By Billy Cunningham, the Great American of course, tonight, starting at nine oh one Eastern time. It'll be a unique presentation. I've looked back in American history the last time there was a sitting president debating a previous president. It might have happened in nineteen twelve when tr of the Bull Moose Party was running against William Howard Taft from Cincinnati against Woodrow Wilson. But I don't think in nineteen twelve there are any debates going on, so this might be the
first debate of its kind. Joan, you and I now is Lauren Tomlinson. She's a Republican strategist who worked in the Trump administration. And Lauren Tomlinson, welcome to the Bill Cunningham Show. And Lauren from the Democrat and or Republican position, what does in your view that Trump needs to do tonight and
what does Joe Biden need to do? If anything? So Trump tonight, We're looking for him to be more disciplined version of himself, for him to stay on message and make sure to pivot to the issues that voters currently care about to stay in the future. You know, this is a unique time in which the economy is top of mind for voters. Inflation is still super high. It's keeping those interest rates high, which is preventing people from buying
home. Lots of trickle down effects there that are affecting people's everyday lives. And by talking about that and making the nostalgia about the economy as it was under Trump, he can have a really successful night. For Joe Biden, what he's looking at is how do I remind people of what they didn't like about Trump in twenty twenty, the reason why I want in twenty twenty, the chaos, the drama, the unscripted moments, and the Twitter rants.
How can I remind people constantly that he isn't presidential. So for Trump, as long as he can maintain the focus on the future, not get dragged into personal grievances, and make sure that he doesn't take debate on revisiting the pass, which Joe Biden will continuously try to do, he should have a good night. Let's talk about the two moderators. And I would like to think Donald Trump did not receive good advice on this one. But Jake Tapper
worked for many years as a Democratic staffer on the Hill. Some of the comments he's made about Trump being Adolph Hitler, and in twenty twenty, Jake Tapper CNN said the long national nightmare is over and Dana Bash has a long
history of anti Trump rans and raves on air. Couldn't the Trumpster? I guess he didn't have a choice of having someone from Fox News or Breitbart or Newsmax from talk radio come on, and didn't he kind of lose the It's not a debate so much as a forum because they're not going to debate each other. But isn't it a problem when CNN picks the moderator so to speak,
and all the parameters of the debate. Was that a mistake? I think it's interesting that both campaigns agreed to go outside of the non partisan by partisan presidential debate for him, so or commissioned because with the commission you get things like that, You get to negotiate the host, you can bring in people from other networks, you can ensure more of a balance moderator panel. Since they decided to work directly with the network, you're kind of limited in
the talent pool. So he could have maybe, you know, he maybe could have pushed for Chris Wallace, who is now a c and an anchor who's formally a Fox News to be there with him. But either way, it wasn't going to be a favorable outcome for Trump in that regard. Now on the flip side, in September, there's going to be another debate that you know, the Biden campaign will say that the that the moderators are unfriendly
towards him, so at least it's balanced in that set. But for this, for this debate, because they chose to go with the network, there really wasn't a lot of negotiating from of who they were going to get.
