Will Trump Benefit from a Debate Double Standard?

Back in the day, I argued that the importance of presidential debates was vastly overstated. In different elections with more stable media environments, the debates mostly confirmed people’s priors. They rarely set off significant fireworks, and the polls barely budged. Sure, the candidate behind in the polls might miss an opportunity to change the dynamic, but in a close race, everything matters. The debate was rarely the sort of “two candidates enter, one leaves” gladiator match portrayed by the press.

Needless to say, I don’t make that argument anymore.

The last debate ended the candidacy of the sitting President of the United States. It changed everything about this race — and Donald Trump will not stop yapping about it. If the June debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was the most important in modern history, tonight/tomorrow night’s debate between Trump and Kamala Harris will likely be the second most important.

There’s an excellent chance this is the only time the two candidates share a debate stage before the election. Voters are thirsting for more information about Kamala Harris and could certainly use a reminder or two about Trump’s erraticism, instability, and declining cognitive function.

Fifty million people watched the Biden-Trump debate. I would be shocked if that number is not higher this time around. Democratic enthusiasm is through the roof compared to June. People who checked out of politics in 2021 have checked back in, and there is a genuine curiosity surrounding Kamala Harris.

This debate matters — a lot. That’s why I am deeply concerned about a pervasive double standard in coverage and conversation — a double standard that advantages Donald Trump.

An Unfair Expectations Game

Donald Trump will participate in his seventh nationally televised presidential debate. No candidate has more debate experience. Kamala debated Mike Pence four years ago. That’s it. And let’s be honest, debating someone as dense as Mike Pence is like racing a sloth.

Yet she enters the debate with much higher expectations than Trump simply because she is a sane human who speaks coherently, knows something about policy, and has full control of her faculties. Among the press and pundits, expectations for Trump are exceedingly low. That's a problem because success and failure in debates comes down to whether one beats expectations.

Advantage Trump.

It’s infuriating. In the last debate, the pressure was on Biden to prove he possessed the mental capacity and vigor to serve another four. Very few people have asked Trump the same question.

If elected, Trump will finish his second term as the oldest President in history. The questions about Biden should be asked of Trump. Where are the demands for more transparency about his health? Could Trump fulfill his obligations as President? It’s a fair question, but very few people are asking it.

Because I made several questionable decisions in my career, it’s been my job to watch Trump’s rallies, interviews, and speeches for the last nine years. The guy has declined cognitively since leaving the White House in 2021. While he was never a particularly cogent orator, Trump devolved into someone who spews nonstop nonsense; he frequently misspeaks, refers to people by the wrong name, and constantly loses his train of thought.

When Biden misspoke, it was a major story. When Trump misspeaks, it’s par for the course.

Why Trump’s Decline is Not (Yet) an Issue

It’s hard to square the circle between Trump’s dangerously incoherent ramblings and the fact that 48% of Americans plan to vote for him this fall. There are many reasons for the alarmingly high levels of support for Trump, and I don’t want to blame the media entirely. But… most people never watch an entire Trump rally. They don’t see his truly bananas posts on Truth Social. If they consume any Trump content at all, it’s a sanitized version of what he actually said or did.

Parker Molloy calls this practice “sanewashing.” She wrote in the New Republic:

Four years ago, in an article for Media Matters for America, I warned that journalists were sanitizing Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings to make them more palatable for the average voter. The general practice went like this: The press would take something Trump said or did—for instance, using a visit to the Centers for Disease Control to ask about Fox News’s ratings, insult then–Washington Governor Jay Inslee, rant about his attempt to extort Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, and downplay the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S.—and write them up as The New York Times did: “Trump Says ‘People Have to Remain Calm’ Amid Coronavirus Outbreak.” This had the effect of making it seem like Trump’s words and actions seemed cogent and sensible for the vast majority of Americans who didn’t happen to watch his rant live.

I worry that the write-ups, TV clips, and social media posts about the debate will “sanewash” yet another truly incoherent and unhinged Trump performance.

The Audience Who Matters

Debates, like convention speeches, offer the public some of the few unfiltered moments in a campaign. It’s rare when the candidate can speak directly to voters without having their words chosen and interpreted by the media.

So, why should we care about how the press and pundits characterize the debate?

Even with a huge debate audience, most of the country won’t watch the event in real-time. More than 84 million people watched the debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton. That’s the highest-rated debate in modern history, but it’s still just over half of the people who voted in the last presidential election. The 20% or so of voters who are undecided or open to changing their mind over the next 50-some days are the ones least likely to watch the debates.

They will consume the debate through clips shared on social media by the press and influencers of all stripes. Therefore, their views will be shaped by the biases of the clippers and the larger conversation that emerges from the debate.

In my view, the most important part of the debate is how Kamala Harris communicates her vision and values. In a close election, everything matters. Trump cannot benefit from the double standard that aided his candidacy during tonight’s debate. With so much on the line, we all have a responsibility to do better when it comes to covering Trump.