Politics
Column: The Biden-Trump debate will be a demolition derby. But will it change the race?
This week’s debate between President Biden and Donald Trump won’t produce much in the way of civil dialogue over the nation’s future. It’s more likely to resemble a demolition derby, with each contestant trying to knock the other off course.
And, let’s face it, many viewers will tune in mainly for the crashes.
The question isn’t who will win that series of collisions — it’s who will lose.
Presidential debates rarely transform an election. But Thursday’s showdown could change the momentum in this year’s contest — mostly because the stakes for Biden are so high.
The president is running about even with Trump in national polls, but he’s behind in the battleground states that will determine the outcome. He’s also battling the view among many voters in both parties that he’s too old to serve effectively for another four years.
Republicans have waged a relentless campaign to stoke those doubts. Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” the former president told supporters last month. “He can’t find the stairs off the stage.”
That’s a pretty low bar for Biden to clear. Last week, Trump belatedly realized his mistake and tried to reverse course, calling the president “a worthy debater.”
“I don’t want to underestimate him,” he explained.
Either way, the 90-minute debate will give the 81-year-old president an opportunity to show that he can not only find the stairs but think on his feet as well. If Biden doesn’t visibly pass that test, his campaign will have a hard time recovering.
Trump, who is 78, faces challenges too.
In his first debate against Biden in 2020, the then-president behaved like a disruptive bully and promptly dropped four points in the polls.
A similarly chaotic performance this week in Atlanta would help revive the anti-Trump coalition of voters that fired him last time.
If Trump blunders badly — he has been known to lapse into incoherence and confuse Biden with former President Obama — he too would face renewed questions about his mental fitness.
Again, the question isn’t so much who will win but who will lose. Candidates fail in debates by stumbling more often than they triumph through brilliant wordplay.
So the stakes are high for both candidates. The incentive will be to go on the attack, to try to push the other guy toward disaster.
The debate, hosted by CNN with correspondents Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as moderators, will spare viewers the tedium of opening statements. There will be no live audience, a demand Biden’s side made after witnessing the noisy enthusiasm of Trump supporters at earlier events. Each candidate’s microphone will be silenced while the other is speaking, in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the 2020 debate, when Trump constantly interrupted Biden and the moderators.
I asked strategists from both parties what advice they would give each candidate.
Biden’s first task is to “demonstrate that he’s not too old to serve another term,” said Doug Sosnik, who advised President Clinton during his 1996 reelection campaign.
After that, Sosnik said, Biden “needs to have a clear narrative about his presidency, what his goals would be for a second term. And then he can go after Trump.”
Republican strategist Alex Conant agreed that Biden should try to steer the debate toward the future and away from a referendum on his stewardship of the economy, which has left most voters dissatisfied.
“He needs to make the debate about abortion and everything else Trump doesn’t want to talk about,” Conant said. “He should try to provoke Trump into overreacting … then get out of the way and let Trump destroy himself.”
One pitfall Biden needs to avoid: boasting about legislation he has passed or trying to convince voters that the economy is better than they think.
“He has to prosecute his political case against Donald Trump and not get bogged down, as incumbents often do … in defending his record,” said David Axelrod, who advised Obama during his 2012 reelection campaign.
Trump’s goals, no surprise, are pretty much the reverse of Biden’s. He wants to make the election a referendum on Biden’s first three years.
“My advice to Trump would be: ‘You are going to win this race on two issues: inflation and immigration. Those are the only two things you should be talking about,’” Conant said.
If the moderators or Biden ask Trump about his conviction on 34 felony charges in New York state, “he doesn’t need to engage in it,” Conant said.
Sosnik agreed. “Stick to a referendum,” he said. “Were you better off during [Trump’s] presidency or Biden’s?”
The hazard Trump needs to avoid: lapsing into complaints about the 2020 election, his conviction or his three pending criminal cases. That would reinforce the appearance “that he is only out for himself and settling old personal scores … [and] reminding people how chaotic and exhausting his presidency was,” Sosnik said.
So will Thursday’s debate change the direction of the race? Conant, the Republican, thinks it could.
“This is the most consequential debate we’ve had in recent memory,” he said. “Voters have major questions about each candidate. There’s an unusual number of undecided or third-party voters who might still be movable. If one of the candidates has a really bad night, that could be decisive.”
But Sosnik is skeptical that many undecided voters will bother watching “a debate between two candidates they dislike.”
“It will take a big moment where one of the candidates falls on his face to make it a game changer,” he said.
With four months remaining before election day, one evening in June won’t determine the winner. But Thursday could provide a pivotal moment — depending not on which candidate performs better but which performs worse.
