Biden Should Never Have Debated Trump — and CNN Did Him No Favors
variety.comDaniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic Should things go the way they seem to be going, the events of Thursday night may go down as the greatest unforced error in presidential electoral politics since Richard Nixon, fatigued and unshaven, went on-camera against John F.
Kennedy in 1960. Joe Biden ran up against two sets of limitations in the June 27 CNN-hosted debate. One was that of the format — one to which his campaign, like Trump’s, had agreed: The commitment by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash to simply pose questions and to allow the candidates, rather than the moderators themselves, to do the fact-checking, put him on his back foot before the event began.
It takes a great debater to push back against Trump’s particular say-anything shamelessness. And this brings us to the second set of limitations: If Biden was ever a great debater, he is not in 2024.
The questions Tapper and Bash posed were rudimentary, thought-starters about various issues in the news. (Were the stakes not so high, I’d say that they recalled the Mike Myers “Saturday Night Live” character Linda Richman tossing out a notion and then saying “Talk amongst yourselves.”) Tapper and Bash’s questions were unshapely, inelegant, not intended to draw out anything more than conflict.
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