President Joe Biden’s campaign co-chairman, Mitch Landrieu, suggested Sunday that Biden will grill former President Donald Trump about his legal troubles during Thursday’s presidential debate in Atlanta.
“It really doesn’t matter if Donald Trump shows up as insane as usual, or if he sits quietly or whatever he appears to be — people are going to know he’s a libelous, sexually abusive, six-times bankrupt, twice-impeached, convicted felon,” Landrieu said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Guest moderator Peter Alexander brought up Biden’s new campaign ad, which calls Trump a “convicted felon,” and asked Landrieu whether that line of attack would make it onto the debate stage on Thursday.
“I’ll let the president say what he wants, but the fact is that sometimes the sky is blue and Donald Trump is a convicted felon,” Landrieu said.
In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying New York business records. The jury also found him liable for sexually abusing and libeling author E. Jean Carroll.
Meanwhile, Republicans South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Florida Rep. Byron Donald, who were once rumored to be finalists for Trump’s running mate, offered their own advice to the former president ahead of the debate.
“I think it’s clear that the hosts on CNN are going to do everything they can to attack President Trump and to piss him off, and I think President Trump is going to refocus everything on Biden’s terrible policies,” Donald told Fox News on Sunday.
“I don’t think he needs to get personal at all in this debate because he has a lot of good things to say in contrast to Joe Biden’s policies…” [which] “This has been a devastating blow to families across this country,” Noem said on “Meet the Press.”
“I think that’s exactly what President Trump is trying to focus on,” she added.
Last week, a Biden campaign official told NBC News that the president will focus the debate on clarifying Trump’s positions on reproductive rights and tax cuts.
“Donald Trump wakes up every day thinking only about himself, his rich friends, and then he thinks really hard about how to use the power he would have if he were president of the United States again to hurt people,” Landrieu said Sunday, adding, “I think the president wants to really make the distinction between those two.”
Since the date was announced last month, the two sides have had less than two months to prepare for this week’s debate, with Biden meeting with top advisers at Camp David in Maryland to prepare, while Trump has been attending more informal policy meetings with his team, including people rumored to be on his running mate list.
Thursday will be the first of two debates agreed upon by the two sides, with Trump and Biden also scheduled to face off in September.
