Stephen Colbert previews Trump’s debate strategy with mute button

Stephen Colbert looked at how a mute button and new debate strategy will work for President Donald Trump

Tomorrow will be the third and final debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. It will bring together an absurd chapter in the 2020 election and with the planned use of a mute button, it will finish in an absurd fashion. Last night on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert offered his preview.

The first presidential debate was an embarrassment for everyone. President Trump’s constant interruptions and back-and-forth with moderator Chris Wallace derailed things. Meanwhile, Vice President Biden was forced to punch back at the president, famously asking him to “shut up.”

On top of it all, the president may have been infected with the novel coronavirus at the time. His subsequent confirmed diagnosis led to a proposed virtual debate that President Trump’s campaign declined. The result was dueling town hall events that kept the candidates separate.

In another first, the third debate will now include a mute button feature to ensure each candidate can answer uninterrupted. How this will play into President Trump’s reported new strategy for the debate was the subject of Stephen Colbert’s monologue:

Colbert works from a report from Axios indicating President Trump’s plan to strike a softer, more likable tone by telling jokes. But the president apparently has no plans to back off Hunter Biden or his emails.

Asking the president to change his tone is an impossible task. Several times over the past four years, media outlets have reported on President Trump’s “new tone” towards a host of subjects. But it never lasts long and Colbert sees no reason to believe the debate will be any different. President Trump may start out differently than the first debate but it’s only a matter of time before he goes on the attack.

Stephen Colbert highlights how President Trump has failed before the debate even starts

Maybe he’s getting it out of his system now, but President Trump expressed a number of complaints leading into the debate. Doing so probably doesn’t categorize him as “likable” but that has stopped the president from complaining about the debate topics and moderate or the way the media treats Vice President Biden.

Colbert shows a clip of President Trump complaining that he doesn’t get any softball questions. But when asked one by Fox News, he refuses to answer. The Late Show host sees it as another example of the president making himself out to be the victim of an unfair system.

In that same interview, President Trump made sure to insult Vice President Biden. Again, it goes against everything he’s being told to do in the upcoming debate.

Perhaps the best evidence of why this new strategy will fail comes when Colbert shows a clip of President Trump claiming he’s “running angry.” An angry Donald Trump isn’t going to come off as likable, make jokes, or be able to sit back and let his opponent speak.

It’s clear that something has to change if President Trump wants to overcome Vice President Biden’s lead in the polls. But Stephen Colbert just doesn’t see how that’s possible after hearing about a “new tone” again and again and again only to see the same old President Trump.

What did you think of Stephen Colbert’s monologue? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.