Donald Trump has gone full Edna Mode, except instead of “no capes!”, he is declaring “no debates!”

Sunday evening on Truth Social, which got immediately retweeted/reposted on Twitter/X, former President Trump declared that he would not be participating in this coming Wednesday’s GOP primary debate, or any primary debate.

Trump says he’s not participating in the debates (plural). pic.twitter.com/pwvREdIqV7

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 20, 2023

Oh, so much to unpack here. First, let’s talk about who benefits from Donald Trump not showing up to the primary debates.

1) Trump’s lawyers. The man currently has four pending cases against him – two in federal court, two in state court, all politically motivated. Regardless of how the cases came to be, they are active and anything that Trump says or does can be brought up in these cases. By not appearing in a debate format, where other candidates would undoubtedly press him on these legal cases, Trump avoids saying anything that can be used against him – and lets his lawyers breathe a little easier.

2) GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel. Donald Trump threw his support behind her re-nomination as GOP chair, despite her losing record. But then McDaniel insisted on a “loyalty pledge,” which she had to have known Trump would not sign. Trump demands loyalty, but as more and more people are getting dragged into his legal cases, it’s clear that Trump’s loyalty only runs one way – toward himself. He won’t sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee, because he believes that he will be that nominee, and won’t sign it. By staying off the debate stage, Ronna McDaniel can breathe a sigh of relief at not having to attempt to stand up for her own rules, that she can’t even enforce. She’ll let Trump surrogates into “Spin Alley” after the debate, but so long as he isn’t there onstage, Ronna can continue to be a giant chicken when it comes to Trump.

3) The fringe candidates with nothing to lose. Like it or not, there are very few people who made the debate stage that will be there for round two. No Donald Trump on the stage means they get more camera time, and more opportunity to speak without Trump’s very presence swallowing up the attention. I don’t expect that Asa Hutchinson or Doug Burgum will suddenly erupt as a major candidate, but they might have a slightly better night than they would have without Trump there.

4) Joe Biden. Yes, Joe Biden will benefit from not having Donald Trump there. Trump is refusing to do the debates on the principle that he will be the eventual nominee. What happens when Team Biden decides to get Joe out of the debates – where we all know he will eventually gaffe or have a huge moment of senility or tell a giant-ass lie – by pointing out that Trump didn’t debate in the primary, so he shouldn’t have to debate in the general election. After all, he’s already debated Trump before, and now he is under indictment, so why should Biden bother giving him legitimacy by appearing on a debate stage with him?

Going to be amazing when Biden's advisors tell him to skip POTUS debates next fall and Trump+followers scream about how he's scared.

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 20, 2023

Donald Trump is gift wrapping and presenting Joe Biden the perfect excuse to not debate on a silver platter, and Team Biden is probably just thrilled with this. No debates means basement campaign 2.0 is ON, baby!

So, who loses when Donald Trump doesn’t show up to the primary debates?

1) The voters. We do not have a king. Donald Trump has to EARN our votes, just like he did in 2016 and 2020. To declare that the race is over before a single primary vote is held or a caucus is convened smacks of Hillary Clinton in 2008, where it was “her turn” and then Barack Obama came in and wrecked her plans. Like it or not, Donald Trump is not the incumbent. We are in a unique situation that we haven’t seen since Grover Cleveland was defeated after his first term, and ran again four years later in 1892 and won. In modern history, one-term presidents (like Ford, Carter, and George H.W. Bush) have not attempted political comebacks four years later. Donald Trump is different, and he very well could win. But the voters have the right to want him to explain himself. Trump himself says in his Truth Social post:

The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had, with Energy Independence, Strong Borders & Military, Biggest EVER Tax & Regulation Cuts, No Inflation, Strongest Economy in History, & much more.”

And yes, the Trump administration was highly successful for the first three years. No one can say that the administration handled COVID-19 well, and Donald Trump gave us Dr. Anthony Fauci as a household name, promoted both “15 Days to Slow the Spread” and “30 Days to Slow the Spread,” and paid Pfizer and Moderna huge gobs of money to produce a vaccine that ended up delivering a lot less than promised. Now, you can argue that we now have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and know just what a flip-flopping troll and liar Anthony Fauci is, but why did children in Florida get to go back to school in August of 2020, and children in New York and California didn’t go back until spring 2021 at the earliest? How can Trump be on the record disagreeing with Governor Brian Kemp about reopening Georgia, and not be questioned about it now? Does Trump still think he was right? We deserve to know that answer before considering giving Trump a vote in the primary.

2) Ron DeSantis. Trump can whine and call him “DeSanctimonious” and claim the primary is over, but the press still has it out for the Florida governor. The most recent hit job came via Kasie Hunt on CNN, whose team did a little editing on a video to make it look like DeSantis was calling Trump voters “listless vessels.” Fortunately, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli called her out.

.@KenCuccinelli calls out CNN's Kasie Hunt for deceptively editing Ron DeSantis's comments during an interview with The Florida Standard. pic.twitter.com/Z4RlAgLyMr

— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) August 20, 2023

In response to Hunt’s dishonesty, Cuccinelli pointed out her editing trick: “Everybody just saw there that there was a cut. You cut from the beginning of that quote to the listless vessels. You just did what the problem is. So everyone who just watched that, understand, go read the transcript.”

Playing dumb, Hunt asked: “How do we get from there to listless vessels?”

“There was a pretty big gap in your cut. So he’s talking about some of the folks in D.C. who’ve endorsed Trump. He’s talking about the more general environment and referring to all of us collectively,” Cuccinelli explained. “We can’t just sit back and take all of this, be listless vessels. We have to move ahead with a different vision. That was not Trump assigned. So folks, go read the transcript. You don’t have to listen to me. You can go read it yourself.”

For the record, here is that transcript:

This listless vessels quote is actually DeSantis just saying that the Republican Party shouldn't revolve around one person and their whims pic.twitter.com/lMKoV6woX4

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 20, 2023

The way I read it, DeSantis is saying that the entire Republican base cannot just sit around and wait. But I expect this phrase to come up in the debate from candidates looking to bloody DeSantis up in a verbal sparring match. He is currently running second, and no one else is gaining on him. DeSantis could have a breakout moment, and really gain some momentum – or he could be taking incoming fire from all sides on the stage, and then from the Trump surrogates later in the post-debate coverage. The governor of Florida is going to have to prove himself on that stage, and being the target everyone is aiming at gets a lot harder with no Trump onstage.

3) Donald Trump. As I said earlier, he’s just gift wrapped an excuse for Joe Biden not to debate him. He won’t be able to respond in real time to criticisms on the debate stage. He won’t be answering questions that the voters want to hear about. Instead, he’s going for a counter-programming move by doing an interview – apparently already recorded – with Tucker Carlson to be released at the same time as the debate. A prerecorded interview, to be held until Wednesday? A lot of things can happen in three days, and Trump will miss out on the opportunity to respond to them in real time.

What do you, our readers, think? Is this a good move or a foolish move by Donald Trump? After all, if you’re a voter, then you are the only person that Donald Trump has to convince. Remember, this is a job interview for commander-in-chief. Just because you’ve held the job once before doesn’t mean that you don’t have to interview for it again.

Featured image: Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)