As recently as a week ago, Donald Trump and his team had made a categorical decision: The Republican would not participate in a Sept. 10 presidential debate to be hosted on ABC. Team Trump had originally agreed to participate in the event, but as of seven days ago, the GOP nominee and his political operation had changed their minds.
In fact, they presented a relatively detailed case explaining their decision to back away from the original commitment, citing Trump’s ongoing litigation against ABC and network anchor George Stephanopoulos, which dovetailed with the former president’s incessant whining — online and in conservative media interviews — about the network.
Trump instead said he would only agree to debate on Fox News — at a time of his choosing, in a location of his choosing, and with the kind of in-venue audience that makes him happy.
After months of “anywhere, anyplace” chest-thumping when President Joe Biden was still running, the Republican posted an item to his social media platform that read, “I’ll see her on September 4th or, I won’t see her at all.”
And then he blinked. The Associated Press reported:
ABC News says that both Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic counterpart, Kamala Harris, have agreed to meet in a debate on Sept. 10. The network’s announcement on Thursday came shortly after Trump told a news conference that he had agreed to three debates with Harris in September on separate networks.
In other words, over the course of a few months, Team Trump agreed to the ABC debate, then backed out of the ABC debate, then caved under pressure and re-agreed to the ABC debate.
In the process, the former president also expressed interest in two other debates — not including a possible event for the vice presidential candidates — though during his news conference he flubbed the dates while pointing to debates that haven’t yet been negotiated and might not occur. As for why, exactly, Trump spent weeks backing away from sharing a stage with Harris, only to have a sudden change of heart, I won’t pretend to have any special insights into the former president’s thinking, but it’s hard not to notice the parallels between the GOP nominee’s thinking this week and Biden’s thinking months ago: The incumbent wanted to shake up the 2024 race, so he agreed to debate his rival. Months later, it’s Trump who suddenly feels the need to shake up the campaign, so he agreed to reverse course on debating his rival. The Republican declared at his Mar-a-Lago news conference, “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all.” His debate strategy suggests otherwise.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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