Inside Joe Biden's secret debate rehearsals ahead of next week's showdown with Donald Trump and the biggest mistakes he could make

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13558137/biden-secret-debate-rehearsals-trump.html

Joe Biden is locked in an intense five-day debate camp as he prepares to take on his hated rival Donald Trump in Thursday's televised brawl.

Trump is expected to goad, insult, interrupt, and heckle the president - and the man playing him in practice sessions won't take it any easier on Biden.

Bob Bauer, the president's longtime personal lawyer, is expected to stand in for Trump as he did before the successful 2020 debates.

Biden left for Camp David on Thursday night and will use the favorite presidential retreat for the ultra-secret debate preparation. Such is the code of silence around debate camps that Bauer wouldn't even confirm he would reprise his role as the villain this time.

But he did share some behind-the-scenes details from the 2020 preparations, and a few of the mistakes he and Biden must avoid both in practice and on Thursday. Bauer said he had to immerse himself in what the opposing candidate said, along with their tone and style of argument, to recreate the experience of debating them. 'I as Donald Trump, played my part lying and blustering and bullying my way through the mock sessions,' he wrote in his book, The Unraveling.

'To prepare, I watched hours of tapes of the 45th president, as a businessman, 2016 candidate, and then in office. 'We set aside special sessions during which I was expected to be at my Trump-worst - as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be.'

The first rule, which is particularly important with Trump, is that he can't hold back in going after Biden in the nastiest possible way. 'You cannot be afraid of laying down on the table something that your candidate that you're preparing this for won't like,' Bauer told Politico. 'That could be something that's personally insulting. That's something that can be completely false about policy positions they've taken.'

Another big mistake is to use an argument that the opposing candidate could make, but never actually made before - as he did in 2020. Bauer described how in a mock debate before the last election he had Trump effectively calling for Roe v Wade to be overturned.

He noted that Trump subsequently took credit for appointing judges that in 2022 did in fact strike down the 1973 precedent upholding the constitutional right to abortion, but that he hadn't done it by 2020. 'That was a mistake. You want to avoid those kinds of mistakes because you don't want the candidate preparing for an argument that the candidate is not going to hear,' he said. Biden aides said the president hoped to use the debate to hold Trump accountable for his role in helping overturn Roe v Wade.