He has guaranteed his place as the Republican nominee and has little need to debate anyone beyond his Democratic presidential opponent.
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Donald Trump has officially squashed hopes for a debate with Bernie Sanders, saying it would be inappropriate to debate the “second place finisher”.
“Yes, I am [willing to debate Sanders]”, Trump said.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said today he won’t debate Bernie Sanders.
But on Friday, Trump said he wouldn’t do it after all, noting that Sanders was trailing front-runner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race and “it seems inappropriate that I would debate the second place finisher”.
If the drama over the on-again, off-again Trump-Sanders debate was the first skirmish of the Clinton-Trump general election battle, you can mark Mrs Clinton down as the victor.
But Friday’s statement from Trump ended what always seemed like a long-shot proposal, if it was ever serious at all.
Let’s get real – should Hillary debate Ted Cruz after she clinches the delegates she needs? “If he paid a nice sum toward a charity, I’d love to do that”. He’s a big tough guy.
As recently as Thursday, Trump said he would be willing to face off against Sanders if either the Democratic underdog’s campaign or a network sponsor would pony up between $10 million and $15 million to benefit what he vaguely described as “women’s health issues”.
“We are prepared to accept one of those offers and look forward to working with the Trump campaign to develop a time, place and format that is mutually agreeable”, Sanders’ campaign said in a statement.
Mr Trump said any regulation he deemed unnecessary, bad for workers or contrary to the national interest, will be scrapped.
Noting states in which he won “landlside victories”, Sanders said he would tell superdelegates from those states, “Do what the people in your state want”. Mr. Trump is known to change his mind many times a day.
Sanders has won almost as many state contests as Clinton, including a string of wins in the past couple of months but has just 1,542 delegates.
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Sanders also continued to hit Trump for backing out of a proposed debate, saying that he has flip-flopped on the idea. Most politicians, they’ll say ‘I’m great, you’re awful, vote for me, the other guy is the scum of the earth, blah blah blah.’ But you know what?
