A lot is going to happen tonight in the first presidential debate between nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Many political experts and those in the camps of the campaigns are predicting and speculating about what will happen Monday night.

The problem with those pundits, analysts and everyone else is that they are predicting. I, the chief election humor columnist, can foresee what is going to happen in this first presidential debate, and I will precap it for you.

First, Lester Holt will introduce himself and have each candidate introduce each other in an icebreaker that worked much better at Thanksgiving. From then on, the night will turn into a raging battle of wits, intelligence and intellect as Lester Holt clearly loses it more and more throughout the entire two-hour event. America wants to know which of the presidential candidates is the biggest smarty-pants — and if Lester Holt is OK.

This might lean in Hillary’s favor. She’s been going to “debate camp” for the past few days. She cleared out her whole schedule and has been practicing, we assume in a cabin in the woods, with 12 other girls and a 17-year-old counselor in Upstate New York somewhere.

Hillary has supposedly told many private sources that she “wants to be a master debater,” but we’ll see if she can ever beat Bill in that category. How does she prepare to take on a candidate as unpredictable as Donald Trump? Just like how everyone else prepares to put out random objects that spontaneously combust.

Donald Trump, on the other — tiny — hand, has said he would not be preparing much for the debate or going to any type of “debate camp.” We can only assume that he’s been on Wikipedia researching all the topics.

What happens at tonight’s debate is quite stunning. The topics — “America’s direction,” “achieving prosperity” and “securing America” — are all answered in very unconventional ways.

“America’s direction” elicits the same answer from both candidates as they both accidentally respond “forward” at the same time. “Jinx” is promptly shouted, and Clinton had to buy Trump a soda before the debate could continue, but both are happy to get that topic out of the way and do not clarify anything else.

“Achieving prosperity” is debated for a while. Hillary brings up a lot of great points about creating jobs, providing healthcare, making college free, and much more, while Trump just points to his “Make America Great Again” hat. While many criticize the behavior, the audience approval rating meter goes up from 5 percent to 7 percent at that time, a 40 percent spike. After about six minutes of the same pattern between the two candidates, Lester Holt, who has ripped out about one quarter of his hair at that point, moves on.

What’s weird is that the only advertisements airing during the entire debate are ads for the Trump and Clinton campaigns. Spending money on expensive ads during a show where people tune in to watch you speak is probably a bad decision, but then again, what really makes sense anymore?

As Lester Holt begrudgingly goes on to the topic of “securing America,” he implements a rule that the word “wall” cannot be talked about after the first question. Luckily for both candidates, the first question is enough to fuel a back-and-forth between Trump and Clinton for a half an hour.

The discussion also included a best-out-of-15 rock-paper-scissors match, a screaming match while the microphones malfunctioned and a discussion about how great “Hamilton” is, even without Lin-Manuel Miranda.

After the long back-and-forth which breaks all of the debate rules and sends Lester Holt off the edge, there’s still about an hour and 10 minutes left to fill of the two-hour-long debate. Hillary and Donald Trump play Heads Up on an audience member’s phone to pass the time.

Overall, nobody knows what’s going to happen in the presidential debate later tonight. We hope both candidates show the best versions of themselves so people can vote for whoever they choose. They won’t, though. Instead of talking and debating each other like human beings, they’ll do exactly what I said.

I won’t have to watch because I already know exactly what happens, so have fun watching the debate for yourselves.

Josh Feinblatt is a sophomore television, radio, film major. You can follow him on Twitter @josh_is_fein or reach him at jfeinbla@syr.edu.

Published on September 25, 2016 at 10:34 pm