Top NYT Columnist Paves the Way for Biden To Duck Debates While Still Blaming Trump
In the latest sign of Democratic desperation over the prospect of humiliation in a presidential debate, a New York Times columnist is pushing a novel approach:
Former Vice President Joe Biden should refuse to debate President Donald Trump, says The Times’ Thomas Friedman, unless Trump agrees to two conditions the whole world already knows he will never accept.
It’s duplicitous, it’s cowardly, and it’s banking on the knee-jerk cooperation of the mainstream media. In short, it’s a perfect example of Democratic tactics in the 2020 race.
Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist with dangerous totalitarian fantasies, published a piece on Tuesday suggesting Biden decline to step on a debate stage with Trump in the fall unless Trump agrees to release his tax returns from 2016 to 2018 and accepts a “fact-checking” squad. That team will be given 10 minutes at the end of each debate to “report on any misleading statements, phony numbers or outright lies either candidate had uttered.”
In a typically pious piece, headlined “Biden Should Not Debate Trump Unless …,” Friedman claims to be concerned about ensuring the two men are debating on an even playing field, and that the “massive television audience” can’t be misled.
But his real motivation for the idea is present in the column’s very first sentence: “I worry about Joe Biden debating Donald Trump.”
He should be. And every American dim enough, or deranged enough, to want Biden to be sworn in as president in January should be worried about the debates, too.
After a sham primary process made up mainly of mannequins representing various identity politics voting blocs, Democrats have settled on an aging, morally dishonest, almost certainly corrupt and very possibly senile figurehead to challenge Trump in the election.
Even the millions of Americans who despise the president would have to admit, if they were to be honest, that Trump’s fortitude is unflagging.
The whole country watched as Trump took to national television day after day to talk to the nation about the coronavirus crisis. The fact that those media briefings turning into daily bear-baiting exercises on the part of the savagely anti-Trump mainstream media doesn’t take away from Trump’s demonstration that any man capable of dealing with such issues on an extended basis is in full control of his faculties.
Meanwhile, Biden has been doddering around his basement, occasionally making cyber statements in settings under laboratory-like controls, and still botching it. Worries about the coronavirus aside, Biden’s physical appearance in a traditional campaign would be a disaster for Democrats – and Democrats know it.
Some of his appearances with even friendly media have bordered on the bizarre — like his botched baseball analogy with CNN’s Dana Bash — and his “you ain’t black” line about undecided black voters to a popular black radio host will go down in American political history as an example of how not to make friends and influence the people.
Yet Friedman wants the country to believe that Biden would be taking the high road by declining to debate Trump unless the president turns over tax returns and agrees to some impossible “fact-checking” squad.
Trump isn’t going to turn over his tax records — and the American people don’t care. If they did, he would not be in the White House today.
As to the Friedman’s fantasy of a “fact-checking” squad, even a liberal knows that agreeing to any such thing would be an act of pure masochism for any Republican, much less one as controversial as Trump.
Even regular debate moderators have proven over and over again their intrinsic hostility to GOP candidates – CNN’s Candy Crowley’s disgraceful interposition in the Obama-Romney debate of 2012 is just one of the best-known of countless examples.
In any debate not run by Fox News, the Republican candidate squares off not only against his Democratic opponent but against the “moderators” as well. A child knows that, but Friedman is asking his readers to pretend they don’t.
On social media, there were plenty of libs who supported Friedman’s ideas — lemmings are rarely in short supply on the left — but sane people saw right through the idea.
If the polls are 100% accurate and Biden is clearly winning, why would there be a big movement to skip the debates? The tax return nonsense is a joke. And “fact checking” statements on air means distorting the truth in Biden’s favor.
— Mr. Stubborn (@obdurate_one) July 8, 2020
And here we go ?♀️. I knew the Democrats would think of some way to cancel the debates
— Merri Ann (@MerriAnn5) July 8, 2020
One of the perennial Democratic Party talking points is that Republicans are stupid and out-of-touch. They cannot afford to have such stark proof of the opposite on the very public stage of a presidential campaign and this is how they’ll try to avoid the embarrassment.
— Potemkin. Go home and be with your family. (@IggyBeeBop) July 8, 2020
I told my husband weeks ago, you watch, Biden won’t debate Trump, he can’t ……… I mean he literally does not have the ability!
— Kim (@kimberlyr51) July 8, 2020
As of early Thursday afternoon, the most authoritative response the column has gotten was when the president’s son Eric told “Fox & Friends” that The Times just wants to help Biden duck debating his father because the former vice president doesn’t have the “aptitude” for the task.
It’s almost embarrassing to watch in a country as great as the United States, but the opposition party and its unflagging allies in the mainstream media have reached the point of self-abasement that they don’t even want the man they support for the highest office in the land to appear on a debate stage against the incumbent.
And to avoid it, a top columnist for the country’s best-known (least honest) newspaper is willing to construct a fable about how to make the debates fair to both sides.
The first line of Friedman’s column contained the truth, “I worry about Joe Biden debating Donald Trump.”
The last line contained Friedman’s advice to Biden if the Trump campaign refuses to play along — and it’s the real desire of every Democrat who wants Biden to have a chance of beating Trump at the polls:
“Otherwise, Joe, stay in your basement.”
It’s a desperation move. And one the American public won’t buy no matter how hard frauds like Friedman and The Times peddle it.
If Biden ducks debating Trump, even if he tries to blame the president for it, he’s guaranteed to find himself with a lot of time to spend in his basement after Nov. 3.
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