Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort continued to push back against the prearranged schedule of presidential debates on Sunday, citing a need to “maximize the audience”. It is impossible to avoid all sporting events, and there have been nights on which debates and games occurred in most election cycles. “We’re not going to be having debates on Saturday and Sunday nights, I don’t believe”, Priebus said Sunday. “A debate has never been rescheduled as a result”, CPD, a non-partisan group made up of Republicans and Democrats, added. ‘Cause the debates are gonna be pretty massive, from what I understand, OK?’
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Manafort also insisted that he did not question the independence of the commission.
The CPD, a nonpartisan, independent presidential debate commission, serves as the event sponsor and sets the participation criteria, dates, sites and formats.
The first presidential debate of 2016, scheduled for September 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., runs up against “Monday Night Football” on ESPN. The second, October 9 at Washington University in St. Louis, clashes with “Sunday Night Football” on NBC.
Whether the debate scheduling drama means Trump will skip out of upcoming debates or not isn’t clear yet – but clearly, organizations won’t be letting the Republican candidate use them as an excuse for bowing out or rabble-rousing.
Trump, who tweeted on Friday that Clinton was “trying to rig the debates” so that fewer people would watch, suggested in the ABC interview that his rival wanted the debates to be held “when nobody’s home” to watch.
The billionaire businessman also says that the football league has complained to him about the debate schedule in a letter.
Trying to schedule a large-scale public event in the fall, while also avoiding conflicts with major sporting events is almost impossible.
Asked about Trump’s assertion, National Football League spokesman Brian McCarthy tweeted on Saturday: ‘While we’d obviously wish the Debate Commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Mr Trump’. But in 2016, there is plenty of opportunity to watch multiple things, to DVR a game or a debate, or to simply watch highlights that are repeated non-stop for the next several days.
And recently leaked emails show that the DNC indeed meant to undermine the campaign of Clinton primary rival Vermont Sen. “The DNC hack showed you that the Clinton campaign was working to schedule debates against Sanders which have the least possible viewing audience”.
“I think two of the three are against the National Football League, so I’m not thrilled with that”, the Republican presidential nominee said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” that aired on Sunday.
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The dates for the three debates ahead of the November 8 USA presidential election were picked a year ago and “will serve the American public well”, the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates said in a statement on Sunday.
