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President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are meeting Thursday at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, for their final presidential debate. The 90-minute event, moderated by NBC's Kristen Welker, is set to begin at 9 p.m. ET.
The topics are fighting COVID-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership.
Under new rules, Biden and Trump will each have two minutes of uninterrupted time to speak at the beginning of each segment. During that time, the other candidate's microphone will be off.
Newsweek columnists and guest contributors, who will be live-blogging the debate, shared their opinions on what the candidates need to do to succeed less than two weeks before Election Day and with Americans already voting across the country.
Gordon Chang
One issue can turn around the election for President Donald Trump: Joe Biden's relationship with China.
If the New York Post stories are true, Biden should not be president because, among other things, Beijing has put his son Hunter—and perhaps himself—on its payroll.
When a CBS reporter on Friday asked the vice president about the charges, Biden did not deny the allegations. Instead, he said he had "no response," he said the charges were a "smear," and he then proceeded to smear the reporter.
Saying an allegation is a "smear" is not a denial. It is an evasion.
And by way of contrast, we should remember Biden can categorically deny allegations when he feels like it. On May 1, he categorically denied the Tara Reade assault allegations.
Trump will win if during the debate he can confront Biden and the challenger gives an obviously evasive answer. Biden will win if he categorically denies the charges or the issue does not come up.
This is do-or-die for Trump. For Biden, who sits on a sizable lead, a quiet night could assure a victory on November 3.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on Twitter: @GordonGChang.
Frank Donatelli
Joe Biden is in a strong position. He has a lead in the polls, including virtually all swing states. The current conversation is benefitting him. He'll want to continue to talk about his aggressive plans to combat the COVID-19 virus, his plans to reform health care and to bring America together. I assume he'll want to play up the large number of Republican endorsements he's been able to corral. Above all, he'll need to keep his cool and not be drawn into angry exchanges with the president.
Trump is trailing and needs to change the discussion. Criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and Lesley Stahl isn't going to do it. He needs to tone down his aggressive posture, though that is probably not possible. The one issue he has an advantage on is the economy. He should focus on his work to build a strong economy and make the case he is best able to bring the economy back, as opposed to Biden, who has a tax and spend program. He might also make a pitch for his "America first" foreign policy that has produced wins against terrorists in the Middle East. Finally, he should argue he has made progress to change the culture in Washington, D.C., but needs four more years to finish the job.
Frank Donatelli served as assistant for political affairs to President Ronald Reagan and as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain. Follow him on Twitter: @FrankDonatelli.
Nigel Farage
The president did not do as well in the first debate as his supporters had hoped. Ironically, the change of format with each candidate speaking for two minutes uninterrupted may help him, despite objections from the Trump campaign. The longer Joe Biden speaks for, the more likely he is to lose the thread of his argument mid-sentence. We have seen many such episodes on the campaign trail.
The most passionate part last time concerned the respective records of Biden's own sons. It was the electric moment. Since then, the New York Post story of leaked Hunter Biden emails and the restrictions placed it by Silicon Valley have become the big story of the campaign.
Can Donald Trump land a knockout blow and paint the Biden family as corrupt? Does Biden have a defense that works? This exchange could decide the election.
Nigel Farage is senior editor-at-large of Newsweek's "The Debate" platform and leader of the U.K.'s Brexit Party.
Caroline Glick
To win this debate, Donald Trump needs to attach his expected attacks against Joe Biden's family's apparent monetization of his official office to a larger point about his commitment to putting the nation before himself and his family. To date, Trump has not drawn the requisite larger points from his attacks in Biden. His support for Hunter Biden's business ties with Ukrainian and Chinese nationals compromised America's national interest by at a minimum giving the impression that the vice president was in a compromised position. Trump on the other hand, abandoned his own businesses. He donates his entire paycheck to charity. Rather becoming enriched through his national service, he is foregoing enormous wealth to serve the nation.
