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Trump vs. Biden: Let’s get ready to rumble

​U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in their first 2020 presidential campaign debate held on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., September 29, 2020.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden participate in their first 2020 presidential campaign debate held on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., September 29, 2020.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Alex Kliment
By Alex KlimentMay 15, 2024
Alex Kliment

Alex wears a few different caps and tips them all regularly. He writes for the GZERO Daily, works as a field correspondent for GZERO's nationally syndicated TV show GZERO WORLD WITH IAN BREMMER, and writes/directs/voices GZERO's award-winning puppet satire show PUPPET REGIME. Prior to joining GZERO, Alex worked as an analyst covering Russia and broader Emerging Markets for Eurasia Group. He has also written for the Financial Times from Washington, DC, and Sao Paulo Brazil. In his spare time, he makes short films and composes scores for long ones. He studied history and Slavic literature at Columbia and has a Master's from Johns Hopkins SAIS. He's a native New Yorker, a long-suffering Mets fan, and owns too many bicycles.

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It’s on. We don't mean the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing “match” but an even higher profile smackdown that might not be a whole lot more substantive: President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have agreed to two head-to-head presidential debates.

The first will be hosted by CNN on June 27 – making it the earliest presidential debate in modern history. The second will be run by ABC on Sept. 10. Neither will have a live audience.

Biden had earlier kiboshed any debates hosted by the nonpartisan debate commission, which has run them since the 1980s. Those live-audience faceoffs typically take place in September, after early voting begins.

Why are they doing this? Biden, trailing Trump in the polls, hopes to make his famously erratic opponent sweat, says Clayton Allen, a US expert at Eurasia Group. “He’s betting that Trump, stressed by the criminal trial and maybe facing a guilty verdict, will implode, or look bad in the spotlight.”

Trump, meanwhile, is hoping that in the heat of debate, Biden will have one (or more) of those moments where he looks old, unsteady, or confused. In short, says Allen, he’s betting on “Biden falling asleep.”

One guy might look crazy, the other might look senile – American democracy is truly a city on a hill!

trumppoliticsus-canadaus electionsdebates2024 electionpresidential electionelections 2024biden

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