US DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL candidate Joe Biden said he expects “personal attacks and lies” from Donald Trump in their first televised debate on Tuesday, comparing the Republican president to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
“It is going to be difficult,” the former vice president acknowledged in an interview broadcast on MSNBC.
“My guess is, it’s going to be just straight attack. They’re going to be mostly personal. That’s the only thing he knows how to do,” he said of the Republican president.
“He doesn’t know how to debate the facts. He’s not that smart,” Biden continued. “He doesn’t know much about foreign policy, he doesn’t know much about domestic policy. He doesn’t know much about the detail.”
As a result, Biden predicted, “it’ll be mostly personal attacks and lies; but I think the American people are on to him.”
The debate Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio will be the first time the 77-year-old veteran politician has faced the president he has promised to dethrone. The men will meet again for two more debates before the 3 November elections.
But some of his supporters fear that Biden, who is prone to blunders and slip-ups, may waver in these televised debates under the rhetorical blows of Trump – who is also prone to blunders and slip-ups, but who is far more aggressive.
Trump himself never ceases to mock what he says is his rival’s lack of dynamism, nicknaming him “Sleepy Joe” and attacking his mental acuity.
The Democrat, however, said he was prepared.
“People know the president’s a liar,” Biden said.
“He’s sort of like Goebbels,” Biden said. “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge.”
“It’s not like it’s going to come as a surprise. And so I’m prepared to go out and make my case as to why I think he’s failed and why I think the answers I have to proceed will help the American people and the American economy, and make us safer internationally.”
‘This guy never goes out’
With just 39 days until the US election, Trump ramped up his campaigning with back-to-back events yesterday in battleground states – a frenetic pace in contrast with the more sedate approach of his Democratic rival.
The 74-year-old president’s 12-hour, three-state schedule culminated with a nighttime rally in Newport News, Virginia. By that time US media was reporting that he was set to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, who if confirmed would cement a solid conservative majority on the country’s highest court.
“We are going to be announcing somebody great,” he told the crowd without mentioning a name.
“Tomorrow [Saturday] I think is going to be a big day!” he added, as the crowd roared with approval.
Trump – who trails Biden in national polling and is narrowly behind in several swing states seen as crucial to his path to re-election – is under pressure to make the most of the remaining weeks before the election.
During his whirlwind day the president mocked his rival for a lower-energy campaign, saying Biden was “staying in again today.”
“This guy never goes out. It’s terrible huh?” he told a black economic empowerment event in Atlanta, where few people wore masks and social distancing was non-existent.
“If I lose to a man who doesn’t campaign… I don’t know,” he told the laughing crowd.
Biden travelled from his home in Delaware to Washington on Friday to attend a ceremony at the US Capitol as late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state there.
But there was no in-person campaigning on the former vice president’s schedule.
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