You’re not thinking like Trump. In his mind, if Biden does even sorta good in the debate, it means Biden cheated - he was on PEDs and they gave him the questions ahead of time and he was wearing an earpiece and the moderator was a Democrat and the TV networks were complicit and the media is ignoring all the proof to make him look bad.
Convict Donald is constitutionally incapable of believing he could legitimately lose a debate.
It might be, in part at least, because Trump has a history of saying he’s going to do something and then not doing it. Little things like presenting us with his plan to replace Obamacare with something better within the next two weeks, when he said he’d testify at the E. Jean Carroll trial, or when he said he’d testify in the hush money criminal trial. Oh, yeah, Trump wouldn’t even debate the other Republicans who threw their hat in the ring for the party’s nomination. If he’s too chicken to debate members of his own party why would we think he’d debate a Democrat in a forum he has little to no control over?
Trump has already laid the foundation to give himself an honorable way to refuse to debate. He’ll complain the gag order prevents him from fully participate in the debate without risks of going to jail, he’ll complain that Biden didn’t submit a drug test, or he might come up with something equally stupid.
Granted, maybe Trump will show up to the debate. The troglodtye MAGAts are going to continue to support him no matter what and he knows it.
In my eyes and to most on left, of course Trump was trounced in the previous debates and got exposed as the fool that he is. Trump and his followers, however, think he killed it, and in any future debates both sides will have the exact same reaction.
Just like the recent 34 guilty verdicts - the left see it as the final nail in the coffin for this buffoon’s political career, To Trump and his supporters it (somehow, don’t ask me how) is just further proof why he’s needed.
You can do it so well that it’s scary! Donald, is that you? 
The moderators on June 27 will be Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, both of CNN, and the debate will be on CNN, so that will automatically make MAGAts look askance at what’s going on. I’m sure that I’ll see “Whaddaya expect, it’s CNN, they’ll never give him a fair chance!” and “They’re tossing softballs at drugged-up Biden, while sober Trump is being threatened with a steamroller!” on a right-wing/MAGA message board the next day, if not that night.
A friend has a few degrees in the psychology field, and while he makes clear that he cannot diagnose from a distance, especially not without meeting with Trump, he says that there is something seriously wrong with Trump’s thinking process. He’s stated as much as you have in your remark, on more than a few occasions. If both you and he think so, you’re in good company.
I’m not Trump. That’s fake news. But if I were Trump, I’d be the most tremendous Trump anyone has ever seen. Just the other day I got a call from a very respected person who said “Sir, I never thought there would be a Trump who’s done as much for our Country as you have”.
Well, once again, I’m going to disagree with one of our respected fellow posters. You are correct that Trump is so indifferent to the truth that he lies practically every time he opens his mouth. And it’s true that he failed to show up to the early Republican candidate debates.
But those things aren’t really relevant here. Saying he would testify and then not doing it is just his typical lies and bluster. Trump didn’t show up to the early candidate debates because the polls were telling him that none of them had a ghost of a chance, so in his enormously inflated narcissistic brain it would have been like a great king descending from his palace to debate the value of the monarchy with a street-corner apple vendor. He just enjoyed glorying in his popularity with the MAGAts while the riff-raff pointlessly fought it out with each other.
But this is different. Biden is an actual opponent and has an actual chance of winning, in which case Trump will end up in jail, not because of Biden but because of his inability to quash all his pending cases. Trump has to win the election. Therefore he has to debate, and of course his ego and his sycophants are all telling him that he’ll win it because he’s the world’s greatest debater.
IMO, Convict Donald sincerely did intend to testify in his criminal trial, because, as I’ve said, he’s utterly oblivious to the fact that people can tell when he’s lying. What probably happened was that one of his lawyers sat him down and told him “If you testify, you’re going to be cross-examined, and they’ll ask you if you had sex with Stormy, and you’ll say no, and then they’ll get you for perjury because the very conflicted judge and crooked Biden prosecutors will say you did even though you didn’t”, and they were thus able to convince him it was a bad idea.
Fake news! Fake news! We have Trump in out midst! But where’s the “tears in their eyes” part? I guess you’re not Trump. Not fake news, stand down, everybody.
Naw, seriously, @Smapti , I know you’re not Trump. I’m just waiting for a MAGAt to say, “He’s the Trumpiest Trump that ever Trumped.” Which means nothing, unless you’re playing contract bridge.
Well, I can’t see his eyes over the phone. I’m not Superman. Or am I?
No, it’s from her column dated June 4, 2024, so this past Tuesday.
Point of order; Ms. Post died in 1960, so either this is a rerun or someone is ghostwriting for her.
It’s definitely not a rerun. Can it be called ghostwriting if the original author is herself now a ghost? 
Post launched the Emily Post Institute in 1946 so that subsequent generations of her family could continue her work. It’s currently run by the fifth generation of Posts. Both the books and the column continue to use “Emily Post” in the title and byline.
