00:00Joe Biden and Donald Trump are making final preparations for the biggest moment so far
00:04in the US election. The first of two high-stakes debates that could upend the race. The televised
00:10showdown later is set to raise the campaigning to boiling point then, with tens of millions
00:16expected to tune in. Trump has even said, I think I've been preparing for it for my whole life.
00:21We're going to talk now to Ketavan Ghorjasdani, our international affairs editor. Let's not forget
00:25as well, Ketavan was also, until a year ago, our Washington correspondent. Good to have you with
00:30us for your analysis, Ketavan. I mean, it's been billed, isn't it, as a historic debate. How do
00:34you think it could play out? Well, it's going to be historic in many ways. Of course, the fact that
00:39it's a sitting president versus a former president is historic in its own right. It's also going to
00:44be the two oldest candidates in US history. There's going to be one convicted felon on the stage.
00:51It's also the earliest presidential debate in US history, more than four months before
00:57Election Day. And it's also the closest race heading into a first debate in the history of
01:04US presidential politics. A very close race, neck-and-neck in national polls, Donald Trump
01:10with a very, very slight edge in some of those key states. But it's not just the context that's
01:15historic. It's also the sort of setting of the debate that's not going to be business as usual.
01:22It's not going to be organized by the Nonpartisan Commission, as it has been since the late 80s.
01:28The rules of the game, if you will, were negotiated by CNN, the host, with the campaign team. So,
01:3490-minute debate, two commercial breaks, during which the candidates will not be able to talk to
01:40their campaign teams. No audience, which is very important, because Donald Trump, for example,
01:45really feeds off of what he gets as a reaction from the crowd. He's not going to get that this
01:50time around. The mics will be muted. The person who speaks is the only one who's allowed to speak.
01:55That's a way of trying to avoid the chaos that happened during the first debate back in 2020.
02:02No teleprompter for closing segments, and no pre-written notes, no real-time fact-checking,
02:10either, by the moderators and the themes. We don't know what those will be yet, to see how
02:17they navigate this debate. But the real critical question is, of course, who's going to show up
02:24on stage? And that's true for both candidates. Will it be the fiery, energetic Joe Biden of the
02:29State of the Union speech, or will it be the older, tired Joe Biden? And for Donald Trump,
02:36will it be the sort of unhinged Donald Trump that we saw four years ago in the first debate,
02:41or will it be a little bit more subdued, more presidential type of Donald Trump? And I think
02:47that's what the viewers are going to wait and see to find out. It's going to be fascinating,
02:51isn't it? What about the strategies, do you think, that both men could employ?
02:55Well, the strategies are already very different when it comes to how they're preparing. Joe Biden
03:01is going for the traditional prep. He's been staying at Camp David for the past week, working
03:07with his team on the answers, but also the stamina of standing on that stage for 90 minutes, holding
03:15mock debates, really going for the traditional prep, whereas Donald Trump has avoided the
03:21tradition. He is doing informal policy meeting. He's not doing mock debates. He prefers going
03:28and meeting people at rallies and stomping on the campaign trail. Donald Trump, however,
03:34according to his team, is going to try to focus on three main policy themes that the Republicans
03:40fear are the weakness of Joe Biden, the economy, crime and immigration, and they're also going to
03:48try to show that Joe Biden is not fit for office. Joe Biden, on the other hand, he's going to try
03:54to counter a little bit on the economy because he knows that that is really the number one
03:58priority for voters, but also focus on two arguments that the Democrats did very well with
04:05at the midterms two years ago, which is abortion and the danger to a democracy. Joe Biden really
04:12will try to put Donald Trump in the light of he is the danger to American democracy. It's very
04:20key for Joe Biden because he cannot afford a slip up. Everybody is going to be looking and
04:26looking to see, is he this old man that they've been describing or is he fit to be president for
04:34four more years? And that is something that you've seen a little bit of a change of strategy in from
04:39Donald Trump and his team. For months, we've been hearing from the Republicans, Joe Biden is an old
04:45senile man who can't put two words together in a sentence. That is a pretty low bar to reach for
04:51Joe Biden at a debate. And so they realized that maybe they were setting themselves up for failure.
04:57And over the past couple of days or weeks, they've been saying Joe Biden is a very experienced
05:03politician. Joe Biden is a very good debater trying to raise the bar a little bit. Donald
05:08Trump being Donald Trump also suggested that maybe Joe Biden will be taking a performance
05:14enhancing drugs for that debate. But the idea is that it's going to be very important for both
05:22of these candidates to show that they are fit in very different ways, because Donald Trump, if he
05:30performs the way he did four years ago, that might also not play in his favour.
05:34So finally, very difficult to ask this question before it's even happened, but how much of a
05:38difference could it actually make? Well, usually you tend to think of these presidential debates
05:44as things that people want to watch, but that don't necessarily sway an election. And in the
05:50case of the United States, if you look at the past presidential debates, usually the gap between the
05:55two candidates heading into that first debate was more than five points on average. This time around,
06:01they are neck and neck. And so in this race, because it is so close and because any little
06:07movement in voters one way or the other could sway the entire election in a handful of states,
06:15that means that maybe this presidential debate is going to have a little bit more of an impact on
06:21the race. One thing is for sure, people want to watch whether they want to watch it for the show
06:27or for the actual policy that is going to come out of it is a different story. But in the latest poll,
06:33six out of 10 American adults said they were very or extremely likely to watch this debate
06:39in some shape or form. Whether they're going to watch the whole 90 minutes is not sure. But of
06:43course, with social media, you have those little clips that are going to go viral. And that is a
06:49trick for both of these candidates is if you go viral for good reasons, it can help you. If you
06:55go viral for bad reasons, it might be a very big problem. Three things to keep in mind.
07:00A looking for a potential counter performance of either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Also looking
07:07to convince maybe people who say, I'm not really going to vote. I don't want to choose. I'm going
07:12to sit it out. And finally, very important in this very close election, the double haters,
07:17those who don't like Donald Trump, don't like Joe Biden. This is a way of maybe showing them
07:23you might not like me, but the other option is worse than me. And that might be the message
07:27that they're going to have to put out there.
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