Former President Trump is stepping into a left-wing minefield when he debates President Biden on CNN, where the moderators have compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Former President Donald Trump is stepping into a left-wing minefield when he debates President Biden on CNN, where the moderators have compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Mr. Trump in May immediately accepted CNN’s invitation to debate Mr. Biden after the president took to social media and directly challenged him to participate.
Since then, Trump supporters have lamented that the terms of Thursday’s debate — no audience, no interrupting and the choice of Mr. Tapper and Ms. Bash as moderators — are deeply unfavorable to Mr. Trump.
“Trump agreed to the moderators and rules that clearly favor Biden,” political analyst and Democratic campaign consultant Doug Schoen said. “Fully expect that Trump will be at a significant disadvantage of his own making on Thursday night.”
The Trump campaign on Monday battled CNN hosts ahead of the debate, which will take place at the network’s Atlanta headquarters.
They made the case that moderators Dana Bash and Jack Tapper have broadcast their disdain for Mr. Trump, in one instance accusing him of using “the dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolph Hitler,” and in another calling his presidency a “long national nightmare.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt attempted to call out the network’s bias against the former president in a CNN segment Monday morning but was abruptly cut off mid-sentence by the show host.
Before CNN dumped her from the interview, Ms. Leavitt signaled the Trump campaign knows exactly what it is facing by agreeing to debate terms largely set by the network and the Biden campaign team.
