criminal business dealings with CCP and PLA-associated individuals and entities while former VP Biden was in office. He should ask former VP Biden directly: "What did you know about your family's dealings with Communist China, when did you know it, and why didn't you do anything about it?"
3) Do you believe that America is a great and good bastion of liberty and justice, exceptional in the history of mankind—and poised to reach even greater heights—or that it was evil at its founding and remains rotten today, demanding only liberty for government officials to control our lives, and a justice of vengeance? Here, President Trump should contrast his vision of patriotism, freedom of speech, religious liberty, and law and order with a Democrat vision that would tear down these pillars of society—from the 1619 Project, to cancel culture, allowing rioters and looters to act with impunity while locking down faithful Americans, and the dismantling of police forces. And of course, he should note his record appointment of judges similarly dedicated to protecting these pillars of our republican order.
On style, President Trump should seek to exude confidence, command, and energy while landing body blows on former VP Biden that expose his tendency to veer into incoherence, grimace, and snap, breaking the "Uncle Joe" veneer of affability that is key to his public personae. He should anticipate former VP Biden having a pithy response, if he can deliver it properly, to questions of stamina and mental acuity, and potentially pivot to blaming the Democrat Party for cynically taking advantage of former VP Biden as a Trojan horse for their radicalism.
President Trump should constantly be on offense, forcing former VP Biden to disavow the chaos on the streets that his staff and that of his vice president directly supported through bail funds, throwing the "peaceful transfer of power" question back on the Obama-Biden administration that spied on President Trump's campaign, sabotaged, and tried to destroy his presidency, and attacking former VP Biden on everything from the disastrous coronavirus policies of like-minded blue state governors, to gratuitously pandering to black Americans who the Democrat Party has failed for decades, to being wrong on nearly every major foreign policy item of his career.
If President Trump can follow this playbook, he should be in for a powerful, momentum-building night.
Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, fellow at the Claremont Institute and senior contributor to The Federalist*. He is the author of* American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party (Bombardier, 2020). Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and production company. Subscribe to his newsletter at bit.ly/bhwnews, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.
Marianne Williamson
At a time when absolutely nothing is normal, there's no way to predict what Tuesday night's debate will be like. Traditional formulations like "Biden needs to do this" or "Trump needs to do that" seem almost quaint in the face of the surreal nature of this moment. From bombshell tax revelations to threats of a rigged election to widespread uncertainty about what either candidate might say at any given time, a bewildered nation can do a little more than sit back, try to be calm, and watch the drama unfold.
Marianne Williamson is a Newsweek columnist, best-selling author, political activist and spiritual thought leader. She is founder of Project Angel Food and co-founder of the Peace Alliance, and was the first candidate in the 2020 presidential primary to make reparations a pillar of her campaign. She is the author of 13 books, among them Healing the Soul of America and A Politics of Love*.*
The views expressed in this article are the authors' own.
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