[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
Today is 131 days from Election Day 2024; the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former POTUS and adjudged business fraudster Donald Trump will be hosted by CNN at the network’s Atlanta GA studios at 9:00 p.m.
Moderators will be Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.
Rules upon which the debate participants have agreed include no use of notes prepared ahead of the debate and microphones muted when the candidates are not speaking during their allotted time to respond.
Based on a coin toss Trump will give the final closing remarks while Biden will take the podium which viewers will see on the righthand side of their screens.
Other networks may carry CNN’s feed, which means you’ll see CNN’s branding no matter which network you choose.
Voters’ perceptions of the debate have already been tampered with by Team Trump:
• Trump and the right-wing media ecosystem have already spread false claims that Biden will be on performance enhancing drugs with Trump using this claim during his campaign rallies.
That’s what this guy, who spent nearly 25% of his first term in office on golf courses and much of it in golf carts:
said about this guy who has a predilection for ice cream and bike riding:
• CNN’s interview of Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt by Kasie Hunt was intended to seed the idea that CNN’s debate platform was unfair to Trump.
However, Hunt cut Leavitt’s mic when Hunt persisted in attacks on CNN and the assigned moderators Tapper and Bash.
This panel discussion which includes an excerpt of Hunt’s interview with Leavitt is worth watching, even if it’s daytime talk show The View:
Most importantly, The View’s panel could see a complete lack of message from Team Trump.
Which ultimately is the purpose of tonight’s debate: the two candidates should convey their vision of the next four years. How different are those visions? What’s their message to the voters?
This is an open thread. Discuss your perspective of the candidates’ performance and their messages to us.
~ ~ ~
ADDER — 8:55 P.M. —
The other entity which should be watched carefully tonight and immediately following the debate is the goddamned media.
I am so furious with NPR’s Tonya Mosley and NYT’s Shane Goldmacher I could spit nails.
Mosley interviewed Goldmacher for NPR’s Fresh Air today. The last portion of the interview is a perfect example of what’s wrong with media coverage of Biden and Trump.
They expended roughly 785 words on Biden’s age followed by a counter observation of Trump which was roughly 214 words, and those 214 words are only half about Trump:
There are also clips of Donald Trump misspeaking, and you mentioned this earlier, right? He gives long, meandering, hard-to-follow answers. I’ve sat through his rallies and sort of lost track of what he’s talking about for a few minutes at a time. And he is not presenting everything in the most sharp and coherent and cohesive way. That said, voters don’t seem to perceive him in the same way they perceive Joe Biden around the issue of age. And the Biden campaign itself, while that’s been a frustration, that’s not how they’ve attacked Trump either. They’ve attacked Trump on policies – that he snapped after the 2020 election, that his second term would be far more radical than his first term was, that he threatens democracy itself, that he wouldn’t accept the outcome of a future election, that he would be a dictator on day one, which is something that Trump has said about how he would take his approach to the border and some other issues. So the Biden campaign itself has through their actions showed their focus is on what Trump would do should he win election. And I think that the Trump campaign is really focused on who Joe Biden would be and raising questions about the president himself and his capabilities.
OMFG THE PRESIDENCY AGED BIDEN No fucking shit, you two sad sack excuses for journalists. Look at every president — Obama’s hair was grey when he left office and his face had new lines.
OMFG DEMOCRATS ARE WORRIED ABOUT BIDEN No fucking shit, because journalists covering Biden do this egregious lopsided coverage in which they literally blow by the fact Trump has said “that he would be a dictator on day one” as if that’s somehow just a minor inconvenience and not an existential threat to many Americans and U.S. residents.
Journalists like these two twits make Biden tripping over a sandbag equal to or a greater risk than TRUMP WANTS TO BE A DICTATOR ON DAY ONE. What the actual fuck???
The inability to recognize dementia in Trump is also egregiously bad — that meandering speech is a bit of a problem if the military is expecting a cogent order about a crisis, you two stupid dipshits. Trump’s phonemic aphasia has been growing worse since he was in office; he already displayed it then.
And yet the public hasn’t been adequately informed about this likely sign among many that Trump has some form of dementia or Alzheimer’s.
Stuff like this from Cornell University’s Media Office:
Cornell expert says Trump’s frequent phonemic paraphasia ‘are signs of early dementia’
doesn’t garner a fraction of the coverage it needs, because journalists like Mosley and Goldmacher are too busy amplifying rightwing talking points about Biden’s age instead of addressing Trump’s increasing cognitive impairment combined with his desire to BECOME A DICTATOR ON DAY ONE.
Again, this is an open thread. Be sure to discuss what fuckery the media offer about tonight’s debate, using Lakoff’s Truth Sandwich format.