Will Trump Help Kamala Hide Her Incompetence from Voters?
This may be the first presidential election of our lifetimes where neither major party nominee will have faced anyone on a debate stage.
First, a note for readers: I apologize for the delay since my last Substack article. I’ve been dealing with a combination of offline personal matters, still-unresolved reconsideration of how best to get my independent commentary off the ground, and the general malaise that comes with tilting at the windmills of our depraved, demented political climate. I can’t honestly say all of that’s been figured out yet, so unfortunately I’m not ready to commit to returning to a regular schedule at a specific date. In the meantime, here’s a column about one of the latest bits of national political nonsense. Enjoy, and thanks for sticking with me this far.
Given how he won his first debate of 2024 so definitively that the opposing party forced its presumptive nominee to drop out, one might assume Donald Trump would be eager to prove it wasn’t just the good fortune to have a senile opponent making him look good by comparison. Instead, for days he’s been sowing doubt as to whether he’ll debate Kamala Harris at all.
In May, the Trump and Biden campaigns agreed to two debates: the June 27th CNN event, and a September 10th debate on ABC News. Now that Democrats have replaced Joe Biden with Harris, however, Trump has suggested that commitment no longer applies. On July 29th he told Laura Ingraham that while he would “probably” debate Harris, he could “make a case for not doing it” because voters already know where both candidates stand.
On August 2nd, he announced the ABC debate was out, citing the removal of the candidate he had originally agreed to face as well as a “conflict of interest” posed by his defamation suit against ABC for letting host George Stephanopoulos call him a rapist—a lawsuit filed two months before agreeing to debate Biden on the same network, when the conflict apparently didn’t bother him. In its place, he’s challenged Harris to a September 4th debate on Fox. The Harris campaign responded by accusing Trump of “running scared,” challenging him to “show up to the debate he already committed to,” and declaring they would only consider “further debates after” the ABC showdown happened.
On August 7, Trump appeared to have reconsidered. From Politico:
Donald Trump said Wednesday that it’s “important for the country” that he and Vice President Kamala Harris face off at a presidential debate — even though he dropped out of one scheduled for next month.
“The most important thing is we get [to] debate,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends,” adding that Harris “wants to say I don’t want to debate, but I do want to debate.”
The next day, the Trump campaign announced he “has agreed to debates with Fox News on September 4, ABC on September 10, and NBC on September 25. The Trump-Vance campaign has also agreed to a VP debate with CBS.”
So at first glance, it seems this was just another typical Trumpian merry-go-round that amounted to nothing, and debating is back on track...except for one detail. Harris, so far, has only agreed to the ABC debate, without commenting on the proposed Fox one to take place earlier. Is this a roundabout stunt to get Kamala to refuse that one, thereby giving Trump an excuse to back out of the rest and pin the lack of any debates on her? Who knows. As with most things Donald, we’ll just have to see what happens.
Regardless, pro-Trump Republicans have deployed a bevy of excuses for the games their nominee is playing: why he isn’t technically reneging, how his willingness to enter hostile territory such as the National Association of Black Journalists conference proves he’s not scared, why it’s reasonable to reset negotiations with a new opponent, etc. But such squabbling over the theoretical defensibility of Trump’s decision should be utterly irrelevant to anyone who actually wants Trump to win in November.
Harris has three major general-election liabilities: she’s tied to the Biden administration’s record, she’s one of the most leftist politicians in Washington, and opening her mouth tends to remind the world she’s an imbecile. Over the years, she’s developed a reputation for verbal incoherence so staggering as to rival Biden, who at least has the dementia excuse (just don’t suggest he hired her for anything other than her qualifications!).
There’s not much she can do about the first two; moderating a few of her least-popular positions doesn’t erase any of her insane old video clips waiting to be turned into attack ads. But the last one can be somewhat managed by having the teleprompter guide her public speeches and keeping her out of unscripted events—like, say, televised debates.
No amount of biased moderators could save a Kamala working off-the-cuff from making a fool of herself, so Trump—who has observed her weakness on this front himself—should want to make it as difficult as possible for her to back out of any debate anywhere. Instead, he gave her the opportunity to not only avoid displaying her incompetence, but make it look like he was the one avoiding her.
As with so many of the 45th president’s decisions, it’s hard to fathom his reasoning. While Biden’s collapse did most of the heavy lifting, Trump also handled himself genuinely well in the CNN debate (well, mostly). Does he doubt he can muster that much discipline a second time? (Which might be a good call, considering his latest press conference.) Is he worried about being put on the defensive over his musings about Harris’s ethnicity? Was President Magoo the only candidate the man who infamously refused to face any of his Republican primary challengers felt he could take?
The answer is known only to Donald. And maybe he’ll ultimately debate Harris after all. But unless Trump’s ability to control himself really has deteriorated far enough in just the last month that his campaign no longer has confidence in his ability to keep the focus on his opponent’s foolishness—a distinct possibility, albeit one that would require a capacity for self-criticism that Trumpworld has lacked for most of its existence—giving her opportunities to hide the real her would be an unforced error. With the race shifting in Kamala's favor, Team Trump can’t afford many of those.