When Joe Biden and Donald Trump square off on June 27, it will be the first time in history that a sitting president and a former one participate in a debate. But will there be anything else historic about it?

Trump is wrestling with trying simultaneously to lower and raise expectations for Biden. On the one hand, he enjoys depicting him as a doddering old man who can barely pull his socks on in the morning; on the other, he worries that a forceful Biden will show up at the debate, slinging zingers. So he suggests that the president will be “pumped up” on a heady cocktail of drugs that may well include cocaine left behind by Hunter. Trump is also suggesting that the debate moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will be out to get him. “I’ll be debating three people,” he said, “instead of one, instead of  one half of a person.”

For all his bluster about Biden’s debilities, Trump does appear to be taking the up coming debate seriously, or at least with as much seriousness as he is able to muster for any consequential event other a WWE competition. He’s apparently meeting, among other things, with his potential vice-presidential running mates to discuss strategy for the debate on topics ranging from Ukraine to tax policy. It’s his advisers who appear to be filling in many of the blanks, including Robert C. O’Brien, his former national security adviser, who has issued a sweeping call for an assertive approach to foreign policy in Forign Affairs calling The Return of Peace Through Strength for a return to Reagan-era doctrines.

Any preparation that Trump is conducting, though, is likely to prove superfluous. His specialty is the cheap shot—the venomous insinuation, the sneering mockery, the splenetic outburst. Trump is a performer and he knows, more than anyone else, that the show must go on. His task will be to reprise his role on “The Apprentice” by dismissing Biden.

Biden, in turn, will seek to recapitulate his great evening during the State of the Union when he toyed with his Republican detractors, professing mock astonishment at their responses to him. A wary Trump already senses that Biden will seek to go in for the kill. To corner him, Biden will need to point not simply to a lower inflation rate but to pummeling Trump on his record as a convicted criminal. 

What neither candidate will want to address is the soaring national debt as they offer gauzy promises for the future. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office indicates that it will exceed 50 trillion dollars by 2034. Even as America expands it financial and military commitments, it has no coherent, let alone cogent, plan for addressing its mounting federal debt. 

But such minutiae isn’t what will turn this debate into a summer blockbuster. Trump, like Will Smith in the movie hit “Bad Boys,” is intent on demonstrating that he’s on the comeback trail. Stay tuned.

About the Author: Jacob Heilbrunn

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel. In 2008, his book They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons was published by Doubleday. It was named one of the one hundred notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is the author of America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.