Thread by @Monaheart1229

Good point here:
Trump's been working overtime to convince his stupid followers that Biden's 'addled and incoherent' which of course, Joe is not
This could backfire on him.. but not with his base
#VoteHimOut
nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/…

2-"President Trump has framed the first general election debate as a test for his opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Yet he has simultaneously set the bar so low for so long that many of his supporters — having watched unflattering, often manipulated clips of

3-"Mr. Biden in Trump campaign advertisements or on Fox News — are now expecting the president to mop the floor with an incoherent opponent in something resembling a W.W.E. match.

4-"The misleading notion that Mr. Biden is too addled for the presidency has been driven by Mr. Trump since 2018, when he first started referring to the former vice president as Sleepy Joe. Since then, in speeches, in interviews and at his rallies,

5-"Mr. Trump has been crafting a narrative depicting the former vice president as having a diminished physical and mental stature, in the hope of making voters believe that Mr. Biden is unfit for office.

6-"It is a message that Mr. Trump’s campaign has spent millions of dollars amplifying, often in misleading, spliced-together clips contrasting an energetic Mr. Biden from the past with a supposedly barely functioning one now. And the campaign has posed the question to voters:

7-"“Did something happen to Joe Biden?”
“It’s an uncomfortable conversation to have, but voters deserve to be able to assess Joe Biden’s capabilities by seeing him and listening to him in his own words, especially as compared to just a few years ago,” Tim Murtaugh,

8-"the Trump campaign communications director, tweeted. Most recently, the president floated the baseless conjecture that Mr. Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs. Trump allies have taken the talking point even further.

9-"Representative Joe Murphy of North Carolina claimed outright last month that Mr. Biden suffered from dementia. All of that means that if Mr. Biden does not appear weak, the tactic will have backfired.

10-"Studying Mr. Biden’s various debate performances, the president’s advisers began warning Mr. Trump months ago that the former vice president had successfully handled a lengthy, one-on-one debate with Senator Bernie Sanders in March toward the end of their primary fight.

11-"Outside advisers warned Mr. Trump that he needed to change the way he was playing the expectations game with Mr. Biden. .. Still, Mr. Trump has not been able to stop pointing out where Mr. Biden struggled in more crowded primary debates.

12-"And the stage-setting has been years in the making.
“There’s talk about Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe, getting into the race,” Mr. Trump said at the Gridiron Dinner in 2018. “Just trust me, I would kick his ass.” .. ~NYT