NBC’s Chuck Todd on Wednesday said former President Donald Trump will improve his performance during his rematch debate with President Joe Biden Thursday in comparison to their first debate in 2020.
Trump infamously talked over Biden during the first 2020 presidential debate, with the former president even acknowledging in a Monday interview with the Washington Examiner that it was not an optimal strategy. Todd on “Andrea Mitchell Reports” said Trump is experiencing favorable political conditions, and noted the former president’s adaptability makes it likely he won’t repeat previous mistakes.
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“When he’s really feeling aggrieved, he’ll let you know. Think about where he was four years ago at this point and then eight years ago at this point,” Todd said. “This is actually the less aggrieved he’s felt in a long time. The entire party’s rallying around him. It’s the first time that’s happened. Entire party wouldn’t rally around him in ’20, entire party wouldn’t really rally around him in ’16. Here he is there.”
“We sometimes treat him as that he’s always a 5-year-old,” Todd continued. “And the fact is he learns. Maybe he doesn’t learn conventionally, but he learns. And I think he’s self-aware of how damaging he personally was to himself in that first debate.”
Biden and Trump will debate on CNN in Atlanta with the rules and format including muting microphones and barring a live studio audience.
“He lies so much,” Trump told the Examiner correspondent Byron York about the first debate. “He’s going on — everything he says is a lie. So I would call him because calling him out two minutes later is very tough because, you know, it’s a lie, it’s a lie, everything is a lie. I’ve never seen anything like it. So when I would interrupt, it looked like — I agree, though. The second debate I handled it much differently and got very good marks.”
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Tuesday that Biden is heading into the debate significantly trailing Trump on economic issues.
“Well, on inflation, this is where Donald Trump wants to be playing. Look at that, an 18-point lead over Joe Biden. The economy, another area where Donald Trump would be happy to play ball,” Enten said. “Look at that, a 13-point lead in average of polls on the economy for the former president.”
“The only one of those top major factor issues where Joe Biden leads is the state of democracy,” the data reporter continued. “Look at that, a seven-point advantage, which is not half bad, but I think if you asked a lot of folks on the Democratic side, they would hope this margin would climb ever higher. And I guess Thursday’s debate is a chance for them, or at least a chance for Joe Biden to sort of push that message home.”
Todd recently said Trump may be regaining the “swagger” he had in 2016 when he won the presidency as a businessman who had never held public office or served in the military.
“I don’t mean to simplify this, but, you know, Donald Trump’s rhetoric, even, and even his sort of swagger looks more like 2016 and the campaign you covered so closely, Katy, than he looks in 2020,” Todd told MSNBC host Katy Tur. “And in fact, I was just discussing this with somebody we all know … he even noted, we were talking about this idea that when Trump’s losing, the worst version of Trump shows up and when Trump’s winning or he thinks he’s ahead, he’s actually a different person, a different candidate.”
