Ed Luce: What Happens in the First Debate ‘Is Hugely Consequential’

BRZEZINSKI: “Ed Luce your new piece is entitled ‘The mother of all U.S. presidential debates.’ What are you expecting? Set the scene for us.”
LUCE: “Well, the important thing, Mika, I think is that the terms and the rules of next week’s debate mostly suit Biden, are the ones Biden requested — no live audience, which Trump of course needs and feeds off, so that’s bad for Trump, Mike of the one not speaking gets turned — turned off and muted. Ditto. And then there’s two commercial breaks, I guess you could see them as given both men’s ages bathroom breaks. But the — the interesting thing here is I think this is going to be one of the few presidential debates, this and the one scheduled for September, that could Sway an election. There’s only really been three. And that was the first between Nixon and Kennedy, first punch in 1960, which had a huge impact for those who watched it on TV, as opposed to listening to it on the radio in a very close election. There’s — then there’s two that Carter fought, the one that he won in 1976 against Ford, where he got forward partly with your father’s advice and coaching to say there was no Soviet control of Poland or Hungary or the old Czechoslovakia, and alienated tons of voters of Eastern European origin in the mid — in the Midwest states in, again, a very close election. And then finally, Carter losing to Reagan, when all Reagan needed to do was basically turn up be genial and show that he wasn’t insane. He wasn’t going to start a nuclear war. He duly did that. And — and he defeated Carter. I think, this debate between Biden and Trump in what is an equally close election to those first two, is hugely consequential, it is sky-high importance. And there are really sort of two parameters. One is we want not to be talking — Biden wants people not to be talking about his age, and he wants people to be talking about Trump’s character. That — that’s really the goal here.”