This is starting to form a discernable pattern. Let’s connect the dots. First, Trump challenged Kamala Harris to a *debate* on Fox News, meaning a MAGA rally, where he could openly attack her and cheering cultists would back him up. That was scheduled for September 4. Harris said she had no intention doing a debate on September 4. She planned to show up for the regularly scheduled debate on September 10. Trump hemmed and hawed and then he decided that he would go along with it. Now he’s sending clear signals that he won’t go through with it. Here’s the play as I see it: Trump will go on Fox News for a town hall on September 4 and he will complain that Kamala is too chicken to debate him. Then he’ll blow off the September 10 debate. The problem with that is, he’s going to look like the chicken.
You see all the signs of Trump withdrawing. Kamala’s got a “best friend” that “heads up ABC.” “Why would I do the debate on that network?” He hasn’t come out and used the word “rigged” but that’s what he means here. Now, the only problem with this is the same problem as Trump had before. We get it that he doesn’t want to debate Kamala. But his disciples expect him to and they expect him to wipe the floor with her.
He knows he can’t. So far he’s been unable to land even a single blow on her with respect to defining her as a “commie” or “cackling” or belittling anything that she does. He just sounds like he’s making stupid cracks because nothing is sticking. He was only able to define Hillary as “crooked” because Hillary had been pursued by right-wingers for over two decades spreading lies about her. So everything stuck to Hillary. Kamala is more Teflon-esque than Trump at his best right now, nothing is sticking to her.
The last thing Trump can handle is a mano a mano combat with Kamala. She’s smarter than he is and she’s a prosecutor. So the bottom line now becomes, will he back out? He wants to. That’s totally evident. Whether he can get out of the debate without looking totally cowardly doing it is the question. That’s why he’s telling the cult now that he’s being set up by ABC to fail.
Don’t waste your time with MAGA. They won’t get it. I also voted for him and regret doing it.
— floridian🐊🐊🐊 (@florida305voter) August 26, 2024
I wonder how many folks like these there are out there, that voted for Trump and now regret it. We do hear from them from time to time. The bad part is that they usually end up crawling back.
This is rock and a hard place time for Trump. He needs to show up and take on Harris for the cult to be happy. And if he does not debate, then you can be sure that the Harris/Walz campaign will make note of that and blast it all around in attack ads. And you can be double sure that Tim Walz will talk about it at the vice presidential debate on October 1.
My personal opinion is that if Trump doesn’t debate he can kiss the election goodbye. He has to be willing to make some effort and if he sits out the debate, then I think that’s him ringing down the curtain on his own show. He won’t be able to make it stick, even with MAGA, that he could only debate Kamala on Fox News or nowhere else. Even to MAGA that’s going to sound ridiculous. To the rest of normal America it’s going to show Trump up for the totally inadequate sham that he is.
He has to debate. He doesn’t want to but if he doesn’t debate, that’s it. Show over.
Personally I think President Biden had to face a kinda similar dilemma with his debate with Trump. Biden had just spent an extended trip in Europe and he became sick. But if he had cancelled the debate the blowback would have possibly ended his campaign. So he made the fatal decision to debate when he was suffering both jet lag and sickness. It was a terrible position to be in with a bully like Trump who can’t be gracious and thoughtful regarding anything or anybody! The rest is history.
Trump is so dull and blunt now he cannot even do his usual slither under the front door, to escape what he knows is now confronting him. He’s now stuck in a self-inflicted ‘dammed if I do, dammed if I don’t.’ vice, that’s getting tighter and tighter, as many context specific and critical dates bedevil his future, as he careens towards the mirage of his free horizon.
I’m quite happy to settle for ‘damned if I do.’, just for the extra humiliation he gets.
Which is why he’ll chicken out.
Trump will probably make the excuse that she was ‘too afraid to debate with him on the 4th so there’s no point in further humiliating her on the 10th’.
Mow, there is NO way that he would humiliate her – but he is scrabbling for an excuse
I’ve maintained all along he wouldn’t show. Bullies are cowards at heart. They only ACT tough, and usually against weaker or more helpless victims. That, or they have their big brothers standing behind them. Trump has NEVER fought his own fight and NEVER will. Kamala is the real deal. She’s faced down and prosecuted REAL dangerous men, who, I’m sure lobbed threats against her. Having spent time in a real dangerous place, the penitentiary, there are no real bullies there. There ARE really dangerous men who don’t lob idle threats…any threat from them is real. The rest are sheep hiding from wolves. Nothing fake survives. If you act or talk tough, then you can 100% count on having to back up your mouth. If you can’t, then plan on not surviving past lunch. Trump is used to standing behind the castle walls safe from the consequences of his tough talk. Now, he has no where to run and hide. I wonder what his excuse will be? He’ll come up with something…with nothing off the table. If he does show, then I guess I’ll start believing pigs do actually fly. Cowards always run when the fighting starts. They run and hide. Let’s see…the drunk disgraced doctor will come out and say he has covid. There’s a million ways the shitweasel will weasel out, but my money is he won’t show.
Did anyone think he was ever going to show up at this debate against V.P. Harris? Seriously, she is a very large threat on the debate stage to well-educated, intelligent folks let alone someone like trump who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. He can make all the excuses and noise he likes but at his core he is a chicken-sh*t mother-f*cker-always has been and always will be.
Of course his cult will believe every reason he gives for chickening out except for the real one: a debate against V.P. Harris makes him want to piss himself and the actual event would result in a very wet pair of pants for him.