Posted on 12/12/2019 5:24:59 PM PST by yesthatjallen
President Trump has been discussing with his campaign advisers whether or not to participate in the general election debates in 2020, two people close to the situation told The New York Times.
According to the sources, Trump doesn't trust the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonprofit organization that puts on the debates. Specifically, Trump is apprehensive of who will be chosen by the organization to moderate the debates, the Times reports.
Trump's campaign reportedly declined to comment on what their plan was for the debates at a state-of-the-race campaign briefing in Arlington, Va.
During the 2016 campaign, the president persistently complained about his debates with former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, claiming that he was put at a disadvantage.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
It’s nothing but a trap unless he can dictate some favorable conditions.
Why subject yourself to that when your record can speak for itself?
Any tactic that removes the media from the equation is smart.
Thanks for responding to my post.
As I was one of the first to comment on this thread, I have had a bit longer to mull things over.
And the more I mull, the more I think this would be superb way for Trump to flip off the RATs. We’ve seen time after time how the Leftist moderators fiddle the questions to favor the RAT candidate.
The process is corrupt and Trump is strong enough to do whatever he wants.
What’s more, every patriot knows the process is corrupt.
Like me, their likely reaction is going to be: “That’s MY president!”
MAGA!
The debates are always run by the aholes in the lib media. That apparently will never change. For some damn reason. Why should he fall into the same trap as countless other conservatives have?! Screw ‘em. We know what his positions are and we know theirs. What’s to debate?
In most elections, the incumbent sets the debate terms. If I’m Trump, I insist on only one debate with no journalists. Two questioners. DNC Chairman Tom Perez asks questions of Trump. RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel asks questions of the Democrat. Alternating questions with time given for rebuttal.
Completely fair.
If not accepted, no debates.
Here is my idea. Each candidate picks one moderator, two total per debate. The candidates each supply one third of the questions to be asked of their opponent and the moderators or sponsor contributes the other third. The candidate questions get asked first in case there is a time crunch. The debates are held on CSPAN, but other networks can carry the feed of they want. No audience. Three debates total. One on the economy, one of security/foreign policy, one on social issues/cultural.
If the democrats don’t agree no debates. He’s the incumbent, they are the challenger, they don’t get to make the rules.
President Trump should offer to appear at three one-on-one debates with no moderators. Each debate will focus on a primary theme, but the candidates will be free to wander if they wish. Topics would likely be 1) the economy/trade, 2) foreign policy/immigration, 3) health care/race relations. Side topics would likely be 1) taxes/climate change, 2) government corruption/drain the swamp, 3) gun control/crime.
Each candidate is given 60 minutes of time to use as they wish. Think of a giant chess clock, where the candidate presses a button when they finish and the clock automatically starts for the opponent. When a person's time is up, they are finished and the other person gets to use their remaining time un-rebutted.
When nobody has any time left, the debate is over.
The first debate would be a free-for-all as the candidates would likely forget about time-management and be all over the place. Disputes might arise, candidates would interrupt and talk over the other, one might just press the button to start the other's clock out of frustration. The bottom line is that the candidates will learn to police themselves during the debate.
The second debate would be better, but probably over-compensated in time management, resulting in sound-bites with no elaboration.
The third debate would be the clincher, where the most savvy candidate would have gotten their act together and figured out how to pull off the total package.
President Trump has already been perfecting this with his helicopter press conferences. He's been willing to meet with an adversarial press frequently and already knows how to think on his feet, as opposed to his predecessors who preferred the controlled optics environment where everything was scripted in advance.
-PJ
One of my cherished memories was the foreign policy debate where Al Haig was captain for the Reagan squad. He sent Paul Nitze in to wipe the floor with Carter’s Soviet expert Paul Warnke. It was wonderful to behold.
Another memory. In the economic issues debate, Arthur Laffer, the captain, went in himself to eviscerate Mitch Rogovin, John Anderson’s economic policy advisor. All poor Mitch could say was, “Liberalism has never been tried. It was mugged.”
This experiment had never been repeated because the two parties feared the uncontrolled and spontaneous nature of the debates, which was something the spin-meisters couldn’t control. It’s a shame. I learned more in those debates than I did the actual joint appearances of the candidates.
At the start of any negotiation: show you’re willing to walk away.
I'd love to see that.
These modern 'debates' are so choreographed as to be pointless. 'President Trump, do you have a rebuttal?' ugh.
Let's have a real debate.
There you go. Rallies that demand equal time with the Dem demolition derby debates.
-PJ
But it shouldn’t go too far. It would get Biden some sympathy votes, because no one enjoys watching an impaired person get beat up. Goes against America’s natural sense of fair play and all.
Just put I out there to drive them nuts
I agree, we wouldn’t want to drum up sympathy for crazy Plugs Biden.
Plugs is truly pathetic and clearly has dementia. But he’s still a blustering bully @sshole, he deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
They are actually really good friends.
Good idea. Why give face time to a bunch of douchebag-liberals? We hired Trump to fix the horrible condition Obama and his party left us in.
Trump, art of the deal. Opening for better negotiations. Leaked to media to go crazy and put pressure on debate committee.
He’ll be there. Trump won’t pass up the big stage.
Any debate should be hosted at Mar a Lago and moderated by OANN.
Mixed feelings.
I think Trump could probably use it to his advantage. I think there’s always a chance to appeal to folks and explain what he believes is doing and such,...
If he doesn’t it becomes a socialist media/politician love-fest totally one sided and the media helping out their socialist pals....
That also might p1ss off a lot of people and get more to Trump just vecause they finally wake up to jow horrible the demtards and the demtard media are...
Dunno.
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