In 2024, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) effectively became irrelevant after both the Trump and Biden camps basically told the organization to shove off. Trump wanted more debates than the standard three in the fall, and Biden wanted his own rules. I’ve had my issues with the supposedly bipartisan organization, which was established in 1987, but let’s not pretend that campaigns negotiating debates independently is working.
Believe me, I cannot and will not defend the CPD’s egregious left-wing bias of the past. The organization had a tendency to select left-leaning moderators who would frame questions in ways that disadvantage Republican candidates, and even inappropriately fact-check them during the debate while leaving the Democrat candidate’s lies unchallenged.
Perhaps the most notable example comes from the second 2012 presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, when moderator Candy Crowley of CNN fact-checked Romney over claims he made about the Benghazi attack. Crowley disputed Romney’s claim that Obama had waited two weeks to label it an act of terror, but Crowley falsely claimed Obama had labeled the attack as an act of terror the day after it occurred.
Recommended: Freedom Is Now Just One Election Away From Extinction
In addition to biased moderators, the topics and questions almost always come from a left-wing perspective, like questions that presume that man-made climate change is an undisputed fact or frame abortion regulation as a woman’s rights issue.
But today we have new problems because of the lack of the CPD's involvement. Now, we're seeing debates and debate rules becoming weaponized by both campaigns. Donald Trump was mocked when he wanted more debates than the CPD called for. Joe Biden ditched the CPD in order to propose his own schedule, his own set of rules, and his preferred networks and moderators. Biden published a video on social media acting all tough about challenging Trump to a debate. Even though Trump promptly accepted Biden's terms, the media narrative became "Will Trump show up to the debate?" and "Trump's too chicken to debate Joe Biden."
And we all know how that turned out.
Then, when Kamala Harris took over the top of the ticket, she insisted that Trump had agreed to the rules with Biden and accused him of trying to back out because he wanted to renegotiate since he was now facing a new candidate with a new campaign. Among other things, Trump wanted three debates with Kamala, including just one to be hosted by Fox News.
Trump essentially agreed to the debates, but then the Harris campaign wanted to renegotiate the rules. It looked like the Harris campaign was trying to find a way to back out of doing the debates, yet, according to the media, it was Donald Trump who was trying to weasel out. It's bad enough that the media was once again trying to push the narrative that Trump was "too afraid" to debate his opponent when clearly the opposite was true, but when the campaigns negotiate debates and rules between themselves, it enables both to weaponize every aspect — from which networks host to every tiny detail in the rules. The moment a campaign objects to something, it becomes a big deal.
A lack of faith in the objectivity of the Commission on Presidential Debates is what got us here, and the only way to fix this is for the CPD to truly become bipartisan. Enough with debates that are solely hosted by left-wing networks with left-wing moderators who ask questions with a left-wing bias. I don't know exactly what such reforms would look like, but clearly, having campaigns duke it out is causing unnecessary distraction.
