This is an interesting although not entirely surprising move; the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump has set up a website to fact-check President Joe Biden’s claims and statements in Thursday’s presidential debate in real time. This should be roundly entertaining.
Ahead of Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Trump’s campaign has launched a new website to “fact check” Biden along the way.
Thursday morning, Trump’s team launched factcheckbiden.com to give real time updates and fact checks if Biden is caught lying. The presidential debate will take place Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET, on CNN.
“Biden has been doing political debates for 50 years, having taken part in at least 40 debates since 1972,” the website reads. “His performances are often filled with lies – about himself, about statistics, about his record, and about events that never took place.”
“We are holding Joe Biden accountable,” the website continues.
It’s not clear that “accountable” is the correct word here, as a website cannot really levy any consequences other than perhaps persuading a few middle-of-the-road voters along the way. It is another counter to claims and brag points by President Biden and Democrats in general, beyond what former President Trump himself will do in the debate. That is worth doing in and of itself.
More information, more fact-checking, and more rebuttals can only help.
This statement in reaction to the Trump campaign’s move is interesting:
“The big thing for Biden is can he avoid a mistake? Biden is sort of predictable. His positions are pretty well known. He’s pretty calm. He’s an institutionalist. The key challenge will be can he avoid the mistake that comes to dominate the after-debate media coverage,” Thomas Hollihan, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, told the Washington Examiner.
Biden is predictable, yes. His positions are pretty well known, and could scarcely be otherwise, since he’s been suckling at the government teat for over half a century; granted, his positions have, shall we say, “evolved” a great deal over that time. But calm? Not anymore; his ongoing slide into dementia has made him prickly, emotional, and prone to unfounded anger and outbursts. (Prediction: Watch for Trump to capitalize on this.) He’s an institutionalist to the extent that the institutions help him — politically and financially. As for his avoiding any mistakes, his recent history shows us that this is unlikely in the extreme.
Joe Biden’s debate performance, despite a week’s preparation, is liable to be embarrassing. We are not clear on what form his debate preparation has taken; there were mock debates and critiques, of course; we are forced to wonder, could there also be (let’s say it softly) a pharmaceutical component as well? Either way, the team that is debate-prepping the president has a big, big job ahead of them, and it may well end up being hopeless. The first debate may be one more nail in Joe Biden’s political coffin, moving Donald Trump a step closer to matching Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive second-term feat.
The Trump fact-checking site can be viewed here. We can expect that its content will grow rapidly; old Joe will surely give the Trump campaign a lot to work with.
