The Great Debate Caper

Donald Trump should agree to another debate with Kamala Harris, but he should set reasonable terms that she will never agree to

After last night’s vice presidential candidate debate, Donald Trump is once again saying that he has no interest in another debate with Kamala Harris before the election in November, which, I think, is his second-best option. After the ABC News debate where the moderators were debating Trump while Harris watched, and after the CBS News moderators began to try to do the same thing to Trump’s running-mate, Senator J.D. Vance, last night, no Republican should ever agree to do a debate on a network that is run by Democrats again. It’s that simple. The Democratic Party would never agree to do a debate with a moderator who was openly hostile to their candidate, and that should be the basis of Trump’s reply to another debate request.

The Trump campaign should agree to another debate against Harris, but set the terms that it will not be a debate hosted by corporate media outlets who have all but endorsed Harris or moderated by Democratic operatives who will debate Trump for Harris. He should say that he will agree to another debate that is streamed online and moderated by Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. Some people might say well this is too unfair to Kamala Harris. My first reply to that would be: So what? And, secondly, it’s far more fair than any debate the Trump campaign has done so far in this election.

The Trump campaign should point out for starters that Megyn Kelly has been a very critical questioner of Trump in past interviews and debates, and there’s no reason to think she wouldn’t be now. Secondly, point out that Trump himself has already done two debates where he went onto networks openly hostile to him, CNN and ABC, and dominated President Biden so badly in the first one that Biden had to quit running for re-election and that everybody knew he would do the same to Vice President Harris so they had to have the moderators debate him for her in the second one. Then they sent Senator Vance to another hostile network, CBS, to do the vice presidential debate, where, despite the moderators once again attempting to debate on behalf of the Harris campaign, Vance made Walz look like a cartoon character. Thirdly, I’d point out that if Kamala Harris wants to prove to the American people that she has what it takes to be President of the United States, she should be willing to do a debate with moderators who might ask her a critical question or two, rather than doing interviews with her campaign donors like Oprah Winfrey or “journalists” who openly declare that Harris shouldn’t be expected to answer questions because all that matters is beating Trump.

Then, when Kamala Harris inevitably refuses these terms, just endlessly repeat that Kamala Harris is too afraid to do a debate where the moderators aren’t openly acting as her campaign surrogates. One thing that Trump has been great at in the past is turning his opponents’ narratives against them. Remember that “fake news” originated with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the corporate media to go after Trump before he simply stole it and started using it against them. He could do the same by agreeing to debate Vice President Harris one more time, but this time setting the terms of the debate as more favorable to him and making his talking point that she’s the one who’s afraid to debate him. That’s my free advice to the Trump campaign.