Since 1976, every four years, the presidential nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties have met for televised debates. Usually, these debates are highly anticipated and attract impressive ratings. The largest viewing audience for a presidential debate was the first 2016 encounter between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It drew an incredible eighty-four million viewers.
Of course, the problem with most of these debates is that liberal “journalists” masqueraded as impartial moderators. Thus, previous presidential debate moderators have included Lester Holt of NBC News, Gwen Ifill of PBS, Martha Raddatz of ABC News, Anderson Cooper of CNN, and Kristen Welker of NBC News. None of these moderators can be considered fair, objective, or impartial.
Every debate is the same scenario, featuring the GOP presidential candidate battling both his opponent and the moderator. For example, in 2012, moderator Candy Crowley of CNN, shockingly interjected on behalf of President Barack Obama to refute an accurate point that Republican nominee Mitt Romney was making about the Benghazi terrorists. The incident skewed the debate toward Obama.
Four years later, in the Democratic presidential primary debates between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, a CNN political analyst, improperly intervened by giving advance notice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign about some of the questions that would be asked. After the revelations, Brazile was fired by CNN and expressed regret, but the episode shows how the presidential debates are rigged.
Unfortunately, this year’s two presidential debates will follow the same pattern. The Republican Party’s nominee, President Donald Trump, will be debating both President Joe Biden and the moderators.
Last week, Trump and Biden agreed to participate in two presidential debates. The first one will be televised by CNN on June 27 with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash moderating. The second debate will be televised by ABC on September 10 with David Muir and Linsey Davis moderating.
Sadly, none of these moderators are known for their fairness or objectivity. All of them, especially Tapper and Bash, are liberal activists pretending to be journalists. Both networks have been extremely unfair to Republicans, especially President Trump and supporters of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda.
In fact, CNN has spent the last nine years trying to destroy President Trump. Currently, it is giving non-stop coverage to the “Trump Hush Money” trial, like the treatment of the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995.
Not surprisingly, despite the rigged arrangements and the biased moderators, President Trump is eager to debate his opponent. He said, “I am ready and willing to debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September.”
According to President Trump, Biden is “the worst debater” he has ever faced and “the worst president in the history of the United States, by far.” In typical Trump style, he made light of Biden’s limited mobility and cognitive ability, quipping “Let’s see if Joe can make it to the stand-up podium…I will provide my own transportation.”
In a speech to Minnesota Republican Party leaders on Friday, President Trump said that he was going to demand Biden take a “drug test” before the debate. This is in response to Biden’s aggressive State of the Union Address in March that featured him yelling and hyper energetic, in contrast to his usual repertoire of incoherent speeches filled with mumbling and rambling statements.
Unfortunately, Biden will not agree to a drug test or to any additional debates. President Trump had recommended more debates including one on Fox News. Yet, Biden has not been a guest on that network in years and will not risk an appearance before this election. His campaign announced that “The debate about debates is over. No more games.”
The Biden campaign only agreed to the two debates because he is losing to Trump. The latest Real Clear Politics average of polls, including third-party candidates, shows Trump ahead by 2.8 percent.
Due to their concerns about Biden’s mental incompetence and inability to effectively communicate, his team demanded that the debates follow strict rules, such as no live audiences. Their theory is that President Trump derives energy and thrives in front of an audience. One anonymous Biden adviser said, “Trump feeds off the crowd, they give him life. We wanted to take that away.”
Another Biden stipulation involved the exclusion of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. from the debates. In their statement on the debates, the Biden campaign claimed that “The debates should be one-on-one, allowing voters to compare the only two candidates with any statistical chance of prevailing in the Electoral College — and not squandering debate time on candidates with no prospect of becoming President.”
Recent polls have indicated that Kennedy is hurting Biden more than Trump, so excluding him from the debates was a critical element in their strategy.
Kennedy fired back on social media, “They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy…By excluding me from the stage, Presidents Biden and Trump seek to avoid discussion of their eight years of mutual failure including deficits, wars, lockdowns, chronic disease, and inflation.”
Yet, it is Biden, not Trump, who wanted to exclude Kennedy. Trump said that he has “no problem” including Kennedy if he meets the “threshold.” CNN is requiring candidates to have 15% support in at least four major polls and ballot access in enough states to reach 270 electoral votes. Currently, Kennedy is not on enough ballots and his poll numbers are below the 15% mark. Regardless of his debate eligibility, Biden will insist Kenndy be excluded.
Biden’s team also limited the number of television networks eligible to air the debates to those broadcast outlets which had hosted debates in both 2016 and 2020. Finally, the campaign demanded that the microphones of the candidates be muted after their allotted speaking time expires.
Even though Biden got everything he wanted, President Trump is still confident, posting on Truth Social, “Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!”
Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and his award-winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs Saturdays from Noon until 1 p.m. CT nationally on Real America's Voice TV Network & AmericasVoice.News and weekdays from 7-9 a.m. & 6-7 p.m. CT on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com. He is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com
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