Even with muted mics, expect 'a lot of noise' at the U.S. presidential debate, says former Clinton aide

As It Happens7:32Even with muted mics, expect 'a lot of noise' at the U.S. presidential debate, says former Clinton aide

Even with new rules of decorum in place, people shouldn't expect Donald Trump to tone it down when he squares off against Joe Biden in the first U.S. presidential debate on Thursday, says political consultant Philippe Reines.

Biden, the 81-year-old Democratic incumbent, will debate Trump, his 78-year-old Republican rival and presidential predecessor on Thursday night at a CNN studio in Atlanta.

The event will be televised, but unlike previous presidential debates, there won't be a studio audience, and the candidates will have their mics muted when it's not their turn to speak.

Reines was Hilary Clinton's aide when she unsuccessfully took on Trump in the 2016 presidential election. He also played the role of Trump during Clinton's debate prep. 

He says the new rules will have a significant impact on the debate, but they won't stop Trump from being his usual boisterous self. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

No studio audience. There'll be muted mics. No pre-written notes allowed. Just those three changes … What should they tell all of us about what this debate is going to be like? 

Hopefully it tells us that this debate will not be anything like the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020, which, for those of you who watched or for those of you who have recently rewatched, was an absolute catastrophe. 

The muting of the person who is not speaking is significant. Mr. Trump intentionally interrupts. It's like lawyers who are taught to just say "objection" every few seconds, even though there's nothing to object to, the whole point being to rattle and break up the rhythm of the lawyer who's talking to the witness. 

Strangely enough, whoever is ... muted will probably still be heard by the other candidate because they'll be so close to each other that their mics will pick it up. But it will allow for at least more understanding, literally comprehending what is being said. 

Another aspect of it that's key is it will give the moderators — in this case, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — it will give them a little bit of space to process what they're hearing, both in terms of deciding if something needs to be revisited because of its veracity, or if it is something they want to follow up on. 

Ultimately, who do you think has the most to gain here?

I think President Biden. 

Amnesia is a strong word, but ... I think people are not remembering the worst of [Trump's presidency]. Or they're not remembering the worst of it as being all that bad … So the debate might be kind of a rough re-entry into the bloodstream, where people might be reminded why they didn't vote for him in 2020. 

This [also] comes only a few weeks after Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies. And what has come to light after that has borne out what polling was showing going into the trial, which is that there were a number of people, including Republicans, who, if he had been found guilty, would not be thrilled with him. 

President Biden has an opportunity with those folks. 

This isn't like seeing a scary movie a second time, where it's less scary because you know the moments to close your eyes. This is a sequel that's a far worse horror show- Philippe Reines, Democratic political consultant

But those folks — and we've spoken to some of them on the program — they cannot entertain the idea of voting for Joe Biden either. Is this the idea of these "double haters" that we've heard reference to?

They think they're comparing apples and apples. And when they're reminded that they're comparing apples and cactuses, it's going to be very different. 

This isn't like seeing a scary movie a second time, where it's less scary because you know the moments to close your eyes. This is a sequel that's a far worse horror show. He's going to pick up where he left off. And where he left off was basically demolishing all the guardrails in our democracy. 

There are questions about the cognitive abilities of both of these candidates, but certainly Donald Trump and his supporters and those who are concerned about Joe Biden's age — he's 81 — are hammering that very hard towards Biden. What do you think he needs to do, President Biden, in this debate to counter that narrative? 

[Trump] has all but said that he expects Joe Biden to fall over. Now, in the last few days, he has changed his tune and now his latest hang-up is drug testing.

But this is the same thing that happened earlier in the year when the president gave the annual State of the Union address, where Trump and the Republicans said he's not going to make it through it. What actually happened was that he gave a 75-minute speech and knocked it out of the park. 

The other thing is ... look, they're both 80, basically. I wouldn't want either of them driving, but that's not their job.

The real issue here is that Joe Biden is going to be standing on stage with someone for the first time in 1,343 days since the last time they saw each other. They do not like each other. There's going to be a lot of anger, a lot of adrenaline, a lot of noise. I really don't think that's the moment that Joe Biden is going to show some kind of fit-for-video moment of any kind of decline. I mean, that's like falling asleep at a KISS concert. 

You've said he did better certainly than Trump and his allies were hoping and suggesting he would do. But, as you likely know, a Reuters Ipsos poll puts Biden's presidential disapproval rating at 59 per cent. So if Donald Trump avoids the outbursts, stays composed, is behaving differently than he did in the 2020 debate and focuses specifically on issues like immigration and inflation, do you think he might be able to realistically win back some voters? 

So you're saying if Donald Trump is not Donald Trump? I mean, what you just listed is impossible. He's the most predictable unpredictable person. 

The idea that he's going to come in and be A-OK with just sitting there twiddling his thumbs for half the debate where no one can hear him, and then when the mics come on, that he's just going to be some human being that we have never seen before for maybe more than, I don't know, seven minutes at a time? ... It's just not within the realm of reality. 

Four years ago, you came on the program and you suggested that the best way to handle Donald Trump is to "get out of his way," as you put it, let him dig his own grave ... Do you think that's the [strategy] this time?

If he starts decomposing and reverting to the part of him that people kicked out of office, then sure, yeah. I mean, when you're in a hole, stop digging. And if he keeps digging and it goes deeper and deeper, then President Biden should focus on what a debate is really meant to be — articulating your view of where we are, where we want to go, and how are you going to get there.