ATLANTA — In a presidential election rematch that remains extremely close and where every vote may count come November, it’s no understatement to say that there’s an incredible amount at stake in Thursday’s first of two debates between President Biden and former President Trump.

The two presumptive major party nominees will face off on the same stage at the CNN Presidential Debate, which is being held at the cable news network’s studios in Atlanta, the largest city and capital of the crucial southeastern battleground state of Georgia.

“This is a toss-up race and there’s over two months until the next debate. This showdown is going to set a tone and a narrative heading into this summer’s conventions,” longtime Republican strategist and communications adviser Matt Gorman told Fox News, as he pointed to the earliest general election presidential debate in modern history. 

And Gorman, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, emphasized that the debate, which will be simulcast on the Fox News Channel and on other networks, has the potential “to change the narrative in a massive way” as Biden and Trump “try to break out” from the current status quo.

WHICH DONALD TRUMP WILL SHOW UP AT THURSDAY’S FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

The debate, which kicks off at 9pm ET, will be 90 minutes in length, with two commercial breaks. 

Only the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor will be on the stage, as the third party and independent candidates running for the White House – including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – failed to reach the qualifying thresholds. 

To make the stage, candidates needed to reach at least 15% in four approved national surveys and to make the ballot in enough states to reach 270 electoral votes, which is the number needed to win the White House.

HOW TO WATCH THE CNN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE SIMULCAST ON THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL

Trump and Biden bypassed the Commission on Presidential Debates – which had organized these quadrennial showdowns for over three decades – and instead mutually agreed on the rules and conditions.

Those include no studio audience, each candidate’s microphone will be muted except when it’s their turn to answer questions, no props or notes allowed on stage, and no opening statements.

There will be closing statements and a coin flip determined that Trump will get the final word.

The debate comes as polls indicate a very tight race between Biden and Trump, with the former president holding the slight edge in many national polls and surveys in the roughly half-dozen or so battleground states that will likely determine the election’s outcome.

“To put it very simply – debates move numbers in a way few other events do. Period,” Gorman highlighted. “And with over two months to go until the second debate [an ABC News hosted showdown scheduled for Sept. 10], the narratives formed on Thursday night may harden into concrete, so showing up and performing well in Atlanta is crucial.”

Both candidates come into the debate with an ample amount of baggage that will offer their rival plenty of potential ammunition.

The 81-year-old Biden, the oldest president in the nation’s history, for months has faced serious concerns from voters over his age and physical and mental durability. He’s also been dealing for nearly three years with underwater job approval ratings as he’s struggled to combat persistent inflation and a crisis at the nation’s southern border, as well as plenty of overseas hot spots.

FIRST ON FOX: BIDEN CAMPAIGN RIPS TRUMP OVER ‘NEGLECT OF DUTY’ ON EVE OF FIRST 2024 DEBATE

Meanwhile, Trump made history for all the wrong reasons last month, as he was convicted of 34 felony counts in the first criminal trial ever of a former or current president.

Three and a half years after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to upend congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory, Trump faces criminal charges of trying to overturn the results of the last presidential contest. His promises of second-term retribution against his political enemies have created a backlash, and he’s struggled along with plenty of other Republicans to deal with the combustible issue of abortion two years after the Supreme Court struck down the decades-old Roe v. Wade ruling. 

Arguably the biggest question surrounding Thursday night’s debate is which version of Trump will show up?

Then-former Vice President Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Oct. 22, 2020. (Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Will it be the undisciplined candidate who continuously interrupted Biden and debate moderator Chris Wallace dozens and dozens of times at their first debate in the 2020 election? 

Trump appeared to lose his cool, failed to condemn white supremacists, and his performance was widely panned by political pundits and viewers alike.

Or will it be the Trump of the second 2020 debate, when the then-president re-worked his strategy and his disciplined and measured performance was a vast improvement.

“If he replicates that performance, Donald Trump’s going to have a very good night,” longtime Republican consultant and veteran debate coach Brett O’Donnell told Fox News.

BIDEN AND TRUMP CAMPAIGNS MAKE MOVES ON THE EVE OF THE DEBATE 

O’Donnell said his advice to Trump is “watch the second debate you had with Joe Biden in 2020 and replicate that performance. Watch it over and over and replicate that performance in this debate.”

“He was measured but firm,” O’Donnell said of Trump. “You can be aggressive and passionate without being offensive.”