The one positive though, I will say about Jake Tapper, he has been very vocal about the Israel Hamas war and anti Semitism in this country currently, and so I think that that could actually play to Trump's favor, reminding people how weak Biden has been on this issue, how he hasn't been standing with our ally, how he hasn't been standing up for Jews in this country, And so Trump can focus on the positive there, then he could also make
a really strong foreign policy point with a sympathetic moderator. And the other thing, Lauren, is that Trump is the only president in American history that has Jewish grandchildren, and the idea that somehow Trump's going to be an isomitic would be a joke. And is this a debate? Isn't it more or less? The format? There's no pros, there's muted microphones, there's two commercial breaks, I guess potty breaks, there's no studio audience. And instead of
going back and forth, CNN as they're hand on the mute button. And I watched yesterday the sound coming out of the out of the podium with a mute button on, and you couldn't hear anything it was being said. And so isn't it isn't all the fourmats? I say, Trump's playing an away game and Biden has picked the officials and are paying them, And is this a debate when the parties can't go at each other? You know, it's funny because the muting of the mic makes it less of a debate one hundred
percent. But they will be allowing the candidates to address the at least do rebuttals. But I'm sure you've seen this as well. But at least with my work with congressional candidates, almost every local election has TV debate in a similar format, So you walk in the studio, it's kind of awkward because
there's no audience. You get two guests and you get to debate each other, and so congressional candidates are kind of very used to this format, and it's a little awkward not having the audience feedback when you land those singers and not being able to play off of the crowd, But it also can be beneficial in that part of the goal of a debate from a campaign communications perspective is to make sure that you are reaching those secondary audiences. So here we
are. We're in the middle of June, almost July fourth holiday. People are with their kids, they're preparing for Fourth of July barbecues, they're not really paying attention. This is it's very early, you know historically for us to be having these debates. They're not tuned in. And we know from the polling that this is going to be a very tight race. So there's basically ten percent of persuadable voters out there that will make the difference in this
race. So those ten percent are probably not watching the debates tonight, and it's going to be really important, and the studio provides this opportunity. I think if you have this goal in mind to make sure that you get a good clip of your message and then push it via paid advertising and social media
after the fact. So the spin room and the campaign apparatus will be really important because these messages and the effects of this debate won't be seen for weeks, because the campaigns will be actively pushing moments for weeks to come to voters who aren't paying attention. And I think that's going to be the opportunity here where it won't feel like a normal debate like we've seen previously because of the
cross talk that you've talked about in the limits there. But it does provide a real opportunity for the candidates to have those viral moments and make a campaign ad and make a difference for some of those persuadable voters. It's only a prediction, but I would think that come September, if Joe Biden is still denominated the Democrat Party and I got hot fudgs Son, he bets all over saying that he's not going to be the nominee of the Democrat Party, they
can't be that stupid to put him back up again. But nonetheless, if he is and Trump's up five or six percentage points, Trump's gonna not want to debate Biden. If, on the other hand, Biden stumbles through tonight and doesn't mumble, stumble and fumble too much and have a senior moment, a Mitch McConnell moment, and just stare into space, and if Biden comes out of that in the media declares him to be the winner, which they
want to do. That case comes September. If Trump's up, he's not gonna want a debate, and if Biden's up, if he's still the nominee, he's not going to want a debate. And either way, I think that's why this is more significance. But you're right, I don't think a core Democratic voter is going to say, man, that was a bad performance
by Joe Biden. I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump. And I can't imagine Ohio and a Kentuckian or a Hoosier but being a Trump supporter saying, you know what, the trump'ster didn't do that, well, I think I'm gonna vote for Joe Biden. And so it's hardened already as to you're gonna, as you say, go to the five to ten percent cent of occasional voter, and that they're going to decide the election and they may not be watching
it all because they don't pay attention to politics until October. And secondly, I would say this that the Trumpster has Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Inflations up about twenty percent, you have a duke, Energy bills up about thirty percent, real estate taxes are through the roof, Mortgage interest rates are about seven to eight percent. Gasoline has almost doubled
in price since twenty nineteen. Everything that should be up is down. Everything that should be down is up. And all the Trumpster has to do is point out the obvious and stay away from personal attacks. Ignore what happened on January the sixth, move on from that, and uh, don't go after Hunter Biden very hard because everyone knows his situation. Uh, and move on.
