President Donald Trump will enter an extremely hostile environment Thursday when he squares off against President Joe Biden in the first presidential debate of the 2024 general election, but that doesn’t mean he will be at a disadvantage.
The debate will be hosted by CNN and moderated by the network’s anchors, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. It is the earliest debate for a general election ever. The two candidates are scheduled to debate again in early September.
Presidential debates are always billed as an opportunity for voters to hear both candidates contrast their different visions for the country in a face-to-face manner. In practice, these debates have increasingly pitted the Republican nominee against a united front of the Democratic Party nominee and the debate moderators.
Don’t expect anything to be different on Thursday. Tapper and Bash have never shied away from their disdain for Trump. When CNN projected Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, Tapper shamelessly claimed that Trump’s term in office was “an era of just plain meanness” and that the end of his presidency was the end of a national nightmare.
Tapper’s partisanship has not been constrained to bashing the GOP. In 2024, his byline was attached to one of the most dishonest news articles ever published by CNN. Tapper co-authored a report relying entirely on hearsay that New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers denied the Sandy Hook massacre at a Kentucky Derby party more than a decade prior. The article was published amid speculation that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might select Rodgers as his campaign running mate.
Bash, for her part, has lamented the fact that Trump is even allowed to run for president. During an on-air segment earlier this year, she remarked that “unfortunately for America,” the Supreme Court was right to say that only Congress could ban someone from running for office.
Anyone who suggests that Bash and Tapper will be fair and impartial moderators should be laughed out of polite company. They are partisan operators and will operate as such when they pretend to referee Thursday’s debate.
Trump, however, has an opportunity to turn this stacked deck in his favor. Every time that Bash and Tapper behave as the partisans they are, he can point out how this shows just how badly the political and media establishment wants to keep him out of office, with the Biden administration and big-city district attorneys even going so far as to prosecute him on bogus charges.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
With his decades of television and entertainment experience, Trump thrives when the spotlight is on him. But if he is to be successful in turning this biased spectacle in his favor, he must maintain a cheery disposition and avoid coming across as angry and bitter.
If he is able to accomplish that and maintain his unique and entertaining sense of humor, the former president can further distinguish himself and his pledge to “Make America Great Again” from the grumpy and angry partisans who will be eager to tear him down on the debate stage.