President Joe Biden’s trainwreck debate with Republican rival Donald Trump followed a series of decisions by his top advisers that critics now say were wrong, according to interviews with Democratic allies, donors and former and current aides.
Trump, 78, repeated a series of well-worn, blatant falsehoods during Thursday’s 90-minute debate, including claims that he actually won the 2020 election.
Biden, 81, failed to disprove them, and his clumsy, halting performance sparked calls from Democrats to end his second-term quest and do some “soul searching” or resignations among top aides.
“My only request was that he rest before the debate, but he was exhausted.” He wasn’t doing well,” said one person who said they had reached out to Biden’s top aides in recent days, but to no avail. “What a bad decision to send him out looking sick and exhausted.”
Others were even harsher.
“I believe he was over-trained, over-trained.” And I believe [senior aide] Anita Dunn … put him in a place that was convenient for Trump, not for him,” said John Morgan, a Florida attorney and top Biden fundraiser.
Morgan suggested that Dunn and other aides “be fired forever and never let anywhere near the campaign.”
Biden’s debate strategy was signed by campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to fuel a lopsided re-election campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former Barack Obama campaign strategist, supported the strategy.
Confidence in the event was high. Trump was convicted by a jury in New York on May 31 of falsifying documents, while Biden made consecutive visits to Europe.
To the surprise of some Biden aides, his stubbornly low poll numbers began to rise nationally in the weeks that followed.
Advisers set a rigorous preparation calendar for the debate, and Biden was confined to Camp David for six days.
The inner circle, some close to Biden for decades, included Ron Klein, his first White House chief of staff, Dan, former White House adviser and Dan’s husband Bob Bauer, and longtime adviser Mike Donilon, as well as a dozen other political and policy experts.
The Biden campaign said Friday that no personnel changes were being considered. A spokesman for Dunn said multiple aides were involved in the preparations and noted that Morgan was not there.
In an email to supporters on Saturday, O’Malley Dillon said internal polls and focus groups showed no change in the opinions of voters in battleground states after the debate. She warned that “overblown media narratives” could lead to “temporary dips in the polls” but said she was confident Biden would win in November.
FACTS AND ZINGERS
Biden’s trips abroad, particularly to France earlier this month, generated Republican clips on social media mocking his age, but, his team believed, it also showed him as a strong leader on the international stage.
White House aides traveling with the president were in good spirits as he headed to Camp David on June 21. They believed that Biden was entering the debate with the most precious of political advantages: momentum, the wind at his back.
Biden flew to France, back to the United States, Italy and the West Coast, among other trips, over a 14-day period before taking just a few days to rest at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
He dragged, according to several people who observed him during this period.
As Biden and his aides settled into Camp David six days before the debate, aides concluded that he had a lot to accomplish, more than his opponent. Trump could only complain about the current administration — and Biden would need facts and some zingers at his fingertips.
They expected Trump to be much more disciplined and prepared than he was in 2020, and they believed they would have to counter a series of rapid-fire lies.
In long preparation sessions, Biden was bombarded with details and then followed up with mock debates.
Critics now say the preparation should have focused on a bigger vision to sell the country, and that Biden didn’t rest enough in the debate.
Worn out, Biden would also catch a bit of a cold, White House aides said, as he regularly did during his tenure after long periods of time-zone-bending work.
The result, say critics, was the worst possible candidate Biden: he appeared on stage with a pale face, disheveled hair on his collar and a hoarse voice. He was often incoherent.
“I’ve never seen him perform like that before,” said Michael LaRosa, a former special assistant to President Biden and press secretary to first lady Jill Biden.
“He can run circles around most people on complex policy issues,” LaRosa said. “This was always going to be a matter of presentation and cosmetics, and the superficial judgments that would be made about his performance.” And he wasn’t able to clear the bar.”
NEW DEBATE FORUM
Earlier this year, some Biden aides debated whether he should debate Trump at all, arguing that it could give Trump a broad public platform that would hurt Biden.
Then Biden himself, in an April interview with Howard Stern, made a decision about the Trump debate that came as a surprise to some advisers. “I did, somewhere,” he said.
With the triumphant memory of his State of the Union address in March fresh in their minds, Biden’s team prepared for the debate but took radical steps to control the conditions.
They decided to skip three long-scheduled presidential debates in September and October organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, still resentful of how the group is running the 2020 debates.
Trump repeatedly broke the rules in what would be the first chaotic debate of 2020, appearing despite testing positive for COVID-19 and talking mercilessly about Biden.
His team tried to set up the competition on their own terms, with what they saw as a more lenient host on CNN. No audience is rooting for Trump’s criticism. Networks and moderators tend to challenge Trump. Not Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mute button.
The day after the debate, Biden bounced back with a strong speech in North Carolina and a promise to keep going. Many donors and democrats gather around him.
But the damage was done.
Asked Sunday if the Democratic Party was debating a new 2024 candidate, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC: “There are very honest, serious, rigorous conversations going on at every level of our party, because it’s a political party and we have differences from a point of view.”
Raskin added, “Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention.”