O’Donnell knows a bit about coaching presidential candidates ahead of their debates. He assisted in debate preparations for George W. Bush in 2004, GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona in 2008, and Republican standard-bearer and then-former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. 

This election cycle, O’Donnell coached Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ahead of his debate performances in the Republican presidential primaries.

O’Donnell said Biden needs to be careful not “to fall into the incumbent trap… Many if not most incumbents in their first debate, whether it’s Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush or Barack Obama, most incumbents perform poorly in their first debate going for the second term.”

“So the advice to Biden is avoid the incumbent trap because if he falls into it, it’s doubly bad because of all the age arguments,” he added.

And O’Donnell emphasized that Biden has “got to somehow frame the race as a choice in defense of his record over the past four years. That is a tall order, but that’s something he has to do in order to justify picking him over Donald Trump.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

For Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman of the United States, gender inequity isn’t complicated. It’s simply wrong.

“It’s not right. It’s not fair,” he said Wednesday during a brief visit to the practice facility for Angel City FC, the NWSL team that trains at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

“It’s actually discrimination,” he said. “There is a misconception out there that if somehow a woman is succeeding, some guy out there is not. That’s not true. Women succeed, we all get lifted up.”

And the disparities may be starkest in professional sports. While women in the workplace make 16% less than men for doing the same job, the minimum wage in the NWSL is about 40% of what it is in MLS, a difference of nearly $50,000. In basketball, the gap between the base salary for the first pick in the WNBA draft and NBA is more than $1 million.

“This is about more than compensation,” Emhoff said. “It’s about respect. It’s about dignity.”

The second gentleman’s appearance alongside Angel City co-owner Lorrie Fair Allen and Angela Hucles Mangano, the team’s general manager, amounted to little more than a photo opportunity. But it was meant to highlight the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to gender equity.

As a California senator, Kamala Harris — the vice president and Emhoff’s wife — sponsored the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, which both addressed pay inequities. And last year President Biden approved a law requiring that all athletes representing the U.S. in global competition receive equal pay and benefits, regardless of gender.

“A lot of what I do is talk about equity and unfairness and tackling that, and what role can men play in helping,” Emhoff said. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Emhoff, who graduated from Agoura Hills High, toured Angel City’s offices and chatted with players in the team’s gym, which is generally off limits to visitors. The groundwork for the visit was laid last summer, when Emhoff met Fair, a former world champion and Olympic medalist as a player, at the women’s World Cup in New Zealand.

“He’s leaning into the work around gender equity. It’s personal to him,” Fair said. “And it’s not just like gender equity around sport. It’s across the entire workforce, talking about women’s access, family leave, parental leave, child care, affordable child care, valuing some of the some of the jobs that are traditionally held by women.”

Emhoff is a soccer fan, having met with the Chelsea women’s team last fall before attending the NWSL Challenge Cup in March. That has made it easy to match his passion with his purpose.

“This sport is a universal language,” said Hucles, a former teammate of Fair who played for nearly a decade with the women’s national team. “I witnessed football as a vehicle for advocacy and positive change. Our unique platforms promote positive change, specifically when we’re talking about gender equity. The origin story of this club began with changing the narrative and shifting culture around gender equity and pay discrepancy to women.”

Which is another reason the second gentleman chose Angel City to promote the administration’s gender-equity policies. Since its inception in summer 2020, the club and its sprawling group of more than 100 owners — the largest women-led ownership group in professional sports history — has leveraged its unique platform to make a difference in at-risk communities.

Angel City pioneered an innovative model that reallocates 10% of sponsorship revenues to community initiatives focusing on equity, essentials and education. That will redirect at least $7 million to Southern California over the next three to five years.

In addition, the team mobilized more than 1,700 volunteers for local programs, contributing more than 5,400 collective hours of community service; created an alternative to the pay-for-play model by creating more equitable opportunities for girls and gender-expansive individuals to play sports; and more than doubled girls’ participation across two youth sports programs.

“For me it’s a great breakthrough,” said Richard Lapchick, president of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

“This team is going to be looked at as a team of social justice warriors as well as the team of vanguard athletes,” he said.

All that work has earned Angel City attention not just from the White House but from ESPN as well, with the network choosing the team as one of four nominees for the Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year award at next month’s ESPYs.

