The first sign of trouble came on Sunday. Just a few hours after President Joe Biden announced that he wouldn’t seek a second term, Donald Trump quickly turned his attention to one thing: an upcoming presidential debate, which he suddenly seemed reluctant to attend.
The Republican published an item to his social media platform, noting that the next debate is currently scheduled to air on ABC in early September, and though Trump and his campaign operation had already agreed to participate in the event, the former president declared on Sunday that he instead wanted a debate on Fox News, instead of a network he described as “fake.”
The second sign of trouble came two days later, when the GOP nominee doubled down on his original message, adding that he believes ABC “is not worthy of holding a Debate.”
Later Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “absolutely” prepared to debate the likely Democratic nominee, though he quickly added, “I haven’t agreed to anything. I agreed to debate with Joe Biden.”
The latest sign of trouble came last night. The New York Times reported:
Advisers to former President Donald J. Trump said they would not commit to another debate, one they had already agreed to participate in, now that the Democrats have changed candidates from President Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris.
The written statement from Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, was weird, even by 2024 standards. It said there’s “chaos” in Democratic politics (there’s not). It said Biden is corrupt (he isn’t). It suggested Barack Obama opposes Harris (he doesn’t). It suggested it was necessary to use Obama’s middle name (it’s not). It said the opposing party is called the “Democrat Party” (it’s not). It also said “many” Democrats want to nominate someone other than Harris (they don’t).
But after combing through the nonsense, the bottom line was simple: Team Trump concluded that it would be “inappropriate” to “finalize” the existing debate schedule until after the Democratic National Convention.
It led the Democratic vice president to respond with a simple and derisive message via social media: “What happened to ‘any time, any place’?” It came hours after Harris told reporters that she was prepared to stick to the agreed upon debate schedule, despite the fact that she’s only been a candidate for less than a week, and she didn’t know why her rival was “back-pedaling.”
Harris’ mockery was rooted in fact. Trump spent the better part of a year begging for debates against Biden, and expressed total indifference to the details. The former president summarized his position in three words: “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE.” When Biden proposed a pre-convention debate, Trump was only too pleased to agree.
The Republican’s position is obviously vastly different now.
When we last kicked this around, it seemed as if there were a couple of possible explanations for the antics. One was that Trump was engaged in a mind-numbing “work the refs” exercise, whining incessantly about ABC, in part in the hopes that the network will tilt the debate in his favor and in part to preemptively have an excuse in case Harris fares well in an upcoming standoff.
The other possibility is that Trump and his team are simply afraid of how he’d perform against the incumbent vice president.
All things considered, the latter explanation appears to be the accurate one.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
