As President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump inch closer to being their parties’ official presidential nominees, many are wondering if they will debate each other. Trump said he will debate, even suggesting they do it at the Manhattan courthouse where he is dealing with his hush money trial. Biden also committed when asked about debates on “The Howard Stern Show.”
“I am, somewhere,” Biden said. “I don’t know when, but I’m happy to debate him.”
David Pakman hopes they will debate, but he’s not entirely sure it will happen. Pakman thinks Trump might find a way out by refusing the conditions set by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
On the one hand, you have some Trump supporters saying Biden’s definitely not going to debate. Why? Because he can’t handle it. he’s demented, he doesn’t know what day it is, he doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t know that he’s running for president. He doesn’t know anything. He’s essentially an empty body unable of any thought. This was what they said, by the way, in 2020, and then Biden showed up and debated Trump and did completely fine. It wasn’t spectacularly explosive, but it was fine.
And they’ve said this many other times, including before the recent State of the Union address: There’s no way Biden can get through even a 30-minute speech. And the speech was like an hour and a half, and Biden was fine. And then they said, well, he was on some kind of drug, even though medical experts have said there’s not really a drug that would just like hide dementia in the way that these Republicans are saying. So a lot of MAGA people saying Biden’s the one incentivized not to do it.
On the other hand, there’s the question as to whether Trump actually wants to debate, because Trump, embroiled in multiple criminal trials, with mostly humiliations over the last several years to speak of and no accomplishments, and no interesting policy proposals that would materially improve circumstances for people living in the United States, with really nothing to show for himself, other than now 88 criminal counts against him and felony trials and being found civilly liable for sexual assault, which a judge said qualified for the definition of rape — he doesn’t have a lot to show for himself. So there are also those who say it’s Trump that actually won’t debate.