To say Donald Trump has ever participated in a debate is to seriously stretch the definition of the word. He doesn’t “debate” so much as scream, interrupt, gainsay, project his own disqualifying flaws onto his opponents, and attempt to kill the person standing next to him.
That said, Trump is slated to face off against President Joe Biden next week (and unsurprisingly sans Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) in a lovefest that will surely invite comparisons to either the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates or that time your MAGA uncle whipped a can of fruit cocktail at your head for accurately citing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.
But if Trump is bad at debating—and he is—he may be even worse at the delicate expectations game that has preceded every presidential and vice presidential debate since time immemorial.
