President Biden and the fascist guy suddenly went today from “no debates” to “two debates, probably,” to be held on CNN on June 27, and on ABC News on September 10, with the two parties’ conventions taking place in between ‘em.
The agreement — still subject to egregious fuckery for all we know — came together ridiculously quickly after Biden announced this morning that he wouldn’t participate in debates organized by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which took over organizing presidential debates after the League of Women Voters got kicked out of the job in 1988 because the George HW Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns both got pissy and wanted more control over the debate formats, moderators, and probably what color M&Ms would be stocked in the green room.
Instead, the Biden campaign asked media organizations to organize the debates, and Trump said on his fake Twitter that he was “Ready and Willing to Debate” Biden, without actually acknowledging Biden actually is president. Biden’s campaign didn’t demand that Trump conform to normal conventions of using capital letters either, which was pretty generous.
The AP, perhaps a bit giddy from all the excitement, was almost florid in its characterization of the 2024 election campaign so far:
The swiftness with which the match-ups came together reflects how each of the two profoundly unpopular candidates thinks he can get the better of his opponent in a head-to-head showdown. The first debate will play out amid a busy and unsettled political calendar, following the expected conclusion of Trump’s hush money trial in New York, foreign trips by Biden to France and Italy, the end of the Supreme Court’s term, and the expected start of two criminal trials for the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
CNN said its debate in June would be held in its Atlanta studios, maybe in Ted Turner’s old rumpus room, and that the event would be held without an audience. Details like who the moderators will be and whether to include emotional support animals — the bitey German Shepherd for Joe, Lindsay Graham for Trump — will be announced later.
Details on the ABC debate, and whether it would include an onstage mental competency assessment by a real doctor, have yet to be announced.
The AP reports that both parties are sick and tired of the commission. Biden’s campaign is still angry the commission didn’t enforce its COVID-testing rules on Trump and his crowd in 2020, when Trump was hospitalized the week following the debate, and furthermore didn’t enforce its rules against candidates talking over each other. And Trump was unhappy that the commission didn’t offer as moderator at least one foreign dictator of his choice, or allow him to lead the audience in chants about locking Hillary Clinton up, even though he was debating Biden.
OK, we were making that up, but not this: On Hugh Hewitt’s internet “radio” show today, Trump said that the choice of moderator didn’t matter to him, but claimed, with zero evidence at all, that “the commission got caught cheating with me. You know that. […] They turned down my sound, remember?”
No, that did not happen.
After accepting the two debate dates, Trump also went on to claim on Truth Social that he had already accepted an invitation to a third, on Fox News, haw haw:
“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on FoxNews. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you, DJT!”
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon replied in a statement that Trump was already “playing games,” and said, “No more chaos, no more debate about debates.”
“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” O’Malley Dillon said in the statement.
That may settle the matter for five minutes, or at least it will provide Trump an excuse to drop out later, the end.
OPEN THREAD.
[AP / Hugh Hewitt / Mediaite / Deadline]
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