OTake the same ones, and start again. Joe Biden and Donald Trump will cross swords this Thursday at 9 p.m. (3 a.m. Friday in Paris), four years after their last presidential contest which ended with the assault on the Capitol. In the CNN Atlanta studio, the roles are reversed this time. Biden is an unpopular incumbent, who must defend his record on inflation and immigration. Trump, for his part, leads the polls in a handful of key states by a narrow margin, but presents himself as a “felon” (criminal) as the first ex-president in history to be criminally convicted.
The third man, Robert Kennedy Jr., failed to register in enough states to be invited. It will therefore be a duel, in front of the cameras, between these men who hate each other and who repel more than half of Americans. Joe Biden is playing big: never has a president with a popularity rating capping at 40% been re-elected. And at 81, he must convince himself that he has the energy – and the cognitive abilities – to continue for four more years.
In modern American history, “presidential debates have had an impact in close races,” said Aaron Kall, director of debates at the University of Michigan, whose students won three consecutive national titles between 2020 and 2022. “No other event, not even party conventions, allows you to speak to more than 70 million Americans.”
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