The downside for him personally is that, no matter what he says, he actually does care what mainstream media outlets say about him.
He may engage in a lot of adolescent negging, but it’s clear he pays attention to at least the NY Times, the Washington Post, and likely several other major news sources - it’s also why he’s so fixated on Time Magazine and being “Man” of the Year (despite that not being a thing anymore). And it is also clear it eats him alive when those sources aren’t actively praising him and especially when they show his gaffes or are critical at all.
His core supporters may not care but he personally still can’t figure out how/why all the bluster and teenage boy insults can’t get them to simply like him and he desperately does want that validation, even if he always denies it.
Assuming he has some kind of strategic goal with this debate flies in the face of everything we know about him. He’ll spin everything anyway. The challenge to debate on any terms is simply the only way he could get his chance to show off in a direct confrontation - to demonstrate dominance over another person (whether Biden or the moderators or whoever). Hence the bluster. The pushback and hemming and hawing is the morning after - when the high wears off and he tries to take back his words the night before without looking weak.
My definition of win in – bump in scientific polls. How the campaigns spin it matters not a bit.
By that definition, Trump has a history of consistently losing debates. Can we be certain it will happen again if the June 27 debate comes off? No.
Past experience says Joe will win. But why Biden should only want two debates, and why he would want them far in advance of the election, so that the effect of victory will have rubbed off long before election day, remains a mystery.
Except he skipped out on all the Republican primary debates. That would have been free TV time too, debating people that everyone, even Democrats, knew he was going to mop the floor with in the primaries. He’d have been untouchable in those debates because the other players wouldn’t want to damage their chances of being selected as his running mate.
I think he’ll debate, because there’s real upside for him: the Biden Gaffe Factor™.
It’s a sad fact that Trump can get away with an infinite amount of bullshit, idiotic pronouncements and verbal nonsense, but that a single misstatement from his Dem opponent will be magnified and weaponized in perpetuity.
So Biden has to be perfect. Perfect. And Trump will do everything he can to throw him off-script.
If Biden stammers, or transposes one word for another, or misstates a fact, or even pauses too long, the media (and not just Faux News) will replay that moment over and over again. Is Biden losing it? Is Biden too old? etc.
Biden may still “win” the debate by any conventional measure, but that would be a yooge win for Trump.
Look, I don’t see any reason why you needed to insult me! I will fully cop to the possibility that Trump is going to debate, but I hink it’s rather telling that nobody can really take Trump at face value. We’ve got to jump through these mental hoops to justify why we think he is or isn’t going to debate. With any sane candidate we’d just take their words at face value.
We’ve been watching him come apart for months now. I’ve said it before, but Trump is on a suicide run Thelma & Louise style. He’d got the pedal to the metal and he’s either going to jump that ravine or crash spectacularly.
I agree here as well. Most of the GOP are cowards rather than true believers.
Hmmm…yeah, I guess that is right. I think of Marco Rubio when I think of total cowardly collapse. My wife and I would have voted Hilary Clinton in 2016, but we both thought Rubio represented a standard, proper Republican and we would have have been freaked out if he won.
He spoke out against Trump and he didn’t seem crazy.
I have seen now, though, he is a Trumper. Sad!
I believe he temporarily announced he would not run for re-election back in 2016, then flipped and came on board with Trump, etc.
People like Ted Cruz…I expect this from. Rubio I was hoping would be closer to Liz Cheney* than Trump.
*Her voting record STUNK, but she did try to expose Trump and break Repubs from him.
Not definitively. Let’s face it - anyone with two braincells to rub together has already chosen who they want to win the election. Trump’s only chance at winning the election comes from riling up his base so that they come out to vote. He got more votes in the last election than any candidate before him, and lost because four years of Trump urged sane people to actually vote. If he can get his message out of “Biden’s open borders are going to let them replace you (and they’re not sending their best and their brightest - they’re sending killers and rapists, but some of them are good people)” then he wins the debate. You and I are going to be scratching our heads going “what does that have to do with greenhouse gas emissions?”, but if it works, he wins the debate.
Not enough individual screen time at those crowded debates, and showing up would have signaled that he was taking their campaigns seriously. Skipping those was a pointed snub.
If he skips these (which I agree is probably a coin flip) he’ll try to paint it the same way.
If the bolded part is true (I can’t seem to find the actual rules), that could be a dealbreaker/out for Trump. I didn’t watch the 2020 debates, but it seemed to me from the 2016 debates that maintaining a physical presence in the camera — glooming around behind the speaker, glowering &c — was a major part of his strategy. Giving up on that would be hard for him.
CNN’s not going to cancel the event just because Convict Donald doesn’t show. You think he’s gonna allow Biden to get all those delicious ratings (which he considers to be the single most important metric of success) for himself?
Trump can’t spin his own feelings. If he sees Biden up on that stage talking to CNN for an hour and a half, smiling and getting over with the interviewer and soaking up all those precious ratings that are His by Divine Right, it’s going to kill him inside.
I will fully cop to the possibility that Trump is going to debate, but I hink it’s rather telling that nobody can really take Trump at face value. We’ve got to jump through these mental hoops to justify why we think he is or isn’t going to debate. With any sane candidate we’d just take their words at face value.