Debate Tips for Trump

The voters Trump should try to persuade care about themselves, their families, and the future of the country. They don't care about his battles or the past.

Let’s start with the basics.

— Donald Trump has a big mouth, but also had a reasonably successful term as President.

— The 2020 election is in the past; this November is in the future. Not a tough guess as to which one voters care about.

— Trying to portray yourself as the victim of a bunch of cheaters is unmanly, not to mention unpersuasive when you’re a zillionaire and a former President, and your wife is a world-class beauty.

— Elections are won in the center, not with the people who got you the nomination and are going to vote for you anyway. So you know who the target audience is.

— The country agrees with you on the most important issues, but you need to be ready to play smart defense nonetheless, because you foolishly allowed this debate to be staged and moderated by your enemies.

OK. Now that we have the basics, let’s spell out what they mean in specifics.

The first thing you do is remind viewers why, by an overwhelming margin, they think the country is on the wrong track. Start with, “My fellow Americans, the best President in most of our lifetimes, Ronald Reagan, asked us — and I’m asking you — ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is our country better off — more respected and more able to deter our enemies? Is the world better off, now that in Joe Biden’s term we have the bloodiest war in Europe since WWII, and a dangerous and volatile war in the Middle East?”

“If you think you are better off, and our country is better off, then probably you should vote for Mr. Biden. But if you disagree — if the price of gas, groceries and rent is out of control and making it tougher for you to get ahead; if you think our adversaries like Russia, Iran and China have become more aggressive while we respond, if at all, with half measures; if you’re worried that we know more about the dozens of people who get on the airplane with you than we do about the thousands of people, including violent criminals, who illegally cross our border — if that’s what you think, I’m with you, and I ask for your vote. We can do better, we did do better, and when I’m President, we will do better once again.” ###

The majority is already with us on inflation, the economy, crime and border chaos, so the thing to do is keep at those issues while avoiding overstatement. Trump doesn’t need it and the Dems will jump all over it in the post-debate spin.

There are two other issues not generally mentioned among the top ones but that I’m certain Trump can gain by hammering. One is racial preference — an issue on which the electorate agrees with us and which has huge moral overtones, morality being one area where Trump can use some help with voters in the middle. Specifically, Trump would point out that Biden’s Justice Department urged to Supreme Court (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) to continue a grossly unfair, cruel and divisive system of racial preferences that benefited one racial group, blacks, at the expense of whites, Asian Americans and essentially everyone else. Moreover, the victims of these racial preferences were teenage college applicants — people who bore no responsibility whatever for long-ago racial discrimination but who were told they were to pay the price for it. Trump would then say that, under his administration, racial preferences would come to a complete end, and attempts to bring them in through the back door would be met head-on by his Justice Department. The Supreme Court, “acting with Justices I appointed,” has said what has been obvious for decades — racial preferences violate the constitutional guarantee of Equal Protection of the Law, a guarantee central to the basic morality and fairness of government. “Joe Biden supports them. I will end them.”

The second thought-to-be-lesser issue but actually one packed with political dynamite is Biden’s using tax money to try to bribe younger people to vote for him. Entirely apart from the wretched odor of its political payoff aspects, the loan “forgiveness” is, again, grossly unfair. Trump could do worse than to quote Mitch McConnell’s take on it:

"President Biden's student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt…This policy is astonishingly unfair….[It’s] cynical and outrageous but perfectly in character for Mr. Biden," McConnell added: "Taking money and purchasing power away from working families and redistributing it to their favored friends."

Trump should add that Biden has continued and is continuing right now to shovel out this money despite the Supreme Court’s having ruled that the program violates the limits the Constitution places on the the President’s spending power without Congressional authorization — authorization he doesn’t have and can’t get. “If it’s lawlessness and contempt for the rulings of the Court we’re searching out, we need look no further than Joe Biden, and if we want to end that sort of lawlessness, we need only to replace him.”

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Those are some key points on offense. On defense, there are at least two (actually more, some of which I’ll try to address later) items to cover. The first is the inevitable question whether Joe Biden is President only because he “stole” the last election.

This requires a disciplined answer (I know, I know, it’s Trump we’re talking about, but he’ll just have to try). One thing he can do, and is capable of doing despite it all, is turn the question around with some humor and get back on offense. Hence his answer should be, “I’ve been asked variants of that question many times — whether Joe Biden is authentically the President of the United States. The answer is simple: Look at the price of gas. Look at the price of groceries. Look at your rent or mortgage payment. Look at sky-high interest rates. Of course Joe Biden is President of the United States.”

The moderator will keep pushing, you bet. Trump can poke at him (but should avoid attack mode) by calmly saying something like, “I’ve told you what I think. My belief is that the American people want to hear about their future not the past, so with all respect, that’s where I’m going to leave it.”

The other point on defense is abortion. Again, Trump needs to tread lightly. He should say something like, “The Supreme Court held that the people, and not judges, should decide that question. In many states, the people have already started to do so. It’s a very heartfelt issue, with earnest and strongly held opinions on both sides. It’s not surprising, then, that some states have very liberal laws and others are more restrictive. A diversity of outcomes is what the Founders contemplated, just as we have diverse outcomes on, for example, laws on age for marriage and on the death penalty. I will say that, in line with respecting different outcomes in different states, I do not favor any federal role in making generally applicable abortion law.”

The key with this, as with other questions where polling shows that Democrats have the advantage, is to be thoughtful and non-threatening and change the subject back to where you hold the upper hand. There’s lots of fertile ground out there. Plow it.

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Lastly as to style.

What many undecided voters fear, and therefore what the moderators will bait Trump to the hilt and beyond, is the angry, nasty, blustering, self-absorbed Orange Bad Man. Trump being Trump, there is only so far anyone’s advice can go, but for whatever it’s worth: The obvious strategy is to be calm and relaxed while confident, to add some humor (perhaps self-deprecating humor if he can get there), and to be the adult, rather than the senior citizen, in the room. He should not directly mention Hunter or Biden’s age; that, I think, would seem petty. But there’s one way to bring up the age factor that might pay big dividends: Trump could ask Biden to name his present ambassadors to Germany, France and Russia. These are not unimportant counties, so it could not be criticized as a trick question.

Maybe Joe could do it, but I really have my doubts. And if he can’t, it will underscore what polls uniformly show is Biden’s principal weakness: The public knows he’s just too old for the job.

If that’s the main impression coming out of this, then, all the substantive policy questions to one side, Trump will have scored a big win.