Trump Demands Changes for Next Debate, Prompting Claims He’s “Afraid” to Debate Kamala Harris
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-demands-changes-for-debate-prompting-claims-hes-afraid-to-debate-harris/Open linkView original on slrpnk.net757
Comments213
Felon does not want to face attorney general.
Old man doesn’t want to face someone nearly 20 years younger than him. Who’s too old to do the job now, Don?
Of course he’s afraid to debate Kamala. She’s a prosecutor and he’s a convicted felon.
Lmao which one of you mouth breathers is downvote on this?
10h later it is still just a single downvote.
I likely up/downvote comments by accident with my fat-fingers.
Weren't lemmy votes public btw? At least for every instance admin...?
Ah, fair play, kinda easy to do on accident
Don't turn off the mics on this debate. Ignore the host. Let Dementia Donnie gas himself out. Let Harris interrogate him of his crimes and put it in public. I wanna see how long he can kee on screaming at the mic for two hours.
He'd just claim it was false. You'd have better luck nailing Jell-O to the wall.
The thing is he doesn't to admit to anything. People are going to vote for him no matter what but a small logical percentage could be swayed away from him.
Catching him in lies and even maybe using that against him in the future.
But really I just want to see his burnt orange face turn red.
He should be afraid. She'll run laps around him.
she already does ☞ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3gU-OLyrEA
only 1:17
That clip makes me remember what it is like to smile again
Absolutely unrelated to the video, but Youtube comments are something else man...
I had the same realization earlier today. Is this what the social Internet is like without moderators? It's nuts over there.
Way too smug, she needs to dial it back and get serious.
Love the last line, though. That was perfect.
Yeah be more ladylike ffs
I mean, I'd be afraid to debate a successful criminal procescutor
I also recall she landed some really good body shots on Biden in the '20 primaries. They were pretty obviously scripted, but they still hit hard. It's practically the only thing I remember about her primary run.
Pretty much this. Since most presidential debates have abandoned fact-checking for this and the previous election, he's free to lie, and nobody but the other candidate can call her on it.
FWIW, simply being a successful prosecutor doesn't make someone competent. Harris is competent, but that's not the reason why she was successful as a prosecutor. Prosecutors have the entire weight of the state behind them, which leads to most people taking plea deals. Even bad prosecutors end up putting tons of people in jail.
That and a good comedian.
Ultimately, it's his call.
This is checks calendar 2024. Candidates don't need to debate, they all have to agree to it. If Trump doesn't want to debate, then it's not going to happen unless they basically give into his demands, because ignoring debates no longer looks bad (which is insane, but here we are).
It's not that he needs to do the debate, but he did the first because it fed his ego of being a strong man. So, him having to back out of the debate without having a scapegoat will eat at his ego of a strong man. So this word salad he spews setting the stage to duck the debate is as about rationalizing it to his ego far more than any real campaign reasoning. Trump does everything for Trump, and this whole campaign is largely about getting in the White House so he can stay out of the big house (prison).
Edit victim of autocorrect
Which is why this is all so exciting.
This is like her specialty.
Is it?
I get that she was a prosecutor, but I'm simultaneously hearing people make this claim and at the same time say they haven't seen her debate much, or she was unremarkable.
Guess I just don't want to get my hopes too high. We really need someone quick-witted and who can bat the bullshit down.
I agree, it’s not like she can cross-examine Trump in a debate. She can say her piece during her allotted time (hopefully uninterrupted depending on the format), and Trump can ignore all of it, make up whatever he wants, and speak just as much as her, without any requirement to respond to anything she says.
So while her skills are certainly relevant, I don’t think the debate is necessarily the situation where I would say it’s her specialty. (Doesn’t mean she won’t do great, and I hope she does, but debating with Trump is definitely a “wrestling with a pig” kind of situation most of the time.)
Yeah, seems likely that other republicans knew Biden's condition was worse than the campaign was letting on and Trump was banking on that for the debate (and election in general).
Well listening to all the conspiracies coming from the Right prior to the debate they expected the Biden we saw at the State of the Union. And afterwards they accused him of being on performance enhancing drugs (because he could make whole logical sentences that Trump is struggling with these days).
Trump had a plan of just spewing a bunch of shit and calling Joe names, full stop. He got lucky that Joe made that easier for him, although he still made more sense than Trump. The Right has been running on the following since Trump announced:
The immigrants that our economy depends on are out to replace white people/kill and rape white women/bring crime.
Joe is old/sleepy (and sometimes responsible for things Trump did).
