President Trump could benefit in Thursday night’s debate by reciting his list of foreign policy and national security accomplishments while billing Joe Biden as someone who had his time in office with little to show for it, advisers say.
The debate commission announced Friday that the topics for the contest would be “Fighting COVID-19,” “American Families,” “Race in America,” “Climate Change,” “National Security,” and “Leadership.” The Trump campaign says it expected a debate focused on foreign policy.
“When President Trump is ticking off his list of foreign policy and national security accomplishments, it’s important for him to remind everyone that if he got it done, it means Joe Biden never got it done. He failed to get it done,” a close Trump adviser told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
It’s a point the president’s reelection campaign has emphasized and hopes that he will stick to at the debate in Nashville on Thursday.
“The president gets advice from us: Let Biden speak. Use numbers because Biden is easily flummoxed,” this source said. “It will wear him down and wear him out because numbers absolutely numb his brain.”
In this spirit, Trump may try one or two statistics.
As one example, this adviser pointed to Operation Warp Speed’s public-private effort to deliver therapeutics and a vaccine “in less time than it takes to have a baby.”
“It is a security issue to think that you have a president that can mobilize the private sector for the good of all Americans.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller told Fox News this week that Trump would scale back his attacks on Biden, granting the former vice president “more room to explain himself.”
Focusing on foreign policy would be “perfect” in light of Biden’s past support for “endless wars,” he said.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced last week a broader scope of debate topics and, on Monday, revealed new time constraints for speakers enforced by a mute button to curtail the opposing speaker.
Trump is expected to work around the new framework.
“There are issue-specific pivots that he can place upon Biden’s shoulders, and there are general pivots that he can place upon Biden’s shoulders,” a source said, pointing to one way Trump may try to gain control of his time.
Said this source: “Joe Biden was vice president for eight years. Prior to that, he was a senator for nearly four decades, including chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. And nobody, nobody with a straight face can cite the top two foreign policy national security accomplishments of Sen.-Vice President Joe Biden, nobody does that.”