Read more from columnist Doyle McManus on Trump and California:
Politics
Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting childcare funds to Democratic states over fraud concerns
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A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from stopping subsidies on childcare programs in five states, including Minnesota, amid allegations of fraud.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, a Biden appointee, didn’t rule on the legality of the funding freeze, but said the states had met the legal threshold to maintain the “status quo” on funding for at least two weeks while arguments continue.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns.
The programs include the Child Care and Development Fund, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, and the Social Services Block Grant, all of which help needy families.
USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
“Families who rely on childcare and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement on Tuesday.
The states, which include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, argued in court filings that the federal government didn’t have the legal right to end the funds and that the new policy is creating “operational chaos” in the states.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian at his nomination hearing in 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In total, the states said they receive more than $10 billion in federal funding for the programs.
HHS said it had “reason to believe” that the programs were offering funds to people in the country illegally.
‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’: SENATE REPUBLICANS PRESS GOV WALZ OVER MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
The table above shows the five states and their social safety net funding for various programs which are being withheld by the Trump administration over allegations of fraud. (AP Digital Embed)
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital has reached out to HHS for comment.
In what might be the most decisive critique yet of President Trump’s remake of the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera’s board approved a resolution on Friday to leave the venue it has occupied since 1971.
“Today, the Washington National Opera announced its decision to seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity,” the company said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Roma Daravi, Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, described the relationship with Washington National Opera as “financially challenging.”
“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with the WNO due to a financially challenging relationship,” Daravi said in a statement. “We believe this represents the best path forward for both organizations and enables us to make responsible choices that support the financial stability and long-term future of the Trump Kennedy Center.”
Kennedy Center President Ambassador Richard Grenell tweeted that the call was made by the Kennedy Center, writing that its leadership had “approached the Opera leadership last year with this idea and they began to be open to it.”
“Having an exclusive relationship has been extremely expensive and limiting in choice and variety,” Grenell wrote. “We have spent millions of dollars to support the Washington Opera’s exclusivity and yet they were still millions of dollars in the hole – and getting worse.”
WNO’s decision to vacate the Kennedy Center’s 2,364-seat Opera House comes amid a wave of artist cancellations that came after the venue’s board voted to rename the center the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. New signage featuring Trump’s name went up on the building’s exterior just days after the vote while debate raged over whether an official name change could be made without congressional approval.
That same day, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) — an ex officio member of the board — wrote on social media that the vote was not unanimous and that she and others who might have voiced their dissent were muted on the call.
Grenell countered that ex officio members don’t get a vote.
Cancellations soon began to mount — as did Kennedy Center‘s rebukes against the artists who chose not to appear. Jazz drummer Chuck Redd pulled out of his annual Christmas Eve concert; jazz supergroup the Cookers nixed New Year’s Eve shows; New York-based Doug Varone and Dancers dropped out of April performances; and Grammy Award-winning banjo player Béla Fleck wrote on social media that he would no longer play at the venue in February.
WNO’s departure, however, represents a new level of artist defection. The company’s name is synonymous with the Kennedy Center and it has served as an artistic center of gravity for the complex since the building first opened.
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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leveling a stunning accusation at Vice President JD Vance amid the national furor over this week’s fatal shooting in Minnesota involving an ICE agent.
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not,” the four-term federal lawmaker from New York and progressive champion argued as she answered questions on Friday on Capitol Hill from Fox News and other news organizations.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good after she confronted ICE agents from inside her car in Minneapolis.
RENEE NICOLE GOOD PART OF ‘ICE WATCH’ GROUP, DHS SOURCES SAY
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by an ICE agent during federal operations on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Video of the incident instantly went viral, and while Democrats have heavily criticized the shooting, the Trump administration is vocally defending the actions of the ICE agent.
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Vance, at a White House briefing on Thursday, charged that “this was an attack on federal law enforcement. This was an attack on law and order.”
“That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation,” the vice president added. “The president stands with ICE, I stand with ICE, we stand with all of our law enforcement officers.”
And Vance claimed Good was “brainwashed” and suggested she was connected to a “broader, left-wing network.”
Federal sources told Fox News on Friday that Good, who was a mother of three, worked as a Minneapolis-based immigration activist serving as a member of “ICE Watch.”
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Ocasio-Cortez, in responding to Vance’s comments, said, “That is a fundamental difference between Vice President Vance and I. I do not believe that the American people should be assassinated in the street.”
But a spokesperson for the vice president, responding to Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation, told Fox News Digital, “On National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, AOC made it clear she thinks that radical leftists should be able to mow down ICE officials in broad daylight. She should be ashamed of herself. The Vice President stands with ICE and the brave men and women of law enforcement, and so do the American people.”
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