At Camp David, a movie theater and an airplane hangar were outfitted with lights and equipment to set up a mock debate stage, and at least 16 current and former aides from Washington and Wilmington zoomed around in golf carts to join Biden’s strategy sessions.
Mr. Biden is in his fifth day of preparations for Thursday’s debate with Donald J. Trump at the presidential retreat in the woods of northern Maryland. Camp David has become the center of administration and campaign efforts to help Mr. Biden shake off the rust that often comes with a sitting defense secretary and to ease voter concerns that he may be too old to be effective as president.
Neither candidate has debate experience, and Biden’s top advisers, including debate organizer Ron Klain, are aware of past mistakes made by incumbents: In 2012, President Barack Obama botched his first reelection debate and was forced to quickly reverse course for the second.
So they will seek to position Biden not just as a president in the middle of a reelection campaign but as a fighter ready to counterpunch at a moment’s notice — a skill his opponent Trump, skilled at delivering off-the-cuff insults, skipped the primary debates where he could have honed it.
“The rust is real,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief strategist. “These two men are not used to having someone standing a few feet away grilling them with no respect.”
The length of work days varies and isn’t rigidly set in stone, with Mr. Biden and his most trusted advisers working through what they think is best to refine or implement at any given time, according to a person familiar with the planning at Camp David but not authorized to speak publicly.
They’re all trying to predict exactly what attacks Trump will launch against Biden, which of Biden’s policies he will try to undermine and how the president can control the debate and stay focused on highlighting his personality and policy contrasts with Trump.
Biden campaign officials see the debate as a chance to go on the offensive on issues like immigration and abortion access. Biden recently announced a program to create a new path to citizenship for people married to U.S. citizens, while Trump has suggested immigrants form fighting alliances. And this week marks two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
Biden’s advisers say the setup itself will highlight Trump’s weaknesses and help the president combat the impression of Trump’s public failings, illustrated by a number of misleading videos. Biden and Trump will meet behind closed doors in a private studio in Atlanta. Each candidate’s microphone will be muted when it is not their turn to speak.
But the debate will still be broadcast live on CNN. The moderators will be pressured to fact-check both candidates in real time, but are not expected to venture into rebuttal territory. CNN political director David Chalian told The New York Times over the weekend that the moderators will be “focused on facilitating the discussion between the candidates, but will not be participating in the debate.”
The Biden team will do everything in its power to ensure there are no surprises.
Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, played Trump in a mock debate at Camp David, as he did in 2020.
In his book, “The Unraveling,” Bauer said he spent hours studying tapes of Trump as a businessman, candidate and president before the 2020 debates. He wrote that he didn’t try to portray a “Saturday Night Live” version of Trump with makeup and costumes. Instead, he wrote, “I used as many of Trump’s words as I could on topics that would come up in the debates.”
Trump himself has been taking part in something resembling a more streamlined debate preparation process than in years past, sitting in with allies to discuss policy, but he said last weekend he was relying on his experience as a campaigner when he takes the stage opposite Biden.
“Well, that’s just the best strategy,” Trump told Fox News ahead of a weekend rally in Philadelphia. “We’ve got a lot of people here, and they’re all fired up with questions. I’m looking forward to the debate.”
At the rally, he accused Biden of “going to a log cabin to ‘study,'” suggested Biden would take supplements to “get energized” before the debate and said the president would spend most of his time at Camp David sleeping.
But Axelrod said Biden has had just as much time to prepare as previous presidents, with Klain planning sparring sessions and mock debates that would lead to a two- to three-day debate camp.
“The process is different in that Trump doesn’t believe in process,” Axelrod said. “What Biden is doing is more conventional.”
Biden’s Camp David prep team includes Klain and Mike Donilon, who came up with the campaign’s theme that democracy is at risk if Trump wins. Steve Ricchetti, the presidential adviser who manages congressional relations, is also scheduled to attend Camp David, as is Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Biden’s chief of staff, Jeffrey D. Zients, is also scheduled to attend, along with aides responsible for communications strategy, including Anita Dunn and White House communications director Ben LaBolt.
Also on the attendee list are Biden campaign staffers including Jen O’Malley Dillon, Cedric Richmond, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Quentin Fulks, Michael Tyler and Rob Flaherty.
Some are returning briefly to help Biden prepare: Brian Deese, who left the administration in 2023 to serve as director of the National Economic Council, is expected to visit Camp David to help Biden refine his case that the U.S. economy is recovering.
People familiar with the matter said there would be a clear divide between Biden’s inner circle and the diverse set of policy experts assembled at Camp David, some of whom are not expected to stay the whole week once the mock debates get underway in earnest.
Mr. Biden’s deputy chief of staff, Annie Tommasini, has been by his side all this time, and Mr. Biden’s senior policy adviser, Bruce Reed, will be making many of the decisions about which arguments need to be refined, according to a person familiar with the planning.
