Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
I've changed my mind: This week's presidential debate matters.
Before I continue, a quick recap: Last month, I expressed my long-standing view that presidential debates aren't very meaningful and are very stupid. They are pseudo-events, the historian Daniel J. Boorstin's term for manufactured media spectacles that feel significant because we imbue them with significance.
My opinion on this as a historical matter is unchanged. Even debate lovers concede that John F. Kennedy won the first presidential debate in 1960 because he was telegenic and Richard Nixon looked like he woke up in a motel room after a bender. In other words, the debates have always been about style over substance.
And even the style hasn't mattered much. Researchers have found that debates have virtually no detectable electoral impact.
So why have I changed my mind about this debate? For starters, because in a "vibes" election, a vibes debate could matter.
We've all heard that many voters -- around 20 percent -- are so-called double-haters, people who really don't want to vote for Trump or Biden. Perhaps more important, as recently as a few months ago, an even larger share of voters didn't believe they would really face a choice between Trump and Biden. Only 33 percent of those surveyed by Economist/YouGov pollsters in March said a Trump-Biden rematch would "definitely" happen.
That's one reason the Biden camp wanted a debate in June, the earliest such meeting in history by three months. They need to get their "gettable" voters to stop wallowing in the crapulence of denial, accept that this is the choice and come home. That alone makes this debate different.
Normally, debates serve one or two functions. Sometimes, they are last-ditch efforts to persuade voters to make their choice. In other cases, they are post-Labor Day attempts to introduce or reintroduce candidates to voters who haven't been paying attention.
But this debate is first and foremost an effort to get voters to understand what their choice is. These candidates -- an incumbent president who's been in politics for half a century and a former president and reality-show celebrity -- do not need to be reintroduced to voters, though voters do need to be reassured about them.
That's why a debate, with its tendency to amplify style over substance, could matter more this time. Big debate moments occasionally arise from well-placed one-liners, but more often they involve unintentional factors such as gaffes, body language and even sighs. The takeaway from presidential debates tends not to be a policy position or plan but rather a comfort level with the idea of a person being in our faces for four more years.
That's a fairly stupid standard for choosing a president. But these are stupid times. And when the single biggest challenge for the candidates is to sway voters who have deep misgivings about their mental acuity and character, comfort level might be all that matters.
That's why the stakes for Biden are higher going into this debate. Yes, it was foolish for Trump to set the bar so low for his opponent by suggesting he is a "brain-dead zombie," but I think the traditional punditry about the expectations game is overblown. Regardless of Trump's rhetoric, millions of people -- undecided Democrats, independents and especially those double-haters -- have legitimate and sincere concerns about Biden's mental and physical fitness. I don't think debates are a good test of presidential fitness, but for a lot of voters, this debate could be a decisive test of Biden's mental fitness.
Even progressives such as Van Jones have conceded that if the president really messes up this debate, it will be "game over" for him. I think that's correct. Fair or not, if Biden has a major malfunction, it will be an irreparable confirmation of voter concerns about his age. I would expect the whispers about replacing him on the ticket to become shouts almost overnight.
But if Biden clears that very low hurdle, the stakes suddenly become higher for Trump. Most voters do not like the former president and pretty much never have. If he leans into the traits that turn them off -- if he follows that age-old advice, "Be yourself" -- and Biden is even modestly reassuring, the double-haters and other undecideds could easily break for the president. Not all of them, sure, but Biden doesn't need all of them.
To put it in boxing terms, if it's a knockout, Biden will likely be the loser. If it's a split decision, the odds are good that it will split in Biden's favor.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.