Trump says he’s ready to debate Biden. Don’t believe him.
For months Donald Trump dodged opportunities to stand alongside his Republican presidential primary opponents and answer a moderator’s questions before a live audience — five debates in five months and five no-shows by the former president.
Even as contenders suspended their campaigns and the field got smaller, Trump still refused to participate. Instead he tried to suck attention from the debates by holding campaign rallies or sitting down for interviews with partisan sycophants.
But Trump is ramping up a claim he’s willing to debate President Biden “any time, any place.”
“For the good of our now failing Nation, and in order to inform the American people of what is going on in our Country, we must immediately have a full scale [sic] debate between Crooked Joe and Honest Don,” Trump recently posted on Truth Social, his flagging social media site.
For anyone confused, “Honest Don” is the new self-bestowed moniker for Trump, who is facing nearly 90 federal felony charges on four indictments in four jurisdictions. He wants a debate to prove on a national stage that Biden allegedly lacks the mental acuity to be reelected president.
Back in December, when he was busy ducking Republican primary debates, Trump said he would “look forward” to debating Biden and proposed doing 10 debates. Now he and his Republican proxies are pushing even harder to get both men together in a public forum as soon as possible.
Speaking about Biden last week to Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “If he really is back, if he’s with it, if he’s energetic, get in a room with Donald Trump and debate. Take questions from people like yourself rather than reading from a teleprompter.”
In a television interview last week, Biden did exactly that with Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post and host of “The Saturday Show” and “The Sunday Show” on MSNBC.
“If there was ever an election in the history of America that deserved a debate between two candidates, it’s this election,” Graham said. One of
Trump’s most ardent lackeys, he said what’s likely to become a GOP mantra — that Trump is willing to debate Biden “any time, anywhere.”
Trump and other Republicans were probably banking on Biden’s recent State of the Union address to be a failure. It wasn’t. Instead, the president received generally good reviews for what had been called “the most important speech” of his political career, albeit one that before he spoke was being scrutinized more on performance than substance.
Republicans needed Biden to flop. He didn’t, so they’re relying on debates to back up what’s been Trump’s major point in recent political ads and at his rallies: that Biden at 81 is too old to serve, but Trump, who turns 78 in June, is not.
On a debate stage, Trump wants to expose what he claims is Biden’s mental weakness. But he’s ignoring how he would also expose himself to the kind of scrutiny that he works very hard to avoid. Without an interviewer tossing him softball questions, Trump would be pressured to answer for his stated authoritarian ambitions should he win a second White House term. He would need to explain his remark about how he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that falls short of meeting its defense spending guidelines.
Trump would have to discuss his recent wining and dining of dictatorial Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary at Mar-a-Lago. Then there’s Orbán’s comment that Trump said he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine by cutting off all US military aid to the sovereign nation fighting for its democracy because Ukraine “cannot stand on its own feet.”
Let’s also not forget the many ways that Trump, when asked about his various legal cases, would run the risk of self-incrimination.
Like the strongmen he admires and imagines himself to be, Trump can talk for hours at his rallies where he doesn’t have to contend with rebuttals or even be coherent. But he has no use for a narrative he cannot control. That’s why he skipped every Republican primary debate. So when Trump claims that he’s ready to debate Biden, don’t believe him. In attempting to show on a debate stage that Biden allegedly lacks the mental fitness to be president, Trump would inevitably prove just how morally and temperamentally unfit he himself remains for the job.