The breathless advance coverage of the first debate between President Joe Biden and a prominent convicted felon has overlooked one key question: Will Donald Trump actually show up?
Until we see him take to the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday night, there’s every chance the former president will retreat to the safety of a rally where he can vent his countless grievances and siphon money from gullible fans.
This is not the first time Trump has skipped a debate: He declined to attend the second of three scheduled presidential debates in 2020 because they were to be held online due to the coronavirus pandemic.
And this year, he ignored all of the Republican presidential primary debates.
Trump slams conspiracy theories ahead of debate, clearly afraid
Thursday’s debate will be broadcast on CNN and moderated by hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, with no audience and microphones cut off so only one candidate can speak at a time — all with the approval of Trump, but that hasn’t stopped him and his allies from launching a blitz of crazy conspiracy theories ahead of what they’ve already claimed will be a “rigged” debate.
This is being broadcast on CNN, so it’s being rigged against Trump! The host hates Trump! Of course, the best part of it all is the now-creedal belief in the right-wing media ecosystem that Biden will be perked up with some magic anti-aging potion.
Preparing for the Presidential Debate:Trump has been lying all weekend. Biden is ready. Thursday’s debate will be interesting.
“He’s going to be so excited,” Trump said of Biden at a recent rally in Wisconsin. “He’s going to be so excited.”
What? The Super Soldier Serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America?
Trump’s MAGA minions are spreading the pathetic claim that Biden is on drugs.
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said the former president has always “demonstrated first-rate stamina” and “doesn’t need to be programmed by staff or injected with chemicals like Joe Biden.”
What is that chemical? Nobody knows. Silly speculations range from simple caffeine to cocaine to vague “performance enhancing drugs.” Where is the evidence? There isn’t. If you live in MAGA fantasyland, you don’t need evidence, just fevered daydreams.
Trump has called for pre-debate drug testing, which is ironic coming from a man who goes on stage at rallies and rambles gibberish about sharks and Hannibal Lecter.
We need to stop pretending that Trump is a normal candidate.
But despite these precautionary excuses, many news outlets continue to speculate that Trump will attend Thursday night’s debate and behave like a normal political candidate. The reason he won’t be there is because he is not, and never has been, a normal political candidate.
He’s a narcissist and a liar, a convicted felon and an election denier, with no interest in policy and only interest in fooling his supporters and cleaning up his own mess.
Trump will either not attend the debate or will walk out in anger.
There are only a few honest scenarios that can be revealed before the debate.
First, as mentioned above, Trump runs from the debate screaming that it’s not fair, that he’s been treated badly, and that everyone is trying to attack him. An ambulance is dispatched to pick him up and take him to a nearby MAGA rally, where Trump screams “I’m unhappy” for a record-breaking two hours straight.
Young voters are taking note:Gen Z will watch the Trump-Biden debate. Will older people say the right things?
The second possibility is that Trump will show up to the debate, have his microphone cut off a few times, or listen to questions about his behavior that he considers unfair, then angrily walk off the stage and create a dramatic fake tough-guy scene to raise money to pay his huge legal fees.
And if Trump stays in office, it will all be noise and chaos and lies.
The third possibility is that Trump will show up and take part in the entire debate, yelling away when the microphones are off and making up whatever fact-free nonsense floats around in his spider-infested brain: “election fraud” and a “Biden crime wave.”
Then he lashed out at the moderator, fabricated more lies about Biden using drugs, claimed complete and total victory, gave what many were calling the best debate performance they had ever seen, and sent out a ton of obviously fraudulent fundraising emails claiming that the media and the deep state were out to destroy him.
I don’t understand why anyone would claim that there is anything remotely normal about Trump. The only thing he is capable of at this point is being predictable. He does these crazy things because they are the exact same crazy things he has always done.
The bar for Biden in the debate has been set so low that a snake would trip over it, but for all the “Sleepy Joe” rhetoric from Trump and his Republican allies, they clearly know Thursday night may not end well for Trump.
That’s why I expect him to run away like the coward he has so many times before.
He’ll say he won no matter what, so why bother showing up in the first place?
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Hapke on X (formerly Twitter). translation: and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
