Tag: debates

Trump and RFK Jr. Agree to ‘The People’s Town Hall,’ But Biden Will Be Missing

President Joe Biden will be the odd man out in a series of town halls focused on the presidential election, according to a new report.

Cable news network NewsNation and social media giant X have secured an agreement “in principle” of former President Donald Trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to participate in live town halls, according to Axios, which cited sources it did not name.

“The Biden campaign has not agreed to take part,” Axios said in an article published on Thursday.

The Trump-Kennedy project is not a debate, but separate live interviews in what is being billed as “The People’s Town Hall.”

Dates and locations have not been determined, but the concept is that users can submit questions to moderators both before and during the events, Axios said it was told.

The final slate of questions will be determined by the moderators, who have not yet been picked.

Axios said X CEO Linda Yaccarino instigated the concept and reported that the goal “is to make X the destination in which everyday people can have a greater voice in the political process.”

Biden and Trump are scheduled for a debate hosted by CNN on June 27 in Atlanta, but Kennedy has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over the event, according to Fox News.

“The violations occurred when, based on the available evidence, CNN colluded with the Biden committee and the Trump committee to schedule and did schedule a debate with criteria that were designed to result in the selection of certain pre-chosen participants, namely Biden and Trump,” the letter of complaint said.

The alleged collusion means CNN is “in a clear breach of federal campaign finance law,” the letter said.

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White House Refuses to Confirm or Deny If Biden Plans to Use Drugs to Enhance Performance in Debates

The White House has refused to confirm or deny whether or not Joe Biden plans to use drugs to enhance his debate performance.

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Biden to be drug tested before each debate, claiming that he was “high” during the State of the Union.

“I am going to demand a drug test, I really am. I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union,” Trump said during a speech in Minnesota on Friday. “He was high as a kite. I said, ‘Is that Joe up there, that beautiful room? And by the end of the evening, he’s like” — Trump made a guttural sound — “He was exhausted, right? No, we’re going to demand a drug test.”

“He can’t talk, he can’t walk, can’t find his way off a stage. Can’t put two sentences together,” Trump continued. “Although he has agreed to debate, so I don’t know, maybe they know something. He’s going to be so jacked up for those debates, you watch.”

Politico asked the White House about whether or not Biden intends to use drugs as part of his debate prep.

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Presidential Debates Should Be More Frequent, and Tougher on Candidates

The presidency is powerful—entirely too powerful. Through mission creep, popular acclaim, and abandonment of responsibility by the legislative branch, the nation’s chief executive has gained near-unilateral authority to wage war and is rapidly acquiring similarly monarchical say over domestic policy. But the office is still elected. The American people are entitled to job interviews with hopeful candidates. Unfortunately, presidential “debates” barely fill that role, least of all the choreographed kabuki meet-ups between Joe Biden and Donald Trump scheduled for this summer.

“Trump feeds off the crowd, they give him life,” an anonymous Biden adviser told Politico about the exclusion of audiences from the events. “We wanted to take that away.”

Biden’s people are afraid that speaking in front of living, breathing humans plays to the presumed Republican candidate’s strengths (and, conversely, to Biden’s weaknesses), so they want it off the table. But that’s only one constraint placed on the gatherings planned for June 27 and September 10, specified by the Biden campaign and agreed to by Trump’s camp. The debates will bypass the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates and be hosted by CNN (June) and ABC News (September). They’ll exclude other presidential candidates. And the meetups will follow kindergarten rules, with the participants allowed to speak only in turn while the other candidate’s microphone is off.

This year’s strange, rule-bound “debates” are the inevitable culmination of a long process of making the meetups as easy as possible for Democratic and Republican standard-bearers. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which is so aggrieved to have been sidelined, was itself created by the major parties to craft situations friendly to their candidates after independent organizations, such as the League of Women Voters, refused to oblige.

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Biden campaign REFUSES to commit to the 2024 presidential debates: Top official says they will look at 81-year-old’s schedule and will have ‘conversations’

A top Biden campaign official was noncommittal on Wednesday about President Joe Biden participating in the general election debates.

Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager for the Biden-Harris campaign, was asked if the president was committed to participating now that the the Commission on Presidential Debates released a schedule.

Fulks, former Democratic Alabama Sen. Doug Jones and Alabama state Rep. Barbara Drummond held a press conference in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where the fourth Republican primary debate will be held on the University of Alabama’s campus later Wednesday night.  

‘At the end of the day, we’re focused on building a campaign. We’ll have those conversations,’ Fulks said. 

When a reporter pointed out that sounded like a ‘no,’ Fulks revised his statement but still didn’t commit Biden to participate in the trio of the debates scheduled.

