Cite?
I will buy “cunning” but not intelligent.
Kos himself weighed in on this issue today:
His reasoning is more or less exactly like my OP with the above-mentioned info about Hannity added. He says there is no upside to Trump debating and thinks that the odds are he won’t do it.
I believe them too in the sense that they are data points that need to be processed with respect to this topic.
My thoughts, hmm…
So it was a “a policy session with Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Eric Schmitt of Missouri.”
I think this could go either way. He could be truly prepping, or he could be pretending that he at least has the intention of debating so that, when he drops out, people can’t say that he never talked about it or demonstrated a sincere intention in the first place (IOW, he is correcting what I was calling him out on a few posts up). Finally, it may be that the GOP has shown concern about a lack of prep, and he’s placating them for now.
Since Trump is constantly playing headgames and fucking around, his intention is unclear. With a normal politician, I would take it as a stronger sign that s/he is going to participate. Hell, with a normal politician, I would never doubt their intention in the first place.
Based on the data point, I would say the chance that Trump will actually debate goes slightly up. Still, I think it’s an 80%+ chance that he doesn’t.
I’m looking forward to his flat-out denial that he ever even agreed to debate. Period. He’ll just deny it. On Camera.
This is Pant-wetting funny! 
The words are both close to synonymous and hard to define. Criminals can be as easily called intelligent as cunning. I withdraw the word intelligent as contributing to thread hijack.
Here’s why it’s cunning for Trump to debate on June 27:
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Some low information swing/uncertain voters treat the first debate the way non-sports fans often treat the Super Bowl – it’s the one game they watch. Those voters will draw a negative conclusion if a candidate does not debate.
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The June CNN debate is only guaranteed to be on CNN, which generally requires a cable subscription. So if Trump does poorly in June, it is possible that only 2/3 of American households will have been able to tune in, but he can still say he debated. (CNN is allowing on-air broadcast networks to give their viewers a free sample of the competitor’s product – whether any will seems presently unknown.)
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June debate performance will be long forgotten by election day. And because it will, almost certainly, be on fewer channels than a normal Commission on Presidential Debates event, viewership will be less than normal.
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If by some chance Trump does well (based on post-debate polling – objective performance is irrelevant) he can debate again, closer to the election, on ABC, a network available to almost all Americans television owners. And if he bombed on June 27, Trump probably can get away with not debating again since he already did.
The live feed on their website doesn’t require a cable TV login. That’s how I’ll be watching.
Re last post, that’s why I said “generally requires.” I do not see low info voters watching on their phone, besides that maybe 10 percent do not have a smart phone — and if they do, they might have cheap service with metered internet. Maybe they have a PC with internet, but maybe not.
I did not realize until today the issue of CNN not being as cheaply accessible as ABC/NBC/CBS. Shame on both Trump and Biden for bypassing the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has their events on all major free on-air networks.
So far I’ve seen nothing to change my mind. Trump thinks he will wipe the floor with Biden. 100% he will be at the debate.
Within the past week alone, Convict Donald has told his audiences that he doesn’t care about them, doesn’t need their votes, that he gave America record inflation, told a roomful of billionaire CEOs he isn’t going to tax their tips, gone on a bewildering monologue about sharks, insulted the capital city of a state he NEEDS to win, and claimed that Nancy Pelosi’s kids want him to fuck their mom.
If there’s any little voice of wisdom left in his head telling him not to debate, it’s been drowned out by all the other nonsense rattling around in his increasingly disconnected from reality mind.
And maybe he’ll lose the election on purpose, too? 
I’m not sure. Or: I’m not sure Trump is sure.
Imagine the easy takeaway from the debate is, hey, of all the stuff said during the evening, here are two or three ‘wow, how inappropriate’ clips of Trump — and here are two or three ‘wow, that elderly guy seems confused’ clips of Biden.
And imagine that those snippets then get replayed over and over and over in the weeks and months after the debate — possibly because it’d make this more of a media-friendly horse race. What follows?
I guess what I’m asking is: does Trump figure his best hope for winning in November involves Biden making a spectacularly bad misstep along the way? And: does Trump figure his best hope for that happening involves — well, just being there and saying stuff at him? Sure, play some greatest hits, and draw some rehearsed responses — but then level an unsupported accusation at the guy, and make it a brand-new one. Maybe toss in a profane taunt about Biden’s kid — no, not that one; the other one. Something. Anything. Just so long as it breaks the rhythm while calling for an off-the-cuff reply that a guy could memorably fumble.
Could that be the plan?
I heard that he insulted Milwaukee. Did he diss Madison, too?
Except that this kind of debate prep is exactly the kind of repetitive intellectual work that we know Donnie hates with a passion. Hours of going over the same talking point,s being told, “No, don’t say it like that, say it like this!”?
Remember, this is the guy who couldn’t sit through a proper meeting dealing with summaries of US intelligence reports. They had to dumb it down to bullet points and pictures, and throw in random references to Trump himself to keep him engaged.
Trump probably has something saved up that he wants to say that he thinks will devastate Biden. Probably something to do with Hunter. Something mean and nasty and crude. Trump will deploy this during the debate expecting Biden to just crumble when he hears it. Since Biden has probably been called worse things by better people, he’ll shrug and ignore the insult which will compel Trump to repeat it over and over.
I’m not so sure. Trump has been, dare I say, surprisingly gracious regarding the verdict.
“The jerk store called…”
Convict Donald was expecting Biden to be ashamed of his son and publicly disavow him, because it’s what he’d do, or else immediately pardon him while making a mockery of the judicial system. Biden instead saying that he respects the decision of the court and still loves his son is alien to him.
Biden did sau he reserves the right to commute the sentence- which if the sentence is all out of proportion to what any other person would get- it legit.
No he didn’t.