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RFK Jr. predicts Trump will win CNN debate against Biden

By Tara Suter - 6/25/24, 5:51 PM EDT

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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he thinks former President Trump will win Thursday’s presidential debate.

“I would predict that Trump will win because I really — I think Donald Trump is … he could win a prize for the greatest debater in modern American history, probably since Lincoln-Douglas,” Kennedy said in an interview with television host Piers Morgan posted Tuesday to YouTube, referencing historic debates between former President Lincoln and Sen. Stephen Douglas (D-Ill.).

Kennedy said his conclusion that Trump will win the debate comes from “watching him run through 16 Republicans,” and easily outmatching them in debates, appearing to refer to the 2016 GOP primary season. He also said Trump has “all of these extraordinary techniques” and is “extremely entertaining to watch.”

“I don’t think it’s possible for President Biden to beat him in that debate,” Kennedy continued.

Biden and Trump are set to debate Thursday night in Atlanta on CNN. Trump has admitted he interrupted Biden “too much” in their first debate back in 2020, which The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman noted last week. The former president’s performance in that debate was widely panned.

“He has said to people multiple times that he knows that he interrupted too much in the first debate with Biden in 2020, and having just rewatched that debate recently, it’s really striking,” Haberman said.

“I mean, we all talked about it at the time, but Biden could barely get a word in edgewise, and Biden was kind of smiling throughout as this was happening,” Haberman added.

Kennedy expressed his frustration last week following CNN announcing that Thursday’s debate would be between only Biden and Trump.

“Presidents Biden and Trump do not want me on the debate stage and CNN illegally agreed to their demand,” Kennedy claimed in a statement via his campaign. “My exclusion by Presidents Biden and Trump from the debate is undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly.”

The Hill has reached out to the Trump and Biden campaigns.

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