Tonight’s the night. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will come face to face on CNN Thursday evening for their unusually early first debate ahead of the 2024 election. By this point, moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash should be well prepared with a vast array of questions and tactics, no matter how unhinged things get on the debate stage.
But just in case they need some last-minute ideas, The Daily Beast reached out to a bunch of professional comedians to ask what questions they would open the debate with if they were serving as moderator.
Some took the assignment a bit more seriously than others. And some were even tougher on Biden than they were on Trump. But a running theme seemed to be just how unprecedented this big showdown between two men hovering around 80 years old with very different visions for the country they want to lead will no doubt be. Here are some highlights from the responses we received.
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Larry Wilmore
The former host of The Nightly Show, current host of the podcast Black on the Air, and the featured comedian at President Barack Obama’s final White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Larry Wilmore zeroed right in on each candidate’s biggest political liability.
Judd Apatow
Director and producer Judd Apatow is responsible for some of the most hilarious movies of the past two decades. But he evidently sees nothing funny about the highly consequential debate.
Jena Friedman
Former Daily Show producer and Oscar-nominated screenwriter (for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) Jena Friedman went straight to the heart of the matter by trying to get the two candidates on the record about one very basic fact.
Laurie Kilmartin
And in a case of parallel thinking, former Conan writer and stand-up comedian Laurie Kilmartin, who recently put out a special called Cis Woke Grief Slut, put a finer point on it, framing her question as a cognitive test itself.
Gary Gulman
Comedian Gary Gulman, whose most recent special Born on 3rd Base was infused with deeply funny class commentary, had just one question for Trump. But he employed his always impeccable vocabulary to really dig in on a question the former president would never in a million years have enough introspection to answer honestly.
W. Kamau Bell
As a former CNN colleague of Tapper and Bash—he hosted the travel series United Shades of America on that network for seven seasons—W. Kamau Bell subtly acknowledged with this question why he was not chosen as moderator.
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
Hot off his hilarious focus group sketch for The Daily Show (and an Emmy-eligible live special “Let’s Make a Poop”), Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (AKA SNL alum Robert Smigel) presented a stark choice for the American people.
Anthony Atamanuik
And finally, the comedian who so expertly embodied Trump on The President Show offered up a pair of questions for the two candidates that revealed he may actually have more animosity toward the current president than he does toward the man he portrayed for years as a petty, venal, idiotic psychopath.