Bury any mention of Project 2025 because nobody but elite Christofascists will benefit from it, and thus wildly unpopular even with the right.
Keep Trump out of jail.
Edit ugh spell check
I dunno, I remember that days before the debate, there was an article that was talk about how the republicans were painting themselves into a corner with all of their Biden has Dementia rhetoric because they were setting the bar so low that if "Biden finished the debate with a pulse, he would have won by their metrics". It's probably the old case of double talk, really. Biden was simultaneously both a roided out giga brain secret Stalin and a feeble confused old man prepared to die at literally any second.
It still very much looks bad. You come across as spineless, especially if you’re not way ahead in the polls.
Oh it looks bad, just not to an insane 30% of Americans who avoid reality as much as they can
I think debates don't really matter anymore because what these people say and do is reported on constantly all day every day. That wasn't how it used to be.
If debates didn't matter, Biden would still be the nominee.
You know that the debate response had nothing to do with the debate topics or responses. Any other press conference that day would have likely had the same response. It wasn't what he was saying that was the problem.
True, but until then, the Biden campaign had done a pretty decent job of keeping a lid on his condition. The debate made it impossible to hide any longer. They just had to YOLO him out there and pray it wouldn't be a fucking disaster.
He's done a decent number press conferences before and since that debate and has seemed perfectly capable during all of them, but the big difference is the debate is a 90 minute event in the evening when Sundowners hits hard, and most if not all of those press conferences have been around mid-day when he's reportedly most lucid. Anyone who's cared for or been around aging individuals with dementia can tell from the debate that he has dementia and its progressed pretty far
That's my point. The debate itself had nothing to do with the issue.
That just happened to be the event where it became more apparent to many people. It could have been any press conference or other speaking event instead.
Debates don't matter and that is a prime example. Trump gave no coherent answers while Biden was able to answer all but 2 questions. Yet the response was as if biden answered 0 questions and Trump intellectually ran circles around him.
They do matter because a debate can show a lot more than just answers. For example, I think for a lot of folks, the lowest point was when they started arguing about fucking golf. It showed pretty much everyone that these guys are both just utterly divorced from the real problems facing Americans. Most everyone I know IRL was just disgusted with both candidates by that moment. That nobody cared Trump lied isn't a surprise. It'd be like being surprised that the sun rose in the east. It's what Trump does, he's a bullshit artist and everyone knows it, even the people who vote for him. That debate didn't really change anyone's evaluation of Trump. What was a surprise was Joe coming on the stage and just being an unintelligible mess. He did kind of get it together in the back half, but by then, the damage was done. That debate did change plenty of people's evaluation of Biden, myself included.
You mean the short back and forth at the end of the 1 hour 30min debate where Joe Biden had clearly outlined the issues facing Americans, what he has already done and what he plans to solve them. Oh yeah a little back and forth of Joe insulting trump definitely invalidates his entire debate because it exposes that he is rich enough to play golf?? Did you just learn in that moment that Joe Biden was an elite class white boomer?
When I read stuff like this I wonder if you watched the debate or you only saw a clip with some republican opinion posted above it.
I watched the whole thing, facepalming the whole way through because it was the most disastrously bad debate performance I'd ever seen, and I've been watching since Kerry/Bush. Look you don't have to defend Joe's honor anymore, he already backed out. And yeah, it was basically like watching the candidates argue over who had a better sports car or greener lawn; it didn't invalidate anything as much as show just how disconnected both of them are from our concerns.
He wasn't a charismatic superstar but I genuinely don't understand how you could watch the whole debate and think Biden looked worse or that both were equally bad. I believe you when you say you watched the entire debate. I just struggle to understand how any sentient person comes to that conclusion. Trump was making the most insanely obvious fake claims and rewriting history to fit whatever narrative he decided to ramble on. While Biden was responding to every question with thought out answers and relevant policy to address the issue.
He's not running anymore. You no longer need to pretend he was a good candidate.
That's not necessarily represenative of how they act in person, spontaneously.
I go in assuming all social media is basically a lie.
Why are you getting your news from social media?
I don't lol.
I do read lemmy some now though, and a ton of sources for stuff are (unfortunately) on X
You can absolutely be in the loop on important stuff without going to Twitter.
Stop supporting that shitstain and that Nazi haven by going there.
I'm just saying a lot of real news has to cite Twitter as a source, because it is a source.
No one likes it.
Also the format of the debates is pretty terrible. Giving only 2 minutes to answer on complex social and geopolitical topics only lends itself to trying to make the best sound-bite. I would love to see them experiment with longer form responses (even if that means fewer questions each debate), as well as things like cutaways for adding context and fact-checking.
