What the road to the presidency looks like for both candidates

Inside Joe Biden’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, Bob Bauer, the typically soft-spoken veteran Democratic attorney, goes on the attack against the former vice president.

Bauer interrupts and shouts down Biden, who is trying to formulate his arguments for why he should be president.

Bauer is playing the role of President Trump during mock debate prep — often embodying the President as he behaved during the first debate in order to prepare Biden stay on message in the event that Trump blows through new measures put in place by the Commission on Presidential Debates to prevent interruptions.

Team Biden is worried that the plan to mute candidates during portions of the debate will not help with the distraction factor. Even if the audience at home can’t hear the President’s microphone if he interrupts Biden, the Democratic nominee will be standing right there and will hear him loud and clear. Paying no attention to the man next to him is a significant part of Biden’s prep for going into the ring with the President one last time.

Biden and Trump are heading into their final planned showdown of the 2020 campaign, with 12 days to go until Election Day. And their respective teams are studying the first debate, which delved into chaos as Trump continually interrupted Biden. The lessons gleaned from that initial matchup are informing the recommendations being made to the candidates as they prepare to take the stage one last time.

Trump’s advisers are have pleaded with the President to try a different tactic this time around.

Republican sources tell CNN that not only did the President’s internal polling numbers drop because of his erratic performance during the first debate, his fellow Republicans down ballot, especially vulnerable Republican senators, also took a hit in their own polling because of Trump’s behavior on stage with Biden.

Kellyanne Conway, who was part of the team that helped prepare the President for the first debate inside the White House map room, said she warned him not to interrupt too much.

“My last piece of advice to the President, which I shared with him directly and I shared with him before the first debate, let Biden speak,” Conway relayed in an interview.

Conway and other Trump advisers are renewing their argument to him ahead of the last debate that the more Trump let’s Biden speak, the worse it is for Biden.

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