Trump’s attack on the debate commission is an attack on the election itself

[Rogue Valley]

Trump’s attack on the debate commission is an attack on the election itself

10/20/20
Like all members of the Commission on Presidential Debates, I have maintained a strict vow of silence regarding my personal feelings about the current presidential campaign. Now, however, that President Trump and some of his ardent supporters have attacked the commission’s integrity, I feel compelled to respond. The president’s apparent strategy is to challenge the validity of the election should he lose. We saw this strategy initially in his claims that mail-in ballots are the tools for massive election fraud. Now we see it as well in his assertion that the debates have been rigged by the commission to favor former vice president Joe Biden. The president’s campaign attacked moderator Chris Wallace as “terrible and biased.” Its senior adviser, Steve Cortes, accused the commission of a “scheme to protect their preferred candidate,” and one of Trump’s strongest champions, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), branded the commission “a disgrace.” The claim is that the commission is composed of Democrats and never-Trump Republicans who — through their selection of moderators, their decision to make the town-hall meeting virtual, and (in the latest accusation) through the moderator’s selection of subjects for the final debate — have corruptly tilted the scale. As for the commission’s makeup, I can only speak for myself. I am a Republican who has carried my party’s banner in six statewide elections and has supported countless Republican candidates over many years. I also have been highly critical of President Trump.

First, all the debate moderators the commission chose are highly professional and experienced. When the selection of the moderators was announced Sept. 2, neither campaign objected. The president and his supporters have charged that the commission’s purpose in deciding to conduct the town-hall debate with the candidates in remote locations was made to favor Biden. This is nonsense. In fact, the commission’s decision that the town-hall debate would be virtual was made in a phone meeting where — after the president’s covid-19 diagnosis — the sole concern was the health of citizen participants and the commission’s 60-member production staff. It’s also nonsense to suggest that the commission has allowed the Biden campaign to steer the final debate away from foreign policy. As the Trump campaign knows, subject matter for the debates is outside the commission’s province and is chosen solely by the moderators. Some have said we should have done better at communicating with the two campaigns. But there’s an enormous difference between criticizing good-faith efforts and accusing the commission of corrupt favoritism. Some have said we should have done better at communicating with the two campaigns. But there’s an enormous difference between criticizing good-faith efforts and accusing the commission of corrupt favoritism.

The problem for Trump is two-fold. Firstly, COVID is the topic most Americans want to hear discussed by the two candidates. It's not Joe Biden's fault that the Trump administration response to the COVID pandemic has been disastrous. Even now, Donald Trump continues to defy the guidelines of his own White House Coronavirus Task Force with his political rally's, where social distancing is non-existent and few attendees wear masks. Secondly, no matter what topics the moderator selected, the Trump campaign would have objected, because Trump has extremely little to crow about after four years in office. In virtually every metric, Americans and the country are worse off now than when Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. At this point, two short weeks out from the election, Donald Trump is only looking for excuses.