Bob Bauer, the personal lawyer to President Joe Biden, is expected to play former President Donald Trump in this week’s Democrats debate prep before the party’s first televised face off next week.
The report is sourced to two people who say Bauer, 72, will return in the role he played as Trump last year: “as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be,” for a part this week.
Bauer, who was asked by CNN during a Friday afternoon interview whether he would assist 81-year-old Biden in preparing to debate 78-year-old Trump in Atlanta on June 27: “I can’t discuss anything related to the debate.”
Sources reached out to the Biden campaign, which neither confirmed nor denied Bauer’s part as Trump. Four top Democrats near the campaign said they were uncertain if Bauer would step into that role as the president spends a long weekend mountain biking, skeet shooting and relaxing at Camp David in western Maryland.
Bauer is married to West Wing senior adviser for communications Anita Dunn, who made a last-ditch but unsuccessful bid last year to get White House press secretary Linda Karine Jean-Pierre to resign out of concerns about how well she was perceived as a face of Biden’s message in an election year.
One Democratic insider said Biden trusts in Bauer, who is widely respected among campaign insiders for his smarts. Bauer also played a role in President Joe Biden escaping criminal charges as special counsel Robert Hur probed an Obama aide for allegedly mishandling classified records.
But another source close to the campaign said counting on Bauer would be overconfident. Trump, meanwhile, is predicted to go after Biden on titles like the former vice president’s cognitive decline and the foreign business doings of his son Hunter and brother James that are currently part 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.”
Bauer had previously depicted Trump’s 2020 election strategy as to try and be “as personally insulting and unhinged as Trump can be,” a performance he will likely resurrect in the following week
“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.”
With a 1988 bid and two other presidential runs under his belt — in 2008 and again in 2020 — Biden is one of the most experienced candidates to ever seek the nation’s highest office. He took part in vice presidential debates in 2008 and 2012 as President Barack Obama’s running mate.
Biden is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history and is dogged by serious questions about his health despite years of experience on how to be president. He has to turn that impression on its head during the debate-making voters feel at ease with his age and on top of critical issues, including high inflation and illegal immigration.
A staggering 86 percent of respondents in a February ABC/Ipsos poll agreed that Biden is too old to serve another term, with a March New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters matching that figure at 73 percent.
Biden’s shots sometimes feature Trump making his own unforced errors, but a recent photo op with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (where the two elbow bumped and clasped hands), followed by Obama himself publicly chastising the incumbent has invited new questions.
“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.
