Donald Trump bizarrely announces his own debate
On the one hand, Donald Trump is scared to death of debating Kamala Harris, who is far more smart and savvy than he is. On the other hand, with Trump starting to fall behind in the polls, he can’t afford to be seen as afraid to debate her. So now he’s trying a bizarre middle ground.
Trump has announced that he has “agreed” to debate Kamala Harris on Fox News on September 4th. This is a bit bizarre, as no such debate exists. But it’s clear what Trump is trying to do here.
As things now stand, the real debate is set for September 10th on ABC News. Kamala Harris has already said that she’ll show up whether Trump does or not. So now Trump is trying the stunt o “agreeing” to a fake debate on Fox News days before the real debate, thus allowing Trump to show up on his own and give the appearance that it’s Harris who’s afraid to show up and debate him.
It’s not clear what Harris will do. She could upstage Trump by going ahead and agreeing to debate him on Fox News. Such a debate would obviously be biased in favor of Trump, but Harris would still likely run circles around him. In fact if Harris agrees to do a Fox News debate, Trump might decide to drop out of it.
But Harris doesn’t necessarily have to go that route. She has the momentum and she’s pulling into the lead, which means she has all the leverage. She can continue to simply stick with the real debate on ABC on September 6th, and keep calling out Trump for being afraid to show up for it. Even if Trump shows up for the fake Fox News “debate” and does a town hall that night, no one is really going to see it as Harris being the one who’s afraid to debate.
In any case, this move by Trump reeks of desperation. If he thought he could handle himself in a debate with Kamala Harris, he’d be agreeing to the existing one on ABC News. And if he falls far behind enough in the polls, he may end up concluding that he has no choice but to roll the dice and show up for the real debate. We’ll see. Either way, Kamala holds all the cards.
