ATLANTA — President Joe Biden 's campaign is downplaying how much his 2024 election opening debate against former President Donald Trump will help him in the polls as Trump maintains an average polling advantage over the incumbent.
A senior Biden campaign adviser told the Washington Examiner the debate, hosted by CNN in Atlanta on Thursday, will help Biden "break through to a larger audience that has yet to tune in to the presidential election" and "put a spotlight on the stark contrast" between him and Trump, "a convicted felon with an unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution."
"The debate also gives us an opportunity to organize with the Biden-Harris coalition across the battleground states," the adviser said, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris . "Our growing grassroots base of supporters will use the debate to have conversations with their friends and families who have yet to engage with the choice on the ballot in November."
At the same time, the Biden adviser underscored that the election will be "very close ... all the way to November." Nationally and in most battleground states, Biden and Trump are statistically tied, according to RealClearPolitics .
"The June debate is not a moment that we expect to define the trajectory of the election or move poll numbers in the near term," the source said. "We have a largely locked-in electorate and two well-defined candidates — and the voters who will decide this election are going to require consistent time and effort to win for November."
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has been playing the expectations game after criticism they lowered the bar for Biden by scrutinizing his age and mental acuity. Campaign aides and supporters have, for example, started attacking CNN, alleging moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be biased toward the former president.
“The media wants to lower Joe Biden’s debate performance bar so low he gets a participation trophy simply for standing upright for 90 minutes, but make no doubt about it — Biden will be highly prepared and alert on debate night, relying on the same perfectly calibrated dosage used to deliver his widely praised 2024 State of the Union Address or his 2012 thrashing of Paul Ryan in the VP debate," Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung told the Washington Examiner.
“The true benchmark for Thursday’s debate should be whether or not Joe Biden can defend his disastrous record on inflation and the out-of-control border invasion versus President Trump’s unquestioned first-term record of success, and if Biden can speak for himself without the overt participation and interference of two CNN moderators," Cheung said. "If given a fair opportunity to present his vision for America, President Trump will lay out exactly how he plans to improve the lives of every American suffering from everything becoming too expensive and every community being turned into a border community thanks to Joe Biden’s incompetence.”
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Biden has spent the past week ensconced at Camp David, Maryland, holding mock debates with his coach, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain , while Trump has had "informal policy discussions" with campaign staff, policy experts, and possible vice presidential nominees.
The debate, the earliest in presidential history, will be broadcast from a television studio without an audience and with muted microphones should the candidates speak for more than their allotted time.
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