Interviews with Democratic aides, donors and former and current aides reveal that a number of decisions were made by President Joe Biden’s most senior advisers after his debate with Republican rival Donald Trump that critics are now calling wrong.
Trump, 78, repeated a number of well-worn, obvious falsehoods during Thursday’s 90-minute debate, including the claim that he actually won the 2020 election.
Biden, 81, has failed to refute them, and his faltering, halting performance has prompted calls from Democrats to end his quest for a second term and for “soul-searching” or resignations among top aides.
“My only demand was that he be rested before the debate, but he was tired. He was unwell,” said one person, adding that they had appealed to top Biden aides in the days before, but to no avail. “What a bad decision it was to show him sick and tired.”
Others were even more explicit.
“I believe he was very much coached, very much practiced. And I believe (senior aide) Anita Dunn put him in a position that was favorable to Trump, not favorable to him,” said John Morgan, a Florida lawyer and a major fundraiser for Biden.
Morgan suggested that Dunn and the other aides “be fired forever and never allowed to join the campaign again.”
Biden’s debate strategy was signed off on by campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was hired in January to boost an uneven reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former campaign strategist for Barack Obama, endorsed that strategy.
There was a lot of confidence in the public about this event. On May 31, a jury in New York convicted Trump of forging documents, while Biden was on a continuous tour of Europe.
Some Biden allies were surprised to see his notoriously low polling numbers slowly rise nationally over the next few weeks.
Advisers devised a rigorous calendar for debate preparation, with Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days.
It also included some of Biden’s closest associates: Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, Dunn, former White House counsel and Dunn’s husband Bob Bauer, and longtime adviser Mike Donilon, as well as about a dozen other policy and political experts.
Biden’s campaign said Friday that no staffing changes were being considered. A spokesman for Dunn said multiple aides were involved in the preparations, and added that Morgan was not present.
In an email to supporters on Saturday, O’Malley Dillon said internal surveys and focus groups showed no change in voter opinion in battleground states after the debate. She warned that “exaggerated media narratives” could lead to a “temporary drop in polls,” but said she remains confident Biden will win in November.
Facts and interesting facts
Biden’s foreign trips, particularly one to France earlier this month, sparked video clips on Republican social media mocking his age, but his team believes they also showed him as a strong leader on the international stage.
White House aides traveling with the president were in a good mood as they headed to Camp David on June 21. They believed Biden was going into the debate with the most precious political asset: momentum, the wind behind him.
Biden traveled to France, then the United States, including Italy and the West Coast, over a 14-day period, before taking a break at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
According to many people who saw him during this time, he was dragging himself.
As Biden and his aides sat down at Camp David six days before the debate, aides realized he had more work to do than his opponent. Trump could only complain about the current administration — and Biden would need facts and a few jokes.
He expected Trump to be far more disciplined and prepared than he was in 2020 and believed he would have to counter with increasingly rapid lies.
In long preparation sessions, they briefed Biden in detail, then followed with mock debates.
Critics say preparation now should have been focused on the larger vision he wants to sell to the country, and that Biden was not well-rested before the debate.
White House aides said Biden may have a mild cold, as he has regularly suffered from colds during his tenure due to long hours working across time zones.
The result, critics say, was that candidate Biden was at his worst: He appeared pale on stage, his hair disheveled at the collar and his voice hoarse. He often spoke incoherently.
“I’ve never seen him perform like this before,” said Michael LaRosa, a former special assistant to President Biden and press secretary to first lady Jill Biden.
“He could outperform most people on complex policy matters,” LaRosa said. “It was always a matter of presentation and appearance, and there were going to be superficial judgments about his performance. And he was never able to exceed that standard.”
New debate platform
Earlier this year, some Biden allies discussed whether he should debate Trump, arguing that it would give Trump a wider public platform, which would be a disadvantage to Biden.
Then in an April interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Biden himself announced his decision to debate Trump, a surprise to some advisers. “I’m in someplace,” he said.
With the triumphant memory of his State of the Union address in March fresh in their minds, Biden’s team geared up for the debate but took radical steps to control the terms.
He decided to reject the three long-scheduled presidential debates in September and October hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and is still upset with the group’s way of conducting the 2020 debates.
Trump repeatedly violated the rules of the chaotic first debate in 2020, appearing despite testing positive for Covid-19, and consistently dominating Biden.
His team tried to frame the contest according to their own preferences, with CNN as the more pliable host. There was no audience to support Trump’s abuses. The network and moderators were not prepared to challenge Trump. There was no Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There was no mute button.
The day after the debate, Biden gave a powerful speech in North Carolina and vowed to keep moving forward. Many donors and Democrats are rallying behind him.
But the damage has been done.
Asked Sunday if the Democratic Party was discussing a new candidate for 2024, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC: “There are very honest, serious and hard conversations taking place at every level of our party, because this is a political party and we have differences in viewpoint.”
Raskin said: “Whether he’s the candidate or someone else, he’ll be the keynote speaker at our convention.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)