News of Biden and Trump debating is the distraction both candidates desperately needed
Joe Biden and Donald Trump are again debating about debates. And for good reasons that have nothing to do with debates.
The current president and the president he defeated in 2020 and will face again in November both need to change the subject from some very bad news for their campaigns this week.
For Biden, the problem was a set of polls Monday from Siena College, The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer that showed him trailing Trump in the key swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
For Trump, the dilemma was in Tuesday's primary elections in Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia, where his former competitor Nikki Haley pulled in significant votes, despite dropping out of the race 10 weeks ago. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, won 31% of the vote Tuesday in Maryland, 18% in Nebraska, and 9.5% in West Virginia.
That's tough news for any campaign to spin. So, let's talk debates!
Biden rejects the planned presidential debates for these two new ones
Biden kicked off the discussion Wednesday with a letter from his campaign manager to the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has coordinated and managed general election debates since 1988.
Biden is ending that 36-year run with a letter announcing that he will not participate in the three debates the commission had tentatively scheduled in September and October. Vice President Kamala Harris will also skip the one debate for her office in September, the letter said.
Instead, Biden's camp said he will push for two debates — one in late June, the other in early September — hosted by broadcast television organizations that held a Republican primary debate in 2016 and a Democratic primary debate in 2020. Harris would participate in a debate in July.
Trump and Biden to debate: Biden gets his wish to debate Trump. But it’s not going to be the win he thinks it is.
Biden also wants to bar third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jill Stein, with the letter describing the president and Trump as "the only two candidates with any statistical chance of prevailing in the Electoral College."
And the letter knocks Trump for his often uncontrollable behavior during two debates with Biden in 2020, saying that any news organization must turn off a candidates microphone until it is his turn to speak.
Biden's camp offered three reasons for all this and two of them recalled 2020. The letter said the debates should benefit American voters, not "raucous or disruptive partisans and donors" in the audience. It also said that the commission "was unable or unwilling to enforce the rules" in 2020, when Trump repeatedly disrupted the debates while Biden was trying to speak.
The third reason is that early voting means some people will have cast ballots before the commission's first proposed debate.
Trump offers up his usual bravado in challenging Biden to more debates
Trump quickly responded with bluster, of course, posting on his social media site Truth Social, "Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced — he can't put two sentences together. Crooked is also the WORST President in the history of the United States, by far."
Trump also said he "would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue." Sounds like someone misses an audience stacked with "raucous or disruptive partisans and donors."
Trump's campaign responded to Biden with a memo Wednesday proposing a debate on CNN on June 27, along with three more face-to-face meetings in July, August and September and a vice presidential debate in September. Then Trump took again to Truth Social to propose an ABC News debate on Sept. 10.
Biden on social media accepted both debate dates.
Trump needs better lies: Trump's followers believe his every lie. But if he was a real alpha-male, he'd lie BIGGER.
Trump has been pushing his "anytime, anywhere, anyplace" call for early debates since March. It has served before as a distraction from his criminal trial in New York, where he is accused of using hush-money to influence the 2016 election, paying an adult film star to keep quiet about an alleged sexual dalliance a decade earlier.
Trump's bluster was likely fueled by Biden's jabs Wednesday about his legal trouble. Biden's letter to the commission said the first debate would be timed for when his trial will wrap up. And Biden posted a 14-second video on the website formerly known as Twitter Wednesday that declared this:
"Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. And since then he hasn't shown up for a debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. So let's pick the dates Donald. I hear you're free on Wednesdays."
That last line is a reference to Trump's criminal trial not being in session on Wednesdays. Zing.
We're officially in a new era of presidential debates
Trump, in his one term and two candidacies, demolished established norms about presidential behavior. Biden defeated him four years ago by promising a return to some sense of normalcy.
The debate about debates shows none of that is coming back anytime soon, even as some political insiders crave a return to the old order of things.
Frank Fahrenkopf, a former Republican National Committee chair who now co-chairs the Commission on Presidential Debates, on Tuesday afternoon sounded certain that Biden and Trump would follow the same debate procedure that has been used in the last nine elections for president.
"I think the fact that we're still alive, after being around from 1988, is that we do a pretty good job of walking down the middle," Fahrenkopf said, stressing the commission's nonpartisan approach in a virtual meeting with the group No Labels.
Fahrenkopf couldn't have known that Biden and Trump would essentially kill off the commission the next day. One more set of guardrails for democracy cast aside along the way.
This is the Biden-Trump show going forward. Their campaigns will have to work through the details.
Only one thing is certain: Debates meant to give voters a sense of which candidate to support will now likely serve more as distractions for whatever bad news looms for the Biden and Trump campaigns.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden and Trump presidential debates are a go. Expect more craziness.
