Donald Trump Opens the Door to Dodging a Debate With Hillary Clinton

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:08 pm

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muchThe nation’s drama king who is also running for president on the Republican ticket left a lot of wiggle room to get out of debates when responding to a reporter’s questions.

Donald Trump said he “expects” to do them all, “well, as of this moment” and barring a “natural disaster”.

The hard-working Sopan Deb reported:

That’s a lot of qualifiers for someone who is actually going to show up, and then he used his attendance during the primaries as proof, only to realize when he said it that he had indeed skipped a primary debate.

So the “obligation” to do the debates was really not so much an obligation, because Trump skipped one of them due to yet another dispute he worked hard to maintain.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s poor performance would qualify as a “natural disaster” in his mind, but he lucked out with Fox News’ Chris Wallace as the moderator for the third debate.

Asked how he would deal with “a campaign fraught with falsehoods and unfounded accusations”, Wallace said that he doesn’t think calling out lies is his job as a moderator.

“That’s not my job,” Wallace said according to Huffington Post. “I do not believe that it’s my job to be a truth squad. It’s up to the other person to catch them on that. I certainly am going to try to maintain some semblance of equal time if one of them is filibustering, I’m going to try to break in respectfully and give the other person a chance to talk.”

The third debate will be the final word much of the public hears from Trump and it will be a fantastic opportunity for Trump to wax on with no regard for facts or reality. Wallace will leave it up to Clinton to deal with Trump’s many falsehoods, which means Clinton will have to decide if she wants to talk about her own many actual policies or spend her time babysitting Donald Trump. Fun.

It’s perhaps lucky for Trump that Fox is ludicrously being treated as an outlet that isn’t a PR arm of the Republican party, especially as the last debate will stick in the public’s mind. Trump will be Fox-washed with complacency for the truth. There is no better scenario for Trump and the Republican Party, nor a worse scenario for the country.

If Trump does poorly at the first debate, a natural disaster could keep him from the second. But he’ll be there for the third. Expect high drama, poutfests and raging accusations of media bias to game the ref first, though.

If Trump doesn’t fall on his face — literally, the media will probably report that Trump held his own or even beat Clinton. Because a know-nothing, racist divider is equal to the most qualified candidate in recent history according the media.

So happy Labor Day, America. What are you going to do about this assault on democracy?

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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