Donald Trump is strongly hinting he’ll bail on the Kamala debate. We’ve seen him play this game before. Here’s what he’s up to.

| 2:18 pm EDT August 26, 2024
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Donald Trump is now dropping strong hints that he might drop out of the scheduled September 10th debate with Kamala Harris on ABC News. This has led to a number of “he’s chickening out” tweets going viral. But these tweets seem to forget Trump’s consistent history.

For the nearly a decade that Trump has been running for office, he’s always strongly hinted that he might bail on any given debate. It’s his strategy. He uses the implied threat of not showing up as a point of leverage, to try to get concessions on things like moderators or format. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But he always acts like he’s not going to show up.

What Trump is doing right now no different. He’s now 4.1 points behind in the national polling averages, and that gap keeps getting uglier for him, and he knows he has to debate Kamala in the hope it somehow goes well for him. He’s just trying to tilt the debate format a bit in his favor.

If Trump does fail to participate in the debate, at a time when he keeps falling further behind, he’d simply be surrendering the election. So if he doesn’t show, you can take it as a sign that he’s given up entirely. But until then, let’s presume this is just Trump’s usual game of acting like he’s not going to show in the hope of getting something out of it. Let’s not fall for his game. He can show up or not show up, but we’re not giving him an inch.