Beyond the personal distinctions, his foreign policies, his trade policies and his economic policies have been driven by the same basic, foundational goal—to put America first in all aspects of the operation of the federal government. Biden represents the flipside of that aspiration and his son's trips abroad with him on Air Force 2 where he closed multimillion-dollar deals for himself are simply a symptom of the sort of policymakers that have populated Washington for far too long. These are the people who hate Trump because he rejects their modus operandi.
If Trump can make these distinctions, he will clinch the debate. If his attacks on Biden remain unattached to larger ideals and ideas, they will fall flat, convincing only the already convinced.
Caroline B. Glick is a senior columnist at Israel Hayom and the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East (Crown Forum, 2014). From 1994 to 1996, she served as a core member of Israel's negotiating team with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Doug Gordon
Here we go again. The second presidential debate and the second time Donald Trump walks onto the stage trailing badly and in need of something to shake up a remarkably stable race. With time running out, tens of millions of votes already cast and few undecided voters left, it is a tall task for even the most skilled politicians. And let's be honest, Trump is lots of things, but a skilled politician he is not.
Trump has spent the days leading into the debate attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, debate moderator Kristen Welker and 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl. Hardly the most pressing issues for the vast majority of Americans who are dealing with a raging pandemic and a faltering economy.
Trump's daily rallies heading into the debate have been a toxic and chaotic brew of grievance politics and way-out-there conspiracy theories about the "deep state" that require a person to watch as much Fox News as Trump does to understand. If this is what he brings to the debate stage tonight in Tennessee, he will once again lose the debate and likely the election.
Doug Gordon is a Democratic strategist and co-founder of UpShift Strategies who has worked on numerous federal, state and local campaigns and on Capitol Hill. Follow him on Twitter: @dgordon52.
Charlie Kirk
Tonight's debate is critical, perhaps the most critical moment in any election, ever. And no, I genuinely don't believe that's overstating things. Yes, early voting has already begun in most of the country and that includes somewhere around 40 million votes already cast. But this election will come down to 1 to 3 percent of the voters who can be persuaded one way or the other. Here's what must be true of these voters: If you don't already hate Donald Trump after four years of the legacy news media engaging in a character assassination of the leader of the free world, then you are most likely looking for an excuse to vote for Donald Trump.
Perhaps you like his policies but you hate his tone? Maybe you find his tweets insufferable but appreciate the economic surge American enjoyed pre-pandemic. Maybe you're increasingly troubled by the Hunter Biden laptop and email scandal which credibly ties Joe Biden to a pay-for-play scheme that resulted in millions of dollars in kickbacks from Chinese firms? Whatever the rationale may be for remaining undecided, President Trump must provide the excuse for those undecided voters to fall his way.
To do that I believe the president must find a way to lean into his foreign policy accomplishments and contrast them against Joe Biden's failures—and now his scandals—despite foreign policy being removed from the list of subjects from tonight's debate! The president must nevertheless must make these foreign policy bombshell revelations about Joe, not Hunter. If the president over-attacks Hunter, that will only make him look like a bully and drive up sympathy for Biden. The president must drive the conversation to the topics Joe Biden desperately wants to avoid—and since his mic will be muted when Joe Biden answers, he must then sit back and watch him either dig his own hole, or meander aimlessly until he completely loses his train of thought. Either way, the American people will see this man is unfit, morally and cognitively, to run the country.
Charlie Kirk is the chairman of Students for Trump and host of The Charlie Kirk Show.
Tom Rogers
Joe Biden has to create no news, no controversy and no new doubts. He must characterize Donald Trump's last two weeks of actions on the COVID-19 front as showing total hostility to achieving competent solutions for the nation's health and the economy. He must also make clear that Trump has a personal temperament that evidences instability and a lack of fitness for a job that above all else requires a steady hand.
Trump has to totally change the trajectory of the race, where all his critiques of Biden to date have largely not swayed independent voters in swing states. What Trump needs to do requires a personality transformation that would somehow make him appealing to suburban women. That is not going to happen.
