Trump threatens to cancel Kamala debate after RFK supports him and condemns media

These countless debates tell us a lot about the state of the presidential election campaign.

If only we could figure out what it is.

Donald Trump has hinted that he might withdraw from the September 10 debate, criticizing “ABC FAKE NEWS.” Yesterday, at a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia, he said it was Kamala Harris who was trying to pull out of the debate.

Michael Tyler, a senior official on Harris’ campaign team, responded on MSNBC that the vice president was indeed excited about the debate and that, in his opinion, all issues had already been clarified.

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My impression is that there will be this debate and that this will be the kind of last-minute negotiations that Trump is known for.

It’s important to remember that this debate was drafted with Joe Biden, whose first meeting with Trump, which the president had requested, was such a disaster that it knocked him out of the race. That led to Harris as the replacement candidate, which was not a “coup” – it’s clear that Trump misses Biden – because no one ran against Kamala.

A good rule of thumb is that the candidate who appears to be lagging behind or has lost momentum is the one who wants the debate more.

At the CNN debate, Biden insisted that the microphones be muted so that the candidate who was not allowed to speak could speak, clearly wanting to avoid a repeat of their first encounter in 2020, when Trump constantly interrupted him.

But now Kamala is insisting that the microphones remain on, no matter who is speaking. Her campaign team says this would show that Trump is incapable of behaving “presidentially” for 90 minutes.

Another way to look at it: If the former president keeps interrupting, it will remind people what they don’t like about him – and might seem even ruder if she’s dealing with a woman of color. Then she can complain that he trampled on her.

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To be fair, however, Harris wants the same thing now as she did in virtually every presidential debate this fall, with the exception of the CNN debate, which the 81-year-old Biden initiated at the president’s urging.

Is this dispute enough to cause the whole thing to fail? I doubt that too.

Here’s what Trump had to say (and he’s tweeting again!):

“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s (K?) ridiculous and biased interview with Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!) and their so-called panel of Trump haters, and I’m wondering why I should have the debate against Kamala Harris on this network? …

In a tirade on Truth Social, Trump attacked ABC and other mainstream networks and suggested that he might not attend the debate with Vice President Harris scheduled for September 10. (Ian Maule/Getty Images)

Will panelist Donna Brazil[e] Will Kamala ask the questions of the Marxist candidate like she did of the fraudulent Hillary Clinton? Will Kamala’s best friend who runs ABC do the same?” After poking fun at the name George Stephanopoulos – who will not be participating in the debate – Trump says, “You have a lot of questions to answer!!! Why did Harris turn down Fox, NBC, CBS and even CNN? Stay tuned!!!”

The ABC panel that drew Trump’s ire included Karl, Politico’s Jonanthan Martin and Rachael Bade, and staff writer Donna Brazile.

The 45th president, facing a largely hostile press, may also be trying to garner some attention after a month of pro-Kamala coverage. The Democratic National Convention was a success by almost every measure, including Harris’ speech. But when Rachel Maddow said she and others at parent network MSNBC “stood up and cheered” when Tim Walz appeared, it was pretty remarkable.

Equally fascinating is how many pundits defended Biden’s intellectual acuity, but now that Trump is running against a 59-year-old woman, they are trying to portray him as having lost something.

Most journalists and commentators have shown little interest in Harris’s refusal to give interviews. Some even said she shouldn’t give interviews because things were going so well. Her deputy campaign manager told me on Media Buzz the first interview will take place by August 31, and we’ll see if it’s a likable liberal.

Meanwhile, Trump gave two long press conferences within about a week – and MSNBC refused to broadcast the second one live because MSNBC news agency experts believed he was constantly lying anyway.

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RFK Jr. spoiled Harris’s mood after the convention by dropping out and endorsing Trump, which could certainly help him at least slightly in such a close race. MSNBC again refused to broadcast Kennedy’s press conference live. Does anyone really believe that the network would not have broadcast it live – and invited him immediately – if RFK had endorsed Kamala Harris?

Kennedy fans are welcome to vote for him, although his siblings called his support for Trump the ultimate betrayal. His response was to make the media the scapegoat:

“ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN combined have only given two live interviews. These networks have instead aired a continuous barrage of smear articles containing inaccurate, often vile audio recordings and defamatory slanders…

“Their institutions have become mouthpieces for the government and stenographers for the organs of power.”

RFK Jr.’s withdrawal from the race effectively wiped out the morale boost Harris had been expecting after the convention. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Many interviews are pre-taped, but the reason the networks gave RFK so little airtime is because he was a fringe candidate with no plausible prospect of winning a single state. He was certainly a colorful candidate – he said he had a brain worm and covered up how he put a dead bear carcass in his car that he was going to eat for dinner – but this is something else entirely.

And consider this: RFK ran as a Democrat, then as an independent. He tried to negotiate a deal with both Kamala and Trump, trading his support for the promise of a top health care job if either won. That didn’t work out.

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So he supported Trump anyway, without promising him a job unless there was a wink and a nod.

Doesn’t this raise the question of what Kennedy actually stands for?

And now, as speakers like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have warned, Harris faces two tough months in which Republicans will relentlessly attack her record and especially the left-wing positions from 2020 that she changed without explanation.

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Some analysts say she calls herself the outsider to position herself as a candidate for change, but in fact she is the outsider.