Sen. John Fetterman said he still believes President Joe Biden would have beaten former President Donald Trump if he stayed in this year’s election race — even as he admitted Trump is a “good debater.”
“It’s going to be a straight-up debate,” Fetterman (D-Penn.) told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday ahead of a Tuesday debate between Trump and Biden’s last-minute replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“She’s going to do great, of course, but Donald Trump will be good too. I mean, we can all remember he wrecked all of the Republicans. He’s a good debater,”
At the same time, Fetterman chided that Hillary Clinton “actually wrecked Trump objectively on the three debates” back in 2016, while stressing how the real estate mogul managed to win that election cycle.
“At the end of the day, I don’t believe this debate’s going to be definitive because it’s going to come down to this choice, and it’s going to be close,” he said.
Tuesday night’s debate between Trump and Harris hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia will mark the first time that the presidential hopefuls cross paths with each other in person.
Ahead of the debate, Harris has hunkered down in preparation, while Trump is believed to have engaged in comparatively more relaxed prep work.
The debate will feature the microphones getting cut off in between each person’s allotted time and the candidates will be restricted from asking questions of the other.
Given the somewhat static nature of the race, about a month and a half since Biden dropped out on July 21, many observers have surmised that the debate could shake up the contest significantly.
Back in June, Biden’s fumbling debate performance against Trump sparked a revolt among Democrats that culminated in the incumbent’s seismic decision to bow out of the race.
Fetterman had been a staunch defender of Biden during that mutiny, having personally survived a disastrous debate performance himself back in the 2022 midterm election cycle against celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz. The senator ripped calls for Biden to step aside as the “dumbest s–t” he’d ever heard.
Despite Biden ultimately throwing in the towel and Democrats’ odds of holding onto the White House looking brighter in polling, Fetterman stood by his assessment that the 81-year-old president could’ve won re-election.
“I do believe fundamentally that Joe Biden would have beaten Trump, and it was going to be very close, and I have always predicted that as well too, and now Harris,” Fetterman said.
“She’s [Harris] had an amazing run so far and we’re raising record amounts of money. And she’s had an incredible all kinds over the last six weeks. But, right now, it’s — here we are, and it’s going to be close. And it comes down to that very same, very stark choice,” he added.
Harris touts a 1.4-percentage point edge over Trump in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of national polling for a head-to-head matchup. She’s also ahead of him in the RCP no-tossup battleground state map.
Despite the positive polling, Fetterman pointed to the history of polls underestimating Trump’s support.
“Everybody thought that Hillary Clinton was going to pull it away, and she wrecked him. She actually wrecked Trump objectively on the three debates,” he recalled. “People thought that Joe Biden was going to win by three or five points.”
Ultimately, Fetterman, who stumped with the vice president last week, conveyed optimism that Harris will win and that she can achieve victory in Pennsylvania, which has the highest number of Electoral College votes of the swing states.
Trump’s team has targeted Pennsylvania aggressively with advertisement bookings, signaling how important the Republican’s campaign views the state.
The former president won the Keystone State in 2016, but lost it in 2020. Now, Pennsylvania has two Democratic senators, a Democratic governor and split control over the legislature.
“It’s not about policies or who has more money or talking about scandals or things — kind of thing. People all have to ask themselves, what kinds of the next four years do we want?” Fetterman stressed.
Fetterman implied that a Trump victory would usher in an era of “reckless and bizarre behavior” and argued that Harris would bring about stability.
