Hillary Clinton, who ran against former President Donald Trump and lost to him in 2016, offered presidential debate advice Tuesday to President Joe Biden, claiming her preparation against Trump “worked.”
The former first lady and secretary of state wrote in the op-ed, published in the New York Times on Tuesday:
In 2016, I prepared intensely for the debates because I knew I had to find a way to cut through Mr. Trump’s antics and help the American people understand what was really at stake. In 90-minute mock debates on an identical stage, I practiced keeping my cool in the face of hard questions and outright lies about my record and character. A longtime adviser played Mr. Trump and did everything he could to provoke, rattle, and enrage me. It worked.
Clinton would go on to lose the election to Trump.
Nonetheless, she painted Trump as difficult to debate, and advised Biden to be “direct and forceful,” arguing that it would be a “waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments.”
She also tried to set standards low for the octogenarian president, saying he “starts from a disadvantage because there’s no way he can spend as much time preparing as I did eight years ago.”
“Being president isn’t just a day job; it’s an everything-everywhere-all-at-once job. Historically, that has led to weaker first debate performances for the incumbent,” she argued.
File/In this Sept. 26, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shake hands during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
She then tried to put forward her own arguments of why voters should choose Biden.
While Clinton is downplaying focusing on Biden’s performance, the debate setting is already advantageous for him.
The debate will be moderated by CNN — which has a notorious anti-Trump editorial slant. There are other rules that are seen as favoring Biden, such as no audience and moderators having the ability to cut off candidates’ microphones.
Trump told the Washington Examiner’s Byron York recently he believes CNN offered him terms they thought he would turn down, but he said yes anyway.
“What they did, I’m pretty sure, is that they approached me with a debate that I couldn’t take. Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, no audience, sitting down, originally sitting down, a dead debate, turn off the mikes when you’re not speaking so I can’t interrupt him….They knew I wouldn’t accept that because it was CNN, Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, and I like an audience and probably he doesn’t, who knows? So they thought they would present it, I would say no, and they would say we can’t debate because Trump said no. So I said yes before they even gave me the terms. So he got roped into it,” he said, according to York.
Trump on how this debate came about: 'What they did, I’m pretty sure, is that they approached me with a debate that I couldn’t take. Dana Bash, Jake Tapper [Trump referred to the CNN anchor/commentator as 'Fake Tapper' throughout], no audience, sitting down, originally sitting…
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 25, 2024
“President Trump is bold to go on a three-on-one fight on a network that is clearly hostile to him,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday in an interview with Benny Johnson.
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