Biden and Trump are ready to debate – for now

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Two years ago, former President Donald Trump intimidated the Republican National Committee into passing a resolution declaring zero cooperation with the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. Trump was convinced that the group that had been running events since 1988 was against him. He also wanted the debates to start earlier, well before the early voting window opened. Trump insisted to anyone who would listen that he was far from afraid of sharing the stage with President Joe Biden and that he would welcome anyone who wanted. 20 such meetings.

Well, double-digit dates remain a long shot, but it looks like the former president is getting a lot of what he wanted when facing the current one. On Wednesday morning, Biden and his campaign issued their own terms for two individual debates, and most of them matched Trump’s red line demands perfectly. The Commission on Presidential Debates was set aside, the first session could take place as early as next month and everything would be captured for a national television audience.

Within minutes, Trump responded with a hearty yes, seemingly ending months of “will they or won’t they” speculations that, within political circles, rivaled the Ross and Rachel question. And, not long after, Biden announced that he had accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Trump on June 27. Trump quickly followed. A September debate hosted by ABC News could also be scheduled by the end of the day.

Courtesy seemed like an easy and mutually helpful way to end this sideshow of the ongoing 2024 campaign and a debate over battlefield boundaries. But here it is worth remembering this truth: nothing involving Trump is that easy, and even when an ostensible victory is achieved, the former President can still find a reason to reopen a victory to extract another small point of pride. He’s a reality TV president. If there’s drama left on the sidelines, it’s always a good bet that Trump will risk a score advantage to drag an outlandish piece of theater into the game.

For example, even when accepting Biden’s top terms, Trump still held out hope that there would be a hearing, something Biden’s proposal explicitly excluded. “I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. It is also likely that Trump will raise objections to Biden’s mandate that would mute a candidate’s microphone when it is not their turn – essentially silencing Trump’s constant interjections that, four years ago, resulted in Biden’s exasperation. murmuring dismissively: “Will you shut up, man?” And no one has yet said where, physically, the TBD host would organize these events, regardless of whether mega-donors and radical activists were in the room or not.

Later on Wednesday, Trump’s top advisers appeared unwilling to accept Yes for a response and proposed debates in June, July, August and September. “We believe there should be more than just two opportunities for the American people to hear from candidates,” Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles he wrote in a memo to the Biden campaign.

Then there is the eternal discussion about the exact moderator or moderators. Biden said he wants a network that has held primary debates with both parties that include both nominees. (Networks that comply with this quirk include ABC News, CBS News, CNN and Telemundo.) As Biden campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a memo released Wednesday, anchors “should be selected by the broadcast host among his regulars. personal, in order to avoid a ‘bell ring’ or partisan.” There’s no doubt that Trump would prefer to see Newsmax, OANN or the friendly primetime opinion hosts of Fox News in the mix. Still, working the referees is as much a part of debate preparation as any political discussion. It’s maddening to watch from afar, but there’s always someone at the top of every campaign who thinks it’s a smart use of time to badger the anchors and those roof them with each crumb of evidence that suggests they are unfair referees who are effectively pushing one side or the other.

Thus, as the audience, the antenna and the anchor continue to be points that could make negotiations unfeasible, at least at first glance it seems that Biden and Trump are heading towards a confrontation before the 4th of July. Advisors from both camps, however, are acutely aware of this high-stakes reality: Neither has actively debated since the final meeting of the 2020 campaign. That’s a long gap of 1,374 days between these tasks, which has only become more pronounced. because Democrats did not consider any of Biden’s primary opponents to be legitimate, and Trump refused accepting that any of his Republican rivals were worthy of his attention.

Finally, there are worrying Statistics from the last New York Times/ Sienna College survey of swing states – the set of seven states expected to win – released over the weekend: 30% of voters are dissatisfied with their choice of candidates, 19% of voters said they pay attention to politics only sometimes or none, and 9% of voters say they are unlikely to vote.

So maybe these made-for-TV events aren’t the balm both campaigns think they need. As much as the Biden campaign insists that the in-person format without an audience would be the best to help reprogram the night as more of a source of information than entertainment, the market for persuasion may already be infinitely small. Most Americans might look to these two sessions – and perhaps a third or fourth if Trump reopens the terms, as he liked to do during his time in real estate – as a justification of their choices, rather than any real driver. of electoral action. This could be a night to give anxious Americans permission to follow their hearts, not reboot their brains. If that is the case, and if the voting is right, Trump would be wise to accept the W, agree to both debates without any additional conditions, and refocus on his many, many legal problems.

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