President Joe Biden’s train-wreck debate with Republican opponent Donald Trump followed a series of decisions by his most senior advisers that critics now point to as wrong-headed, interviews with Democratic allies, donors and former and current aides show.
Trump, 78, repeated a series of well-worn, glaring falsehoods during the 90-minute debate on Thursday (Jun 27), including claims that he actually won the 2020 election.
Biden, 81, failed to refute them and his fumbling, halting performance has sparked calls from Democrats for him to end his quest for a second term and for “soul-searching” or resignations among top aides.
“My only request was make sure he’s rested before the debate, but he was exhausted. He was unwell,” said one person who said they appealed to Biden’s top aides in the days before, to no avail. “What a bad decision to send him out looking sick and exhausted.”
Others were even more pointed.
“It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced. And I believe (senior aide) Anita Dunn … put him in a venue that was conducive for Trump and not for him,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.
Morgan said Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s attorney who played Trump in pre-debate rehearsals, should “be fired forever and never let back anywhere near the campaign”.
Biden’s debate strategy was signed off on by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to boost an uneven reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former Barack Obama campaign strategist, backed that strategy.
Confidence going into the event was high. Trump was convicted of falsifying documents by a jury in New York on May 31, while Biden held back-to-back visits in Europe.
To the surprise of some Biden aides, his stubbornly low poll numbers began to inch up nationally in the weeks that followed.
Advisers set up a rigorous debate prep calendar, with Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days.
An inner circle, some close to Biden for decades, were involved: Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, Dunn, former White House counsel and Dunn’s husband Bob Bauer and long-time adviser Mike Donilon, as well as about a dozen other policy and political experts.
Biden’s campaign said on Friday that no staff shake-up was under consideration. Multiple aides, not just Dunn and Bauer, were involved in the preparation, said a campaign official, who also noted that Morgan was not there.
In an email to supporters on Saturday, O’Malley Dillon said internal polls and focus groups showed no change in voters’ opinions in battleground states after the debate. She warned “overblown media narratives” may drive “temporary dips in the polls,” but said she was confident Biden would win in November.
