[PJM] Last week, after months of uncertainty and conjecture, the Biden campaign finally broke its silence on the issue of participating in presidential debates. However, rather than going through the Presidential Debates Commission, Biden's team proposed direct negotiations with the Trump campaign for two debates: one slated for June and another for September, under terms that were transparently designed to benefit Joe Biden.
The funniest thing about the debate challenge was that Biden tried to flip the script by accusing Trump of ducking debates and acting all macho about it.
"Now he is acting like he wants to debate me again,” Biden said. "Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice. So let’s pick the dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.”
Despite the challenge, I was skeptical. Think about it: Why would the Biden campaign, after months of indecision, now push for debates and act like it was their idea in the first place? Biden’s public appearances have been disastrous. Even with a teleprompter, he struggles to deliver a speech without embarrassing himself. When he strays from the script, it’s a spectacle of blunders. His video challenge to Trump was a debacle as well, requiring a jump cut roughly every two seconds for a video that was just 13 seconds long.
It's certainly possible it was a bluff because the conditions the Biden campaign proposed were ridiculously absurd. Unfortunately for the Biden campaign, Trump called their bluff and agreed to the debates.
My skepticism appears to have been well founded because, according to Cindy Adams of the New York Post, Joe Biden is already trying to avoid debating Trump.
"I’m filled with messages about a maybe floppola failure," she writes. "Mouths kvetch that the debate won’t debate."
If the Biden campaign is truly having second, third, and fourth thoughts about the agreed-upon rules, which his campaign proposed, that tells me the debate challenge was a bluff they never expected Trump to agree to, and now they're fishing for reasons Biden can back out and potentially save face.
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