Former President Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork to complain that the upcoming presidential debate is rigged against him, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
This was evident in what Trump told his followers at this latest campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin.
Trump told his followers to be "suspicious of the whole debate enterprise, although his campaign negotiated the terms of his participation," wrote Shawn McCreesh. "They should keep in mind, he said, that he’ll be up against multiple adversaries at once — not just Mr. Biden but both of CNN’s moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who, Mr. Trump added, were constitutionally incapable of treating him fairly. 'I’ll be debating three people instead of one half of a person,' he said."
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Because Trump and his supporters spent months portraying Biden as cognitively enfeebled and incapable of managing basic responsibilities, the report said, he would be seen as the loser of the debate if Biden came in forcefully and dispelled the notion.
"The expectations game is a particular challenge for the Trump campaign. Mr. Trump, 78, has spent months casting the 81-year-old Mr. Biden as a husk of a man who can barely walk or formulate complete sentences. Republicans have pumped out a stream of videos of Mr. Biden walking stiffly — some deceptively edited — that are meant to be proof of Mr. Biden’s decline," said the report.
"But Mr. Trump was also preparing for his caricature of Mr. Biden to be punctured next week. He openly wrestled with the obvious question: What if Mr. Biden clears the very low bar that Mr. Trump has now set for him?"
The debate is scheduled to take place next week in Atlanta. Some analysts have previously suggested Republicans have been trying to set the stage to legitimize Trump bowing out of the debate altogether.
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