Quick Take: No, Donald Trump should NOT debate Biden
After running an effective nomination campaign without debates, why is Trump suddenly eager to share a stage with Biden?
I get gamesmanship - calling out your opponent to a fight “…‘cause you ain’t askeert.” Which implies your opponent is - unless he calls your bluff. At least I hope Trump’s bluffing.
Donald Trump is saying he wants as many as ten debates with Joe Biden. I think even one would be a mistake. Possibly a disaster.
Why?
We’ve seen why. Look at the recent State of the Union address or the Newsom v DeSantis debate, which incidentally was moderated by Sean Hannity of all people. In both cases, the Democrat simply lied a non-stop blue streak. And the mainstream media said the Democrat was amazing - in both cases! Never mind that Newsom’s wife pulled the plug on extended debate - MSDNC had declared Newsom the champ! Or that Biden’s poll numbers haven’t moved - he was a-mazing!
Joe Biden claimed, among many other such whoppers, to have defeated Covid without any help from his “predecessor”. That he’d inherited a “disaster” and only (only) his immediate, emergency interventions “saved” millions of lives (never mind that more people died of/with Covid under Biden’s first two years in office than under Trump’s four years - when many of the most vulnerable, at-risk victims (“weak sisters”) would have died. Or that Operation Warp Speed was Trump’s accelerated plan to deliver a vaccine in record time. Seriously, by the time Joe Biden was inaugurated, the “lockdown” (15 days to flatten the curve!) was nine months in the rearview mirror!
On the issue of the border, you’d never know that Biden enacted over 90 executive orders in his first month in office, dismantling every Trump era border policy, which had effectively closed the border to a manageable trickle. No, the border crisis today is apparently just like the weather - like a hurricane of migrants that just happened for no reason - and for which Biden needs the Congress to give him more money.
Biden is still claiming to have “cut the deficit more than a trillion dollars” in his first year in office - which is absurd, considering he increased the deficit by just shy of two trillion dollars in his first year in office - which led to hyperinflation which we hadn’t seen the likes of in over a half century.
Or that he’s “created 15 million new jobs” - a simple picture destroys this:
Not only aren’t there any “new jobs”, under Biden we still aren’t at the employment level we were at before Covid!
And on and on it went throughout the night - one lie after another shouted out at the American people by an elderly man hopped up on amphetamines.
Gavin Newson’s performance was no different. In response to one gloomy fact about life in California after the other, Newsom simply claimed the opposite is true. People in California aren’t leaving because of high prices, high crime, high taxes and onerous regulation - in fact, they aren’t leaving at all!
How does one debate this? The answer is: you don’t. A debate would only provide a platform for Joe Biden to lie even more. And don’t be fooled into thinking you’ll catch him looking like a tired, confused old man - they have drugs for that now, and Biden will be prepared.
Another reason: in the modern political era, debates are usually moderated by anti-Trump left-wing extremists who consider a debate the opportunity to “get Trump” and little more. As we’ve seen in previous Trump presidential debates, the moderator will call everything Trump says “untrue” - while lobbing softballs to Biden. Even the questions themselves will be little more than accusations against Trump: “You said recently….how do you justify that?”
At best, Trump could only hope for an unbiased debate format with a moderator intending to ask both candidates “tough” questions. In which case, Biden will simply lie the whole way through and Trump will look like an unhinged ogre in response.
And this is the central problem with Trump and debates - they’re not campaign rallies where he delivers a monologue. There are two other parties on the stage, and millions of people watching who don’t like him or are unsure. So instead of these being an opportunity to connect with undecided voters, Trump turns it into a cage match slug fest. That turns many voters off.
Unless Trump decides he’s going to play it “presidential” - not likely - it’s going to be ugly and at best, nobody wins. That’s the best he can hope for - that he doesn’t lose voters to Biden. At worst, Trump provides Biden the opportunity to look like a successful, moderate president.
Trump has managed to claw out a lead in the polls. And currently it looks like his lead is growing. Why put that at risk?
President Trump should stick with what’s worked so far.
agreed! I saw him talk about primary debates with Howard Kurtz on Saturday, but I must have missed the obvious question about whether he'd debate Biden. It is best that Biden defeat himself and avoid giving the media tools to help him.