Will Trump Reject Presidential Debates?

Fred Barnes: “Political commentator Hugh Hewitt has urged Trump to reject both the commission and its plans and ‘announce that if any debates will be held at all in 2020, it will be only after extensive, direct negotiations between him and the eventual nominee of the Democratic Party and their respective designated representatives.'”

“There was more to Hewitt’s plan. The negotiations ‘should begin from a premise that the Republicans will no longer play by the biased rules of a deeply unbalanced Manhattan-Beltway media elite,’ he wrote. ‘Explicitly articulating the declaration of intent now, along with the possibility that, as in 1968 and 1972, there won’t be any debates, would do both the public and the elite media great service.'”

“Democrats and the establishment press are sure to balk at Hewitt’s proposal, but Trump can be expected to embrace it. There’s no obvious middle ground between these notions of how to set up presidential debates. So, next year’s election may lack televised confrontations.”