Why Trump Eagerly Accepted Unfair Debate Rules

Any experienced negotiator knows that, if his opening offer is immediately accepted, he has given away too much. Consequently, it must have rattled President Biden’s handlers when former President Trump instantly agreed to their debate proposal, despite its extravagant demands concerning format and rules. The Biden team very likely expected Trump to balk at some of those preconditions, which would have enabled them to portray his frequently repeated offer to debate “anytime, anywhere” as an empty bluff. Instead, he gleefully exclaimed, “Let’s get ready to rumble.” Moreover, he proposed additional encounters beyond those offered by the Biden campaign.

Tellingly, Biden’s people have declined to allow their candidate to face Trump in any other venue or on any other date than they initially proposed — CNN on June 27 and ABC on September 10. Trump has accepted two other debates, including one jointly hosted by NBC News and Telemundo. Considering Biden’s sagging support among Latino voters, his team should leap at the chance to communicate with this crucial voter bloc. Yet Biden’s campaign chair characterized Trump’s interest in this debate as a dirty trick: “No more games. No more chaos. No more debate about debates.” This suggests that the Biden campaign believes it has more to lose than to gain from participating in further debates. (READ MORE from David Catron: NY Judge May Get Trump Elected)

And they are probably right. This is why Trump isn’t worried about debate rules other than the one requiring his opponent to show up. It will not have been lost on the former president that Biden’s debate challenge was issued in a 14-second video riddled with jump cuts. That such a short video required so much editing doesn’t bode well for Biden’s ability to remain coherent for two hours on live television. Another reason the Biden campaign refuses to consider additional debates may well be that they are in denial about how badly they are really doing in the polls. The Wall Street Journal’s Edward Lawrence asked Democratic pollster and former Clinton advisor Doug Schoen about it and his answer was unambiguous:

I think they are absolutely in denial. I talk to Democrats all the time and they are aghast that the Biden campaign hasn’t reached out, hasn’t changed strategy, hasn’t done anything about inflation, the border, and is involved in conflicts overseas that seemingly will not be resolved any time soon.… Unless Biden talks about inflation and understanding people’s concern, his willingness to do something about it, cut spending, reduce the size of government, and reduce as much as possible the numbers at the southern border — unless he does those things, I think he’s likely to lose the election narrowly as the polls are now suggesting.

So, when June 27 arrives, Trump will face a candidate whose verbal delivery ranges from unintelligible maundering to the belligerent “get off my lawn” shouting that characterized his SOTU address. The CNN “moderators” will try to protect him, of course, but they can’t stop him from making delusional comments about the “booming economy” or saying something so crazy about foreign policy that it scares the bejabbers out of the millions who are expected to be watching. And, the claims of the corporate media notwithstanding, the absence of a live audience will probably work in Trump’s favor as will a mute button on his microphone. These impediments will make it easy to look presidential as Biden slowly implodes.

Even if Biden can remain upright and relatively coherent, he has nothing to sell but failure. The voters are deeply dissatisfied with Bidenomics. According to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, “In all, 85% of poll participants said inflation is an important issue, making it the second-highest priority among adults surveyed. The top priority, the economy, also relates to individuals’ perceptions of price increases.” And which presidential candidate do Americans believe will banish these perceptions? “On each of those issues, the economy and inflation, adults surveyed by ABC News/Ipsos said they trusted Trump over Biden by a margin of 14 percentage points.” Why? As Kevin D. Williamson writes in the New York Post:

The usual story that inflation-wary politicians tell to voters is that things are better than they seem because “core” inflation is lower than overall inflation — “You’re in great shape, as long as you don’t have to drive or eat or consume anything that moves on a truck!” — but for Biden the story is reversed: Overall inflation has been partly eased by relatively large declines in food and fuel prices, but inflation for most things people buy is worse than it is at the grocery store or gas station … There isn’t going to be some last-minute economic miracle to save Joe Biden’s presidency. That poor bastard is going to have to run on his record.

All of which means that Americans aren’t going to cast their votes based on the respective performances of Trump and Biden in presidential debates hosted by television networks they regard with a jaundiced eye. Both of these men have held the highest office in the land, and both have well-documented records of success or failure. In the end, the voters are going to do what most Americans have always done in difficult economic times — they will vote their pocketbook. They don’t particularly like Trump or Biden, but they remember what life was like when the former lived in the White House and they are reminded every day what life has been like since the latter finally managed to shinny to the top of the greasy poll. (READ MORE: Are Trump’s Polls Understating His Lead?)

This brings us back to the hypothetical negotiator discussed in the first paragraph above. The Biden campaign deliberately included unreasonable preconditions in their initial debate proposal hoping that Trump would balk at something. They no doubt assumed there would be a protracted period of haggling over the format and rules which could be exploited to create bad press for Trump and perhaps provide an excuse not to debate him at all. But they still don’t get the Bad Orange Man. He just wants to get Biden on stage so tens of millions of voters can get an unfiltered look at the man who currently poses as our President. It’s a pretty good bet that Trump signed the deal without going through the trouble of reading it.

The post Why Trump Eagerly Accepted Unfair Debate Rules appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.