If Trump Thinks Harris Is So Dumb, Why Is He Afraid to Debate Her?

Republicans are finally getting over their anger and denial that the Democrats have a presidential nominee whom Democrats prefer rather than the one Republicans prefer to run against. The new line is that Kamala Harris is a paper tiger, reliant on reading speeches from teleprompters.

“Kamala’s teleprompter campaign in 2024 is meant to limit her exposure to keep her from inadvertently bursting the media bubble that’s been created around her,” sneers National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry. Democrats “will take their campaign on the road, Ms. Harris never more than a few feet away from her truly indispensable companion, the teleprompter, and a much safer distance from any enterprising reporter who may ask a difficult question,” predicts Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker.

Interestingly enough, Republicans also believed Barack Obama was unable to speak cogently without the aid of a teleprompter, and jokes relying on this premise were a staple of conservative humor throughout the Obama era.

If Republicans believe Harris can’t defend her positions extemporaneously and would melt down in the face of any unscripted pressure, it would make sense for them to want her to submit to media interviews. But given their belief that the media is in the tank for Democrats, it would make even more sense for them to want Trump to debate her.

After all, we just saw a debate in which Trump destroyed the Democratic nominee onstage. Why don’t they try to make that happen again?

Over the weekend, Trump announced he won’t attend the September 10 debate on ABC. Republicans have run cover for Trump’s retreat, insisting he had technically agreed to debate only Joe Biden and hadn’t committed to debate anybody else. That is not true. Trump might have assumed Biden would be his opponent, but the terms of the debate agreement did not specify this:

Here are the terms of the ABC debate that Donald Trump is pulling back from. While he obviously thought he would be debating Joe Biden when it was set up, the rules didn’t name names. From May: pic.twitter.com/t7HTz9E74Y

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 3, 2024

What’s more, a Trump campaign spokesperson said as recently as four days ago, “President Trump would be happy to debate anytime, anyplace, anywhere.”

But even if none of this were true and Trump had signed a deal that applied to debating only Biden, why would Republicans want him to weasel out of it?

And it is perfectly clear that Trump is not trying to get himself onstage with Harris. His “offer” was to debate her on Fox News, with moderators he selected, in front of a packed “arena.” That is not a serious offer.

Republicans like to pretend Fox News is unbiased, or maybe no more biased than mainstream media, but Trump himself can barely keep up the pretense. Last week, he insisted Fox News should stop giving Harris rallies any airtime (the network shows Trump rallies all the time, as he notes from onstage) and that it stop running ads by his opponents. He’s treating it like a party organ and demanding it abandon even a fig leaf of journalistic legitimacy.

Calling for it to host the sole debate between the candidates is what you do if you’re pretending you want to debate and only want to give your supporters an excuse to believe you.

The strange thing is that conservative pundits are playing along with this transparent ruse. Trump is taunting Harris for being “low IQ.” His chorus of conservative pundits is making softer versions of the same argument without explaining why its man won’t get onstage and back up his talk.