So, if you were gonna whisper in Donald Trump's here before before he takes the stage at eight fifty five pm, what would Lauren Tomlinson say to the Trumpster? I would say, stay calm. Remember your pivots don't act
like in the first debate, act like in the second debate. In twenty joint exactly the second debate of twenty twenty and and like you were saying, pivot, pivot, pivot, you know, every time that they want to talk about something else, bring it back to the economy, bring it back to inflation, bring it back to crime and immigration, because those are the
issues that people care about right now because they're affecting their lives. And if you can keep reminding people of where they are right now and what you can do to fix that, it's going to be very impactful. Because voters don't care about the personal grievances and the politics and the personalities. They know these guys, it's one hundred percent. Name might be they both have first term presidencies under their belts. What they do care about is do you understand what
I'm going through right now and what I'm seeing? Because it doesn't feel that way Lauren that Oh no, I was just gonna say. The person they can reflect that will win. Lauren Tomlinson, you're like a woman and geop strategistan, you're not a birthing people. You're like a woman. And I'm
watching Fox News right now. They have a list of all the crimes, the vicious rapes and the torture that illegal aliens have put women through inside this country, and the murder migrant gangs from Venezuela that are burglarizing homes, large number of migrants if smuggled guns and New York City shelters, that the rapes of so many women in the South, especially at the hands of legal migrants, wouldn't that be a good ploy for the Donald to route off the names
of five or six women who were raped, tortured, and murdered at the hands of the illegal immigrants that Joe Biden brought into this country one hundred percent. And I think also tying that back towards the larger issue of there's a reason why we have immigration laws and why our order is unsecure, is a threat to national security. I mean, a lot of these laws are put in place because of nine to eleven right in the terrorist attacks and the we
need to know who and what we're coming into our country. There was just a report that four hundred ISIS linked migrants are at large in the country right now because they came through the southern border, and so it's a it's not just uh, you know, the horrible crimes that are happening at the communities, which people are very upset about, and rightfully so, there's a broader national security argument to be made there, and Democrats have denied that this is
happening for years. I mean even when I was working in the administration, we knew that people with affiliations to ISIS were trying to enter the country or coming into the country. They very much view transnational criminal organizations know that that's the way to get in, and we have to know who is coming in from a safety perspective. And so you know, even the Biden's going to be taling his recent measures to women asylum claims and how that's dropped the numbers
at the border. But unfortunately, two thousand people coming in illegally is still too much, right if you limit it per day, it's not enough, right, Like you have to change the policies there. So I think as long as Trump can make sure to tie it to broader national security and make sure to connect to people that this is a big threat. I think he went there lastly about a minute remaining. I see that ron Klain and Susan Rice and others. They've taken Biden away from his job as the president for
a week to get ready. I think you'll overload many people that are mentally not up to snuff by putting too many facts in their head. They can't
rattle them off sufficiently. From a national perspective, I have this thought that democratic operatives that run the executive branch of government, not Joe Biden, wanted this debate early, unpresidented, so that if he does particularly bad, there's six weeks between now and the middle of August and Chicago to substitute out either Michelle Obama or Newsome or god forbid, Kamala Harris to be the nominee. Is there a thought this is Joe Biden's last chance to prove that he's mentally
alert. I think that there's there. I hear that rumor that this gives them enough time before the convention to nominate someone else. I think that we also have a situation in which there is early voting in some states as soon as September, so we have a much shorter cycle to influence those voters with the new early voting laws. And then three, I think that there's also a thought that if Joe Biden stumbles, even if they stick with him as
a nominee. There's so much time between now and November that there can be enough cleanup to be done, and like you said, they can forego the second debate. So there's a lot of benefits for the Biden camp for doing it this early. And number one, I do think it's influenced by the early voting, and then number two, the ability to switch out before the convention. Right, Lauren Tomlinson, You're a great American GOP strategist, also
worked in three or four different positions in the Trump administration. The truth will set us free. I like to think God Almighty's in charge, and I hope that some light has shined upon Donald Trump tonight. I set a rosary for him two days ago. I want him to do well, and it's up to up to him to perform up to snuff. And the country cannot survive four to ten more years of what's happening on the southern border and what's
happening all around the world. We can't survive this. We can't put up with another fifty to one hundred million people coming into the country illegally with bad intentions, and we just can't. We just can't. We can't survive this is the most important presidential election I think since eighteen sixty and we'll see what happens. But Lauren Tomlinson, once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. And may God bless you and God bless America. Thank
you very much, Thanks for having me. All right, Lauren, thank you very much. Let's continue with more your thoughts five, one, three, four, nine, seven thousand plus Reds Baseball begins about six ten tonight in Saint Louis on the home of your Reds News Radio, seven hundred WLW