Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer expected to play Trump in debate prep
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer is expected to stand in as former President Donald Trump during the Democrat’s debate prep ahead of their first televised showdown next week.
Bauer, 72, previously played Trump during the 2020 election cycle — describing his role in a new memoir as trying to be “as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be” — and is likely to reprise the act in the coming week, CNN reported, citing two sources.
“I can’t discuss anything related to the debate,” Bauer said in a Friday afternoon appearance on the cable channel when asked to confirm that he would guide the 81-year-old Biden through his preparation to take on Trump, 78, in Atlanta June 27.
The Biden campaign neither confirmed nor denied to The Post that Bauer will play the role and a number of Democrats close to the campaign said they didn’t know for sure if he would do so as the president spends a long weekend at Camp David in western Maryland.
Bauer is married to West Wing senior adviser for communications Anita Dunn, who last year unsuccessfully attempted to pressure White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to leave her post over concerns that she would be an ineffective election-year champion for Biden.
One Democratic source noted that Biden trusts Bauer and that the attorney, who helped the president avoid criminal charges as part of special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into the alleged mishandling of classified records, is highly regarded among insiders for his intellect.
A second source close to the campaign expressed concern, however, that using Bauer may reflect complacency — with Trump likely to hit Biden on the most sensitive matters, such his alleged cognitive decline and role in his son Hunter and brother James Biden’s foreign business relationships, which are the subject of a House impeachment inquiry.
“Will they run debate prep like a Bravo reality TV show? Because they should,” said this source.
“Will they be innovative and creative enough in prep to coach him to expect the unexpected and the unconventional? That’s all that matters.”
“Bob and Anita aren’t exactly known in Democratic circles for being cutting edge or seeing around corners,” this person added.
“If they were, the boss wouldn’t be playing defense on everything under the sun, every day for the last two and a half years.”
Biden is one of the nation’s most experienced candidates when it comes to seeking the White House and doing debates — running first in 1988 and then again in 2008 and 2020.
As President Barack Obama’s running mate, he took part in vice presidential debates in 2008 and 2012.
But the country’s oldest-ever sitting president faces overwhelming scrutiny about his fitness from the electorate — meaning he must use the debate to put voters’ minds at ease about his age and command of issues that are his worst-polling liabilities, such as high inflation and illegal immigration.
A whopping 86% of respondents said Biden is too old for another term in a February ABC/Ipsos poll —with 73% of registered voters also saying so in a March New York Times/Siena College survey.
Biden’s campaign has sought occasionally to highlight Trump’s own slip-ups, but public coddling in the past month by both Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Obama himself drew new rounds of scrutiny to the incumbent.
“It’s no surprise that Bauer is in prep again with most of the other usual suspects. Biden likes to have his security blanket around him. This team knows how to handle him and how he wants to be handled for these exercises,” the second source said.
“Biden has the record for the most debates under his belt than any president or candidate in our history. He always shows up for these types of things. He is truly at home behind a podium whether it’s in the Capitol or a debate hall. They’re home for him, just like the crew that preps him,” the person went on.
“He’ll be ready to spar over both of their records. But can the old dog be taught new tricks? Does Bob have the tricks and tools to teach a debate against such an unpredictable opponent?”