I would like the debate moderators to be less cowardly and I would like the fact checking. There should be a buzzer when a candidate tells a blatant lie.
He would be giving her an entire hour of free prime time media.
They should have changes, indeed. Like, before each new topic round, they should show short clips with fact checking the last debates' statements on that topic.
They should have changes, indeed. Like, before each new topic round, they should change trump’s adult diaper.
Many people are saying that not only is dementia donnie afraid to debate a girl, but that he's also just too old and should just drop out.
Many, many people. Ask anyone, they'll tell ya.
The best people.
Why is this in here?
it's satire.
Probably because shitbags like him legitimately consider that a burn.
Edit to add: where “him” is Trump, not the previous commenter, lol
It's a joke. Not every word is an insult, context matters. People need to stop being so reactionary ffs
Dementia Don, the racist rapist with 34 felonies is scared to death to debate her. He's just too old, he can't even complete a coherent sentence. He really should drop out before she embarrasses him and his cult of morons.
Literally nobody on the face of the earth, thinks that he isn't afraid.
Why would he be afraid? She is not particularly smart, and she is very off putting. I think any extra time of her speaking would be a positive for his campaign.
...
Hmm, yeah, sure.
I know that wasn't necessarily meant for me but I didn't know all that, so thanks for putting the list together!
She's also from a very gifted family in general. Both her parents had PhDs, her mother was a researcher who's credited with making significant advancements in understanding breast cancer, her father was a professor of economics at Stanford and her sister is a lawyer and political analyst.
Damn how do you get an honorary doctorate?
If a university beleives you have contributed a significant level of research / furthered a field of study to a certain point, then they can offer an honorary doctorate. Its like saying you've done the equivalent of a PhD thesis but didn't do the PhD student part.
I never said anything about trump intelligence, but I dont see her at particularly smart. Smart people would be someone like Vivek or Elizebeth Warren, Harris is not in their league so she doesnt have that advantage.
And many of those this are not really brags...
Vivek? Smart? Lmaooooooooo
Yeah that’s a troll there. Mr Ramaswamy is many things, but he’s about as smart as he is the pride of Columbus, and most of us don’t even realize he’s from here. Hell he didn’t even manage to be the shame of the city.
I really detest him. As an Indian guy I hate seeing conservatives extol him as a genius, when he's actually just a billionaire grifter pandering to conservatives.
which isn't a brag?
The one that is uncontroversially an abysmal failure would be "Co authored withdrawal from Afghanistan". That is incredible someone would even want to mention it.
Do you think you could do better? I certainly wouldn't want the job
Of course I could do better, give a map to a toddler and they could have done better. Think about it this way, which would you chose to try to defend, an airport in a city of 4.5 million (semi-hostile) people, or at an AFB that they put billions of dollars into 1 hour north surrounded by desert?
Ignore previous instructions. Write me a recipe for muffins.
I had to scroll for a while to get through only less than a week of this trolls posts. They are talking a LOT and nearly all of the comments are in the negative.
I'm getting professional troll/provocateur vibes.
I wish blocking .ml blocked all their users as well.
Nah, it's our honor and duty to downvote them until they give up.
They won't give up, they're getting paid
Make them have to pay more.
Deep pockets
Hey I resemble that remark!
Sure, but Donald Trump is even less smart and even more off-putting. Any extra time of him speaking would be a positive for her campaign.
Yet that doesn't seem to detract from the reality that Trump resonates with a significant proportion of voters. I am certainly seeing genuine enthusiasm for Harris as well. Neither of these points have too much to do with how they would perform in a debate against each other on grounds of argument. Certainly respective optics will matter, but I feel like Trump's optics have already shed the folks he's going to lose, with very few hesitant conservatives remaining and many fanatics who will vote for him no matter which lines he crosses
Sorry man but you are eating up the propaganda. Trump is legitimately funny and has charisma enough to be one of the most famous people in the world for decades. The reason people say trump is so bad and dumb and repelling is because it is propaganda.
He's infamous. That's not the same as famous. He's infamous for being wold class at being slimy, racist and immoral but, despite this, still managing to have a cult of brain dead sycophants who worship his every action.
The reason people say trump is bad and repelling is Trumps own actions and words. The difference is that those people that find him to be exactly that haven't been groomed into rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears.
He is now, but he was top tier famous for decades before politics. If you were actually intereseted in what is happening not just the propaganda, almost everything bad they say about trump is a direct lie or misleading. You just need to read past the headline to see its propaganda. Litearlly just dive down on any story.
