The Landscape For Tonight's Presidential Debate - Top 3 Takeaways

This Presidential Debate (Probably) Matters More Than Most - Top 3 Takeaways – June 27th, 2024     

1. It’s go time. How weird is it that it’s not even Independence Day and we’re having a presidential debate? Very weird. How odd is it that we’ve not had the political conventions – where each party’s candidate is actually decided – prior to having a presidential debate? It’s very odd. How strange is it that Joe Biden showered with his daughter (according to his daughter)? Sorry, that’s aside from the point. So, the answer is that it’s so weird and so odd that we’re having a debate on June 27th because no debate has ever taken place before July 4th, the political conventions or actually before September 21st (the first Reagan-Carter debate in 1980). Tonight’s presidential debate is the earliest in American history by 86 days. How strange is it that the debates’ two moderators have both compared one of the presidential candidates to Adolf Hitler? That’s also unprecedented. It was just last December that CNN’s Jake Tapper said this about Donald Trump: If you were to open up a copy of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. The Jew, Hitler wrote, ‘poisons the blood of others’ … Donald Trump’s language mirrors this directly. So, yeah of course that guy can be trusted to moderate the debate. I mean yeah, he's recently compared Donald Trump to Hitler, but it isn’t like he referred to his presidency as a nightmare or anything? Oh, wait he did. Following the results of the 2020 presidential election Jake Tapper declared: It has been a time where truth and fact were treated with disdain. It is a time of cruelty, where official inhumanities, such as child separation, became the official, shameful policy of the United States. But now, the Trump presidency is coming to an end. With so many squandered opportunities and ruined potential, but also an era of just plain meanness. It must be said, to paraphrase President Ford, for tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over. So uhh...yeah. Nothing but straight down the middle objectivity from that guy. Then you have the aptly named Dana Bash who likewise sees Trump as Hitler’s second coming. In a campaign rally last November Donald Trump said this: We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. As Dana noted while responding to Trump’s comments at the time: We talked to historians, like The Washington Post did, and we just need to say for the record that the term 'vermin' was really effectively used by Adolf Hitler and by Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to go after their opponents. Got it, so that’s the comp for Trump according to Dana Bash and her “historians”. As an aside, I wonder if any of the "historians" were the same criminally negligent intelligence officials who signed a document just prior to the 2020 election saying that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, the same laptop that was later verified as legitimate and that contained the evidence that was just used to convict Hunter Biden on federal charges? Good times. And what does CNN have to say about their esteemed Nazi hunters? Quoting a CNN spokesperson to the New York Post: Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined. They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle.  
2. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate. So, let me see. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion than two people who’ve likened the former President of the United States to Adolf Hitler? What alternate universe do these people live in? Evidently, they suspect you’re every bit a mis and uninformed as their audience is. What else can you say except that...This is CNN...in 2024. But back to tonight’s debate. In the words of Jake Tapper in December of 2021 when referring to the former and perhaps future President of the United States... He did try to kill democracy once, and he’s going to try to do it again. One wonders if Jake will see it as his role to “protect democracy” tonight by attempting to take Trump out...or at least through his line of questioning and perhaps cutting Trump off. Like literally cutting off Trump’s mic. That takes us to... 
3. The rules of the debate... There will be no studio audience. There will be only a pen, paper and water allowed on stage. No prewritten notes will be allowed on stage nor will any sitting (you can see where Trump’s team negotiated those two) There will be commercial breaks though neither candidate will be allowed to consult their political teams. And then there’s this one. A candidate’s microphone will only be turned on when it’s their time to speak. That’s one that could cut both ways. A hallmark of Biden’s debating strategy has been to strategically interrupt to prevent his challenger from getting on a roll. In theory that will be mitigated. But the question is whether CNN will fairly let Trump go when it is his time to speak? That remains to be seen. But the reason this debate is taking place the way it is and where it is due to President Biden’s team having called the former president’s bluff. When Trump said he’d debate Biden any time and any place. The Biden team said great! Then the time will be before the political conventions (so that what – either the debate performance is so far in front of the election it might not matter – or as some conspiracy theories suggest it provides an opportunity for him to be removed by Democrats at the convention), the place will be Biden-friendly network CNN and the where will be in Atlanta with two CNN debate moderators who’ve gone on-air comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. And with that the stage is set with a presidential debate that has the potential to matter more than most.