Rachel Maddow just nailed it

| 9:18 pm EDT October 16, 2020
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During last night’s calamitous NBC town hall, Donald Trump claimed that he didn’t know if he’d been tested for coronavirus on the day of the first presidential debate. Palmer Report flagged this as suspicious, and seemingly a confession that Trump hadn’t been tested that day. But Rachel Maddow just put a finer point on it.

During her MSNBC show tonight, Rachel Maddow agreed with us that Trump’s strange answer about whether he got tested means that he’s “basically saying that he didn’t.” That’s bad enough. But Maddow pointed out that this means Trump broke the debate commission rules about getting tested on the day of the debate – and she explained that if Trump can’t be trusted to follow these rules, Joe Biden should consider refusing to do the final debate in person.

Rachel Maddow is absolutely right. Joe Biden doesn’t need the final debate; he’s currently winning by a sizable margin. Based on last night’s town hall TV ratings, Biden is also now a bigger ratings draw than Trump, meaning Biden really doesn’t need to do another joint event with Trump; he can simply do his own events and get plenty of eyeballs. Maddow doesn’t seem to think the odds are great that the final debate will even happen – and she’s right.