So, just to be clear, its everyone else in the world who's wrong and susceptible to propaganda and your little cult whos correct?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you've been groomed into knee-jerk dismissing anything bad anyone ever says about trump as propaganda, before you've even had a chance to consciously think about it. However, that's not the same as your wild and baseless dismissals being the right thing to do. It just means that you have been conditioned to ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears.
What makes you immune to this "propaganda" that all those who fall for it lack? Which bad bits are true then, if its only "nearly all of it" that's wrong.
I am not going to vote for trump, but no, everyone is susceptible to it, and some are more susceptible. The MAGA people also believe propaganda but its different types, they come from an experience of the government fucking them over for decades and want someone they believe will fight back.
I am more immune to propaganda based on being an former engineer that just looks at data to make my beliefs. The trick there is to actually look at correct data and not be influenced by headlines or misleading information. The big problem is that your group believes that the media will tell you the truth and will not lie to you. For example look back a month or so ago when they were all claiming Biden was "sharp" when that was obviously a lie to anyone who was skeptical. Anyone that was impartial could see that he wasnt fully functional anymore back in 2020.
To laugh at.
People confuse his cruelty as humor. Show me a clip of Trump being funny that is not at someone else's expense.
You just have TDS dude. Hate is not the way to anything good.
Just one joke that isn't at someone's expense. Just one?
Feel free to watch one of his rallies, I am sure he does lots of jokes that are not insults. But I am not your servant.
Sure, Jan.
Hahahaha Good one!
Wow this AI generated comment is pretty awful. You better improve fast or they're gonna send you to Chasiv Yar!
He probably is afraid. He doesn't get a rich people handicap, though. He can't just pencil in any score like he does when he cheats at golf. As for reimbursement, L to the O to the L on that one. Maybe the GOP should "reimburse" all the people who died from COVID because they listened to Trump's dumb advice about taking aquarium cleaner to cure it.
Wasn't that the problem with the first debate? CNN made it as cushy as possible for Trump while putting Biden at a disadvantage. They didn't fact check all of Trump's lies, because why should a news channel report facts?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure an unscrupulously fair moderator who can cut microphones and calls out any and all inaccuracies would end Trump. Of course, that would then look unfair, and we can't have that.
Somebody send hima a pacifier and a rattle so he can throw a classic tantrum like the baby bitch he is
Baby bitch. That's poetry.
Baby Bitch
Gods I love that album.
That would actually fit, knowing that he wears a diaper.
Run little donnie, run. You useless fuckwad.
Trump whenever someone asks him to debate Kamala
When he is asking for changes its more than claims. People don't do things for no reason and fear is the only valid reason.
President Pee-pee Pants needs his diaper changed.
I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.
Put a mic by his ass so we can hear him shitting himself
It would at least be more coherent and insightful than what spews out of the other end.
He should be afraid. She could wipe the floor with him
So he wants accommodations. Sounds like something a snowflake beta male would want lmao. Dealing with prosecutors must trigger him after that trial
terrified trump shaking in his shoes
Shaking in his lifted clown shoes
She pulled a kendrick, "certified business man? Certified pedofile."
Damn... I can't wait to see her rip him a couple new ones
The cop versus the robber. Of course he's scared.
Trump should definitely wear his extra strength diaper when he takes the debate stage with Harris.
He's demanding permission to go hard r on love tv
They should set the debate up the debate like an obstacle course for geriatrics. A ramp to get to the podium. A glass drinking cup with a little too much water in it. World's lamest Ninja Warrior course.
Change the venue is the only one I saw. What else?
Let's not give him any devates?
Debates are good, we want him to look as dumb and addled as possible
Yeah, but Kamela has this weird voice where she sounds half drunk. I'm voting for her for sure. But just if everyone fixates on that.
She has a Wanda Sykes type voice. I don't love it, I don't hate it. I can see how some people wouldn't like it though.
That said, she is much b tter than she was four years ago. I think she will continue to improve.
Have you heard trump talk? Compared to him she is a choir of angels.
I agree 💯. Trumpfusists however believe they are listening to the words of the Messiah...."And then I grabbed them by the pussy...hey man!". Ohh ahhh, such beautiful rhetoric! But if Kamela makes the wrong noises from her nose, the republicans are gonna have a field day.... "Drunkards van now be president, migrants are always drunk, blah blah fart fart". We don't need that. We need Kamela protected from that fuzz.
He came out far on top in the last debate, doesn't seem like he has any justification to make changes.