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Just When Dem Debates Would Have Been Interesting, DNC Says There Will Be No Debates

Well, this is disappointing news. The Washington Post reported Thursday that “the national Democratic Party has said it will support Biden’s reelection, and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates.” It’s understandable: the Dems have a president, of sorts, and so they’re counting on the power of incumbency to help their superannuated kleptocrat get over the top again. However, it’s also immensely disappointing, because after years and years of Democratic presidential debates being dreary displays of candidates trying to out-socialist one another, 2024 Democratic primary debates would have actually had something to offer.

Biden has two challengers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson. When Kennedy announced his candidacy on Wednesday, USA Today reported that RFK immediately had the “support of 14% of voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020,” according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll. Williamson had 5%, and another 13% were undecided. USA Today noted that “that is surprising strength for a candidate who has a famous political name but is now known mostly as the champion of a debunked conspiracy theory blaming childhood vaccines for autism.”

USA Today’s confident use of the word “debunked,” however, can’t mask a growing suspicion among an increasing number of Americans that the authorities aren’t being honest with us. The COVID vaccine debacle, with what was originally touted as a single shot that would protect you from a deadly disease becoming multiple shots and boosters that carried side effects that were often worse than COVID itself, only fueled that suspicion. So the establishment media’s confidence that voters will dismiss Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because they dislike this vaccine skepticism may be whistling in the dark.

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Law student government rejects free speech group because debate can cause ‘real harm’

For the second time recently, Emory Law School in Atlanta is dealing with a controversy involving a student-run organization seeking to squelch debate in the name of preventing harmful speech.

Its Student Bar Association, the law school equivalent of student government, denied a charter to the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF) in part based on the “lack of mechanisms in place to ensure respectful discourse and engagement” at its events, such as a moderator.

This could cause a “precarious environment” and “potential and real harm” on fraught topics such as race and gender, “when these issues directly affect and harm your peers’ lives in demonstrable and quantitative ways,” the rejection letter said.

A charter comes with eligibility for university funding and the use of university resources. Given Emory Law’s “well-established promotion of free speech values” and EFSF’s “overlap” with other chartered groups, the letter said, “we fail to see a need” to fund it.

A week earlier, three law professors pulled their essays from a forthcoming issue of the Emory Law Journal in response to student editors ordering one of them to remove “insensitive language” from a “hurtful and unnecessarily divisive” critique of the concept of systemic racism.

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Video Surfaces Of Final Debate Moderator ‘Tipping Off’ Hillary Clinton Campaign On Interview Questions In 2016

NBC News reporter Kristen Welker, the debate moderator for the final presidential debate, has strong ties to Democrat activism and has even been caught on camera “tipping off” a member of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign about “at least one question” that she was going to ask during an interview, according to a new report.

“Welker comes from an established Democratic family — who have poured cash into party coffers, and to Trump opponents, for years,” The New York Post reported. “Her mother, Julie Welker, a prominent real estate broker in Philadelphia, and father, Harvey Welker, a consulting engineer, have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and close to $20,000 to Barack Obama alone. There was also $3,300 for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and $2,100 for Hillary Clinton’s doomed 2016 presidential effort against Trump. Another $7,300 was contributed to the Democratic National Committee between 2004 and 2020.”

The report comes after Chris Wallace, a registered Democrat who moderated the first debate, and Savannah Guthrie, who hosted a town hall last week with President Donald Trump, have both been widely criticized for bias during the two events.

The New York Post’s Jon Levine also highlighted photographs that were on Welker’s Facebook page that showed that she and her family celebrated Christmas at the White House with the Obamas in 2012.

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Kristen Welker, upcoming presidential debate moderator, has deep Democrat ties

All eyes are turning to NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker as she prepares to host the third and final presidential debate Thursday.

President Trump and Joe Biden will square off at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., in a 90-minute debate starting at 9 p.m.

Welker, 44, has been the White House correspondent at NBC News since 2011, after working as a news reporter in Rhode Island.

But Trump supporters who took issue with hard questioning by previous moderators like Chris Wallace and Savannah Guthrie may find themselves pining for those combative hosts after Welker is done with the president.

Welker comes from an established Democratic family — who have poured cash into party coffers, and to Trump opponents, for years.

Her mother, Julie Welker, a prominent real estate broker in Philadelphia, and father, Harvey Welker, a consulting engineer, have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and close to $20,000 to Barack Obama alone.

There was also $3,300 for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and $2,100 for Hillary Clinton’s doomed 2016 presidential effort against Trump. Another $7,300 was contributed to the Democratic National Committee between 2004 and 2020.

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