Why Trump is suddenly talking up Biden after months of slamming his cognitive capacity

[Dulcinea]

(CNN) After months lampooning President Joe Biden as a cognitively impaired “brain-dead zombie” who can’t finish a sentence or navigate off a stage, former President Donald Trump and his campaign are changing their tune days ahead of the critical debate of the election.

The commander in chief has suddenly morphed into a “worthy debater,” someone of considerable ability and a veteran political performer who is not to be underestimated, according to Trump and his lieutenants.

The game of pre-debate expectation-setting is often absurd – one aide to former President George W. Bush once claimed that John Kerry, his Democratic opponent in 2004, was a better debater than Roman rhetorician Cicero. But the Trump team’s shift is remarkable given their relentless assault on Biden’s faculties. And it hints at their possible concerns that they’ve set an unnecessarily low bar for the president’s performance ahead of Thursday’s clash hosted by CNN in Atlanta.

-snip-

Trump is also hedging against a stronger-than-expected Biden showing by suggesting his opponent will be “jacked up” on drugs to ensure a strong performance.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-trump-suddenly-talking-biden-040015893.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO&ncid=crm_19908-1202929-20240624-0&bt_user_id=JUqZnCGGNile%2BtOJPX7UAbveg5hMVQ5BTn394bx3R1qUS%2FfU9dYgXf%2FRW4QVEeW7&bt_ts=1719220555210

[Fullduplexxx]

1. Just teeing up the loss

[Captain Zero]

4. Kicking the ball back into the Fairway

Or throwing it back on the fairway like his golf partners have told us about. Or pulling another ball from his pocket and dropping it where he wants it.

[GreenWave]

2. Very Quixotesque of them, eh Dulcinea?

[sop]

3. Yeah, how would it look if "Demented Joe" wipes the debate stage floor with Trump, the MIT stable genius?

[Midnight Writer]

5. Playing the media. I'm surprised these same tricks work again and again.

You would think by now professional news outlets would have defenses in place against old tricks like this.

[Skittles]

6. the media is complicit

yup

[louis-t]

7. He knows he's going to lose the election

and will send Mitt Romney to try to get Biden to pardon him?

[Aristus]

8. They finally realized the blindingly-obvious fact that lowering the expectations bar isn't going to help them.

If they go around saying that 'Demented Joe' is going to drool on his microphone, and shit his pants, and then he doesn't do those things, he has already cleared the expectations bar with room to spare.

[Igel]

9. For the same reason antisemitism has two equally ugly heads.

One says that Jews are inferior, a taint of some sort.

The other says that Jews are cunning, smarter, manipulative, and run things.

Reconciling those two isn't attempted by antisemites right and left and even center, their own form of unresolved ersatz Hegelian dialectic.

Similarly, Trump can't say that Biden's utterly incompetent and run the risk of losing to an incompetent. So he adopts the same unresolved dialectic--Biden's a doddering ignorant fool but also very clever and smart.