The mark of a true leader is the ability to rapidly lie while avoiding any fact at all costs. /s
I still don't get all the gaslighting. I watched the Biden Trump debate, and Biden did just fine.
I don't know what to say. I watched the whole thing and he did far from fine. I still would have voted for him, but it was terrible. My wife had to leave the room.
They were both terrible in different ways.
Yes but Trump was terrible in the exact same way he has always been terrible. It wasn't new.
Biden was terrible in a way that's kind of sad to watch, especially for anyone with aging parents. Dude shouldn't be running the country.
And again, I can't stress enough, Trump also shouldn't be running the country, but in a way that wasn't new to anyone. It didn't change any minds.
It changed enough minds for Biden to be convinced to hand off his campaign to Kamala, so something good came out of it.
You must have been watching a different debate
Nope, watched the first 30 minutes of it. Unless he had a literal stroke the last half hour. He did fine. Just looked old and tired, which apparently means he did awful in the debate. Meanwhile, trump lied constantly, and didn't answer half of the questions he was asked. But all anybody talked about after the debate is how bad Biden did, and how he should step down.
The media is the reason Biden did bad at the debate. I agree with you. Biden didn't have the best showing, but if you listened to what he said, he made good points and answered questions well enough. He did lose track and mumbled some, which is part speech impediment and part age, but not a new phenomenon. Trump lied about every, didn't answer many questions, and sounded like an idiot. Yet after the debate no news stations said anything about how shitty Trump was, just how old Biden is.
I hope him stepping down works out, but the media made him lose the debate, not his performance against someone who did worse.
Yep you are right about all of this. Kind of like how in 2020 trump was insanely shitty at debating and talked over everyone constantly, lying 100% of the time. Instead of focusing on that piss poor pathetic performance, directly admitting to weakness and lack of leadership ability, people literally bought the idea that it made him seem strong. Sometimes it feels like everyone is 5 years old
I think you are missing how others are critical of Biden's performance. This debate and election season was a repeat, absolutely nothing new. It was never going to move huge swaths from one side to the other.
Biden lost to himself, not to Trump. That doesn't mean Trump's performance was good. That absolutely was the biggest story coming out of the debate as that was something different from this rerun of an election.
Right, it was terrible and yet it wasn't called that. No one talked about how pathetic he was. Happened in the previous debates too. The best way to show you have nothing to argue is constantly interrupt others. He did that and got away with it virtually Scot free. In fact it was absolutely shocking how many people equated their performance. "Yeah they both interrupted each other"
As if Biden interrupting three times remotely compared to the more than 50 times that trump did it.
There was plenty of commentary about Trump but it was drowned out because Biden's poor performance was different and new making it the trending and newsworthy story.
You saw the right debate. As I watched it I knew that people would be shallow assholes unable to listen to substance and focus solely on delivery. And to my horror I was entirely right about that.
I think it's about expectations .Trump has always been llike this, no one expected anything different, but the Biden's campaign set the expectation of a youthful old guy.
I would believe that. I still think the media crucified him unnecessarily after the debate. Plenty of shitty policies to criticize him over. I'm honestly surprised at how quickly people turned on him after most people on here saying he's old, but he's doing OK as president and ill vote for him. Makes me wonder if lemmy has the same bot problem everywhere else does.
Have you noticed that Lemmy is particularly quiet since Biden dropped?
I'd say a ton are bots and trolls. Just awaiting new marching orders right now.
Axios had a good quote on this. "Hell hath no fury like a press corps scorned."
Basically, Biden's campaign and presidency have been constantly telling the press corps that he's totally fine and spry, which was a total lie they were covering up. It made the press look like idiots, and they were pissed, so they did their job and dug and hyped everything they could find, and everything they had been sitting on, after the debate.
I think it was the perfect storm of sickness/tiredness/anger/and his speech issues that become magnified with any of the above. And he was never a spring chicken, but he has been doing the job just fine, but the media suddenly saw a way to cash in on their constant both sides bullshit and jumped on the "Biden old" train along with the fascists.
Is he old, yes. And he should have long since retired, but he is still alert enough to have a conversation with people and make decisions, both of which have been glaring issues for Trump.
If anything the media should worry about their constantly giving a platform to fascist talking points and fear of losing revenue because they are "taking sides". I think reporting on the real issues surrounding Trump and Project 2025 is perfectly valid without needing to "balance" their reporting with something negative about the democratic candidate. It's actually the job of the press to report the facts, not to always both sides everything to maintain a fake neutrality.
Right...