If you asked me to bet my house on whether we would have had a second debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, I would have — at least at the start of this week — pushed my chips in on “yes.”
Trump, an attention hog, could never resist the chance to appear across every network in primetime, I thought.
Well, I have changed my mind. I now believe debate season is — sad sigh — over.
This all came to a head on Wednesday when Fox News proposed a Pennsylvania debate later this month between Harris and Trump — an offer, you might think, that was too good for Trump to refuse.
Especially given that CNN had set a noon Thursday deadline for Trump to accept its proposed October 23 debate, a showdown that Harris agreed to last month.
It made a ton of sense — to me at least — that Trump would turn down CNN, accept Fox and we would all get one more debate.
Nope! Here’s Trump on Truth Social Wednesday night:
Which reminds me a whole lot of this:
Ignore all of Trump’s bluster — Ahead in polls everywhere! Won every debate ever held! — and remember this: Trump is purely a transactional creature. He does, in every instance, what he believes is good for him. Period. Don’t overthink it.
So, Trump simply does not believe another debate is a good thing for him. My guess is that the first debate with Harris on Sept. 10 proved to Trump that he isn’t going to score a clean victory over her in a debate setting — and he might even be judged to lose again. And he doesn’t want that.
Of course, we are talking about Trump here. Could he suddenly change his mind in 48 hours? And would every network scramble to accommodate him and host a debate? Absolutely.
But, I actually think now that we won’t have any more debates. One and done.
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The Morning: No more debates!