“I met Laurie during the World Cup, and we started talking about the all the things that weren’t working. At Angel City they are working,” Emhoff said. “This is my hometown. I’m from here, and I wanted to come here to support this team that’s doing the right thing right in my hometown.”

FIRST ON FOX: A key Republican lawmaker spearheading former President Trump’s outreach to Black voters will debut a six-figure ad buy calling out what he describes as President Biden’s “real record on race” during the CNN Presidential Debate Thursday.

First-term Texas Congressman Wesley Hunt’s Hellfire PAC will air the 60-second ad on Fox News and CNN in major cities in key battleground states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Thursday night. The ad, which puts a spotlight on several of Biden’s controversial comments on race, is part of Hunt’s strategy to convince Black voters to support Trump in November.

“Joe Biden’s history as a politician reveals a pattern of making explicitly racist comments, authoring and endorsing discriminatory policies, and associating with individuals known as segregationists,” Hunt told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

He announced that Hellfire PAC would begin a national campaign in multiple swing states “to inform voters of Joe Biden’s real history on race.” 

TRUMP ENLISTS PROMINENT BLACK REPUBLICANS TO APPEAL TO THEIR PEERS: ‘FISHING WHERE THE FISH ARE’

The Hellfire PAC video begins with Biden’s own vice president, Kamala Harris, questioning his onetime opposition to school desegregation. In an infamous moment from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, then-rival candidate Harris said Biden, as a freshman senator in 1975, had worked with segregationist lawmakers to oppose “bussing.” 

“You also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris told Biden during a primary debate, referencing two segregationist senators. “You know there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

BLACK GOP LAWMAKERS HOLD ‘CONGRESS, COGNAC AND CIGARS’ EVENT IN KEY SWING STATE

Reps. Wesley Hunt (left) and Byron Donalds (right) are hitting the campaign trail to turn Black male voters out for Donald Trump (center).  (Getty Images)

The ad goes on to call into question Biden’s record on civil rights, noting his relationships with segregationist Southern Democrats, including former Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia. Biden ignited a firestorm in 2019 after he spoke fondly of the “civility” of the old Senate and his ability to work with those he disagreed with, name-dropping those opponents of racial integration. In response to attacks from his then-Democratic rivals, Biden said there is “not a racist bone in my body.” 

The video quotes various cringe-inducing statements from Biden’s lengthy political career, including a campaign event from 2012 when the then-vice president told an audience of Black voters that Republicans are “going to put y’all back in chains.” In another insensitive gaffe quoted from a 2019 campaign event in Iowa, Biden said “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” 

TRUMP CAMPAIGN SETS UP SHOP IN BLUE PHILADELPHIA IN THE FIGHT FOR BATTLEGROUND PENNSYLVANIA

The Trump campaign hosts a Black business roundtable in Atlanta, featuring Reps. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas (far left), Byron Donalds, R-Fla., (center) and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson (second from right).  (Matt Reidy | Fox News)

Hellfire PAC’s ad also shows Biden describing his old running mate, former President Obama, as “the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate, and bright and clean — nice looking guy.” 

Hunt, who is Black, told Fox News Digital that no Republican would get away with the things Biden has said.

“If any Republican had even the slightest history that Joe Biden has on race, they would be ostracized, canceled, and excoriated by the media,” he said. “When Democrat President Joe Biden does it, there’s always an excuse, and, when there’s not an excuse, the behavior and the policies are simply memory-holed.” 

The ad will air in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Milwaukee and Detroit during the CNN Presidential Debate. Americans across the country can tune in to the Fox News Channel from 9:00 p.m. ET to 11:00 p.m. ET to watch the CNN Presidential Debate Simulcast. Viewers can also tune into Fox’s live coverage before and after the debate for expert analysis.

Hunt traveled to Atlanta for an event with Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., on Wednesday that the duo calls, “Congress, Cognac and Cigars.” Moderated by former ESPN host Sage Steele, the two Black lawmakers will have a discussion in a cigar lounge and field questions about how Black male voters will impact the 2024 election. 

Hunt told Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind in an interview that he aims to help Republicans capture 25% to 35% of the Black male vote — a long-shot goal, though one that would spell almost certain defeat for Biden’s campaign. 

Multiple exit polls show Trump having won 19% of Black male voters in 2020, though the vast majority of Black voters still went for Biden.

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind, Paul Steinhauser, Joe Schoffstall and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.