Workers set up a massive fence Thursday around the perimeter of the presidential debate site at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters.
Protesters are expected to descend on Georgia’s capital city to demonstrate outside the first showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
One shirtless man braved the muggy heat to show up early Thursday morning to protest Biden ahead of his arrival in Atlanta.
His signs read: ‘Lock up Biden’ and ‘Biden betrayed America and Israel.’
The event is the first time Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, will be in the same room since they went head-to-head in their two debates in 2020.
But law enforcement is anticipating that the debate won’t be the only area where two opposing sides clash on Thursday night.
One protest group expected to gather outside the debate are pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who have descended on public areas nationwide to express their unhappiness with how the Biden administration is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict.
It’s also likely that other protest groups could include pro-abortion demonstrators, environmental activists and just general pro-Trump groups that like to follow around the former president and show their support for his reelection and reiterate their belief the 2020 election was stolen.
Georgia is massively important to the 2024 presidential election and is one of the seven states consequential for which candidate will ultimately earn a second White House term.
Trump is facing one of his handful of criminal trials in Fulton County, which encompasses Atlanta, where District Attorney Fani Willis brought a case alleging the former president and more than a dozen allies engaged in election interference.
In 2016, Georgia voted red for Trump and flipped in 2020 for Biden – but the former president and his allies maintain widespread fraud was the reason the Peach State went blue.
A recording of an infamous call with then-Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger shows Trump demanding he find the more than 11,000 votes needed to overturn Biden’s victory.
CNN is holding one of the earliest general election showdowns in modern history after Trump and Biden both publicly challenged and accepted the network’s proposal to host the debate.
It comes before either of the candidates officially became their respective parties’ nominees.
The Republican Convention is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July and Democrats are holding their Convention in Chicago, Illinois in August.
The two presumed 2024 presidential candidates also said they would debate after their nominations after ABC proposed an event on September 10.