The Trump campaign’s response to last-minute rule and topic changes made by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) show that Thursday night’s presidential debate will be all-out war.
In a call with reporters on Monday morning before the CPD announced the muted mic rule, Trump 2020 senior advisor Jason Miller called out the commission for its pro-Biden bias: “I want to make it very clear how they’re putting their foot on the scale with regard to this debate. This was supposed to be the foreign policy debate — the final debate is always the foreign policy debate.”
He added:
The debate commission is now trying to change the rules and make this about a whole host of different issues. And we believe this is the request of the Biden campaign that does not want to talk about Joe Biden’s support for endless wars, his support for sending those pallets of cash to Iran, the fact that Joe Biden appears to be compromised by the Chinese Communist Party as we look at this money coming in to Hunter.
It was clear the Biden camp does not want to talk foreign policy. It is clear the debate commission is bending over backwards to try to help out the Biden campaign.
He followed that with a Tweet: “Good morning to everyone except Presidential Debate Commission members who changed focus of final debate away from foreign policy so Joe Biden wouldn’t have to answer to being compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, supporting endless wars and sending pallets of cash to Iran.”
Once it was learned that the candidates’ mics would be muted during the opening two-minute segment on each topic, Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien responded: “President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”
He expanded:
This was supposed to be the foreign policy debate, so the President still looks forward to forcing Biden to answer the number one relevant question of whether he’s been compromised by the Communist Party of China.
Why did Biden allow his son Hunter to sell access to him while he was vice president, and why were there Chinese payment arrangements for Joe himself worked out by Hunter and his sketchy partners?
If the media won’t ask Joe Biden these questions, the President will, and there will be no escape for Biden.
Stepien followed up his attack on the commission in a letter he sent to it late Monday:
We write with great concern over the announced topics for what was always billed as the “Foreign Policy Debate” in the series of events agreed to … many months ago….
As is the long-standing custom, and as had been promised by the Commission … we had expected that foreign policy would be the central focus of the October 22 debate….
New information recently revealed indicates that Biden himself was mentioned as a financial beneficiary of a deal arranged by his son Hunter and a communist Chinese-related energy company. If a major party candidate for President of the United States is compromised by the Communist Party of China, this is something Americans deserve to hear about….
It is completely irresponsible for the Commission to alter the focus of this final debate just days before the event, solely to insulate Biden from his own history.
He said the last-minute changes in rules and topics have turned the debates into a “fiasco”:
The Commission’s pro-Biden antics have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco and it is little wonder why the public has lost faith in its objectivity …
The moderator of the third debate [Kristen Welker] now has decided to pursue topics almost wholly unrelated to the purpose of the event, which was to be focused on foreign policy.
Welker has earned a reputation for her scathing and vicious style of questioning. And she has made no effort to hide her left-wing proclivities. As the New York Post noted: “Welker comes from an established Democratic family who have poured cash into party coffers, and to Trump opponents, for years.” A senior White House official concurs: “Anyone who’s ever dealt with Welker knows she’s an activist, not a reporter.”
So it’s all-out war, and the president will take every remaining advantage to make sure the millions of viewers watching Thursday night’s debate know all about Biden’s corruption, his close financial ties to the communists running China, and his phony denials. There will be no escape for Biden, in spite of the last-minute changes in rules and topics by the commission.
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