Donald Trump will face Joe Biden in the first presidential debate of the general election on Tuesday night, as the president tries to gain an advantage over his opponent after months of trailing in the polls and new revelations that he avoided paying federal taxes for years.
A damning report in the New York Times documenting Trump’s tax avoidance efforts offered a fresh line of attack for Biden, who has sought to cast the election as a choice between Park Avenue, a symbol of the elite lifestyle Trump enjoyed as a businessman in New York, and Scranton, the working-class city where he was born.
Hours before the debate, held in Cleveland, Ohio, Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, released their 2019 tax returns. Breaking decades of precedent, Trump has refused to release his tax returns to the public.
Both campaigns have spent weeks preparing for the matchup, which is expected to draw millions of viewers. Biden is expected to hammer Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed nearly 205,000 American lives.
Ahead of the debate, Trump’s allies have attempted to cast Biden as incoherent and fanned baseless online conspiracy theories that Biden requires cue cards or an earpiece to answer questions.
In a statement, Trump’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh, alleged that Biden’s campaign had reneged on an agreement to a “pre-debate inspection for electronic earpieces” and that his team sought “multiple breaks during the debate, which President Trump doesn’t need”. Pointing to Trump’s demand that Biden submit to a drug test, a suggestion Biden laughed off, Murtaugh said it was clear the president’s opponent was looking for a “safety net” ahead of the debate.
Biden’s campaign flatly denied the accusations.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, the deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, observed that Trump’s team appeared “concerned that he will not do well tonight” and were “laying the groundwork for how they’re going to lie about why”.
The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace will moderate the debate, focusing on six pre-determined topics, which include: the candidates’ records, the Covid-19 crisis, the economy, the supreme court, race and violence in American cities and the integrity of the election. Each topic will receive 15 minutes of discussion during the 90-minute affair.
US presidential debate: all you need to know about the face-off in Cleveland
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The debate is arguably Trump’s best opportunity to reset the presidential race in which he is currently behind. The economy is the sole issue where Trump retains a slight advantage over Biden, though even there his edge is slipping.
Majorities of Americans consistently disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and believe his response to the racial justice protests have only made matters worse.
On election security, Trump may face scrutiny for his baseless attacks on mail-in balloting and attempts to undermine confidence in the electoral system. Polls show that Americans have lost faith in the electoral process, a sign that his efforts to sow doubt ahead of the election are resonating.
Performance is equally, if not more, important than the discussion. And in both style and substance, Biden and Trump are opposites.
Trump, ever the showman, has used past debates to shock and awe the audience with his unorthodox approach. The approach worked in 2016, when Trump defeated his better-prepared opponents. Biden, by contrast, delivered steady albeit less memorable performances in many of the Democratic primary debates. And yet, Biden emerged victorious from a field of agile debaters.
Looming over the debate is whether anything either candidate says or does on Tuesday night will sway voters. While nearly three in four voters said they planned to watch the debate on Tuesday night, according to a recent Monmouth University poll, just 3% of voters said it was “very likely” to affect their vote in November.
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