National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, said President Biden’s public image is so bad that he “has to crush it to get anywhere near winning” the upcoming presidential debate on Thursday.
Cooke listed the Biden administration’s major policy failures of the past three years, from the Afghanistan withdrawal to “his illegal attempt to give money to students by so-called student-loan forgiveness,” adding: “He’s a guy who has become a national embarrassment.
“Supermajorities . . . of Americans think he’s too old,” Cooke said, “so he’s going in and he doesn’t just have to survive. . . . This therefore has created a debate where the roles are reversed. I think what . . . Trump has to do is just seem normal.
“We can talk about all of the expectations we like,” Cooke said, “but to me . . . Thursday is going to be the mirror image of 2020.
“If Trump can stand there, deliver a carefully selected set of haymakers on topics that matter to people — not the election of 2020 — on topics that matter to people, get through his answers sounding reasonably coherent, I think he wins the debate.”
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