In the absence of that, he should focus on the economy, but not with his usual rap on jobs and the stock market, which will not meaningfully change anything at this point because his presentation has not resonated, and not by the "Biden is a socialist vessel" charge. Instead, he should put forward the idea of a massive new economic plan on infrastructure modernization, new high-speed broadband highways, the spawning of clean energy environmental industries—with special focus on how all that will create much higher-paying jobs for most of middle America. Of course, that will not be what he does, but as a closing argument to the American people, he needs to do something truly bold and different.
Tom Rogers is an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, currently executive chairman of Engine Media and is former senior counsel to a congressional committee.
Ben Weingarten
For President Donald Trump to have a successful final debate, he must hammer home the message that—notwithstanding the temporary ravages of the Chinese Communist Party-driven coronavirus—his agenda helped make America infinitely richer, stronger and safer than it was four years ago, and that a compromised, swamp-dweller par excellence and Trojan Horse for the radical left in former Vice President Joe Biden would bring America to its knees.
Trump should make clear from the get-go that this debate was supposed to be about foreign policy—the area where a president has the greatest responsibility and power—and that the topic switch demonstrates that on issue after issue from the military, to China, Iran, Russia and beyond, Biden cannot compete with the Trump record.
Trump should make clear that the debate commission, the media and Big Tech have conspired to protect Biden from scrutiny on foreign policy precisely because they know of his weakness on the issue, and because they share his agenda and wish to return to the globalist status quo—in contravention of an "America first" peace through strength agenda.
Trump should also make crystal-clear that the issue of Biden family corruption is about the father, not his troubled son. Every viewer should walk away knowing that Biden's closest family members monetized his office through dealings with America's worst adversaries, in an influence-peddling scheme that may have resulted in kickbacks to former Biden himself. Trump must ask candidate Biden pointed questions: "What did you know? When did you know it? Why have you previously lied about your knowledge of it? What did you do about it? Did you directly or indirectly profit? How can the American people be sure you aren't bought off by Communist China and a whole host of other adversarial and corrupt regimes?"
Though Biden will seek to evade, and the moderator will likely mute Trump, he must make clear that this is not about Hunter Biden—it's about Joe Biden being the ultimate swamp creature, and in the process standing as a potential national security threat based on his family's dealings—even before delving into the clear disparity in the two candidates' records. Trump should speak directly to the American people in calling out Biden's evasion and the moderator's tag-teaming against him as evidence of an attempt to hide the truth from the American people, for the benefit of the political elite.
If Trump clearly distinguishes his record of success with that of nearly 50 years of Biden failure, and ties the bombshell allegations regarding Biden family corruption back to that record, he will be on his way to a successful and potentially election-altering final presidential debate.
Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, fellow at the Claremont Institute and senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party (Bombardier, 2020). Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and production company. Subscribe to his newsletter at bit.ly/bhwnews, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.
Christine Todd Whitman
Donald Trump needs to rise to the occasion and control himself so he doesn't embarrass himself by having his mic cut off—whether he can do that remains to be seen. Can Trump actually appear as a normal candidate with ideas about policy, or will he continue to simply call Joe Biden names and lie about his record?
Biden needs to stay on his message—point out the over 222,000 Americans who have died from the pandemic, the economic crisis and Trump's inability to govern.
Also, Biden should make the point that if you truly believe in the right to life, you must care about the lives of the 545 kids who were separated from their parents at the border and how the government has no idea where their parents are. The Trump administration assured the American people that they knew where everyone was and they could reunite families.
Biden doesn't even need to get into Trump's bank account in China and some of the more minor scandals that have arisen this week. And he can enjoy the fact that he can have at least two interruption-free minutes to answer questions.
Christine Todd Whitman is president of the Whitman Strategy Group. She served in the Cabinet of President George W. Bush as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and previously was governor of New Jersey. Follow her on Twitter: @GovCTW.
The views expressed in this article are the authors' own.