Or maybe Miss Manners would be more to your liking. She tackled the issue of the correct form of address for a former president 21 years ago when a reader wrote that her son had met Jimmy Carter and was not sure of the correct title to use when addressing him(bolding mine):
What Miss Manners can give you is the correct information. But it comes with a warning that most people not only don’t know or believe it, but turn indignant with the notion that it is disrespectful.
This is because we suffer from title inflation. Our Founding Fathers, including the ones to whom this question applied, established American protocol to be simple and unpretentious – and thus antithetical to the modern taste.
Nevertheless, the rule is that titles pertaining to an office that only one person occupies at a time are not used after retirement.
That statement is probably true of most organizations, societies, and states over time.
If Trump qas posting here, he wouldn’t be making sense. Also he would Have to let everyone know it was him.
Some May Ask President Trump Is.
This seems most likely.
This. I wager fifty quatloos.
Seriously, what’s the downside for Trump? That a horde of mythical independent voters goes, “oh gosh, this whole time I’ve thought Trump was strong on the issues but this debate has shown me otherwise”?
He’ll do his normal thing and his base will eat it up.
“But that won’t help him with anyvody but his base!”
Yeah, no shit. The Trump campaign - like the Trump legal defense team - is concerned with making Trump happy and keeping donations flowing in. An effective strategy that doesn’t do those things simply isn’t on the table.
Yeah, even though I wouldn’t be surprised if he ducks out and just doesn’t feel like debating, I don’t see any reason for him not to debate. Biden is never going to “win” the debate. No matter how well Biden does factually, or presidentiallly, it’ll be spun as too close to call or some shit like that, and the people who love bullies and to rant and rave and break the system will still see Trump as America’s only hope. From my perspective, he got trounced in the Hillary debates but, well, much of the rest of America didn’t see it that way, so I hold no hope that the rest of America will see it my way this time, either.
This is correct. And he will do anything, fair or foul, in order to win.
But this isn’t correct, since the debate won’t help him, and he knows it, and those around him certainly know it.
I think that’s the key point of disagreement here. It’s fully plausible, based on Trump’s past behavior, that he thinks he’s invincible in all things. I actually think Trump is cagier than people think about what helps him and what hurts him. Further, it’s also plausible that the people around him are fluffing his ego and his mushroom (lol), but I think his team will discourage him from debating. Let’s deal with both points.
While the number of MAGAs who perceive the degree of his cognitive decline is close to zero, there are still a lot of people on our side who don’t get it either. Trump is coming apart. It’s not just that he will be “beaten” in a debate with Biden; his dementia will be on full display, since he will not be able to control the situation.
Similarly, I don’t think Trump ever intended to testify. He and his lawyers knew that, from a legal perspective, it could only hurt him, but also Trump intuited that he would just look bad. Again, it was a set of circumstances that he couldn’t control.
Consider also why Trump didn’t debate his fellow fascists in the primary race. It’s a political truism that debating helps trailing candidates more. Trump was way ahead in the polls against those clowns, so there was no upside to debating. It was beneath him. Also, the fact that he didn’t debate defeats rather handily, I think, the notion we’ve seen in this thread that Trump grabs all the free airtime he can get.
The same thing applies in a debate with Biden. Trump is not behind in the polls (which I think are bullshit, but it’s not crazy for Trump to think he’s neck and neck with his opponent). So in terms of upside for Trump, at best it’s a wash. But the GOP narrative about Biden is that he’s a doddering old man who can barely put a sentence together. So it’s not just about “winning” the debate; Trump absolutely has to appear in better cognitive shape than Biden. Trump intuits and his advisors know that that’s a tall order. Even in the case that neither candidate shows signs of poor cognitive health, that harms the GOP myth of Biden’s infirmity, which is definitely one of their most important weapons against them. But in the case of Trump doing poorly while Biden does well, it’s a disaster for Trump. The risk-reward calculation is not in any way in Trump’s favor.
As for the second point about sycophants, I think there’s another misunderstanding here. While there are morons like MTG who are genuine true believers in Trump, most of the GOP polls support him out of a self-interested desire to stay and (in the GOP sense) succeed in politics. His campaign advisors want him to win, first and foremost. Sure, they can’t oppose Trump and his idiotic whims too much, but they are going to be working on a more or less rational basis. Do you think they think that debating Biden would be good for Trump? I sure don’t.
I guess that’s another thing to nail down: Do most of us here agree that debate would be good for Biden and bad for Trump? That’s my impression.
In a rational world, yes. In this world, I can’t say one way or another. A wash.
The level of sheer nonsense and stuff that flies in the face of everything everyone else saw that comes out of his mouth, and the way his supporters eat that up is the real problem. You could have every major newspaper and news outlet (save Fox) judge Biden to win, and say that Trump ought to be in a home, and he’ll still spin it as a win and that the rest is “fake news” and biased against him, and everyone on that side will take that as God’s own truth, and run with it.
It’s that set of competing and parallel truth structures that is the problem, both with the debates, and between the parties these days.
I see no reason he won’t debate; there’s no downside. Even if he gets slaughtered, they’ll spin it as a win, and that side will eat it up, because their truth structure says so, and everything the other, conventional one says is false.