WASHINGTON DC: To many Americans, it might seem like a summertime TV rerun, but President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are debating Thursday night in a seminal moment for their campaigns leading up to the November 5 election.

It is the earliest debate ever in the quadrennial cycle of U.S. presidential elections, but a replay of their two 2020 debates, which occurred in the two months just ahead of Biden defeating Trump’s reelection bid for a new term in the White House.

Thursday’s face-off is the first time two U.S. presidents have debated each other and it is the first time Biden and Trump will be in the same room since they last debated in October 2020.

Trump skipped Biden’s January 2021 inauguration, and they have been sniping at each other ever since.

In recent days, Trump has mocked Biden’s debate preparation and suggested he would need a medical boost to get through the face-to-face encounter.

Trump told a Philadelphia rally, “Right now, crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” as he pantomimed quotation marks with his hands. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong.”

Trump has long contended that Biden cannot put “two sentences together.” More recently, however, Trump has been priming his supporters for the possibility that Biden might be something more formidable than the doddering old man that Trump has portrayed him as.

“I assume he’s going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater,” Trump told one interviewer. “I don’t want to underestimate him.”

For his part, in mid-May, just before the Thursday debate was agreed to, Biden said, “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate.” Trump skipped several such encounters against Republican opponents in the party’s presidential nominating process earlier this year.

“Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again,” Biden said. “Well, make my day, pal.”

Trump is likely to accuse Biden of mishandling the U.S. economy and lax control of the southwestern U.S. border with Mexico, allowing thousands of migrants to stream into the United States before Biden recently tightened entry restrictions.

Trump has claimed that excessive government spending early in Biden’s presidency boosted consumer prices at an annualized rate of more than 9%, sharply pinching family budgets for food, gasoline and other necessities, although the rate has since dropped substantially, to 3.3% in May.

For his part, Biden is likely to point out that Trump is now a convicted felon, found guilty of 34 charges last month linked to an attempt to influence the outcome of his successful 2016 presidential campaign by falsifying records of a hush money payment to a porn star.

In addition, Biden assuredly will remind voters that Trump faces three other indictments, including two alleging the former president illegally tried to upend his 2020 election loss.

Biden is likely to blame Trump’s appointment of three conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court for its 2022 decision to overturn the nearly five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion in the U.S. Biden has contended that Trump, if he gets the chance during a second term to carry out his plans for “retribution” against his political foes, is a threat to American democracy.

(VOA)