According to the Washington Post, the Republican presidential nominee said on Friday that rival Hillary Clinton and her cronies had colluded with the media to schedule this fall’s presidential debates alongside National Football League games.
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The dates for this year’s three presidential debates have been in place for a year and “will serve the American public well”, the Commission on Presidential Debates said in a statement on Sunday in response to criticism from Donald Trump.
Washington University is scheduled host the second of three presidential debates on October 9. “That’s something we’ll be discussing as we go into negotiations”, Miller said.
“The CPD did not consult with any political parties or campaigns in making these decisions”, it said.
The RNC is playing dumb and acting like they never heard of the debate schedule that was set by a bipartisan commission in 2015. “But they’re against the NFL”, Trump said.
So as we move on from this story, we’re reminded that Trump did once call the NFL boring so perhaps giving the league some competition with the Presidential debates will spice things up!
The Oct. 22 presidential debate’s 51.9 million viewers – without FOX, remember – was nearly 3 times the number of people who watched FOX’s Major League Baseball coverage (7.16 million) and “Monday Night Football” on ESPN (10.66 million).
Trump’s debate disappointment leads some to believe that he may threaten to skip a general election debate, similar to how he skipped one of the GOP primary debates in January.
Given that the debates air on multiple networks and more than half the country has a digital video recorder to record one program while watching the other, it is not as if viewers must choose between the debate or football.
Trump expanded his conspiracy theory when asked about the debates during an interview for Sunday’s “This Week” on ABC: “Well, I’ll tell you what I don’t like”.
TRUMP: Well, I don’t like dates against – you know, Hillary Clinton wants to be against the NFL.
As ABC pointed out, the debate dates are set by a non-partisan commission months ahead of time. Scheduling the debates on a Sunday or Monday night in the fall is just a bad idea.
Mr. Chairman, Paul Manafort says that Donald Trump wants to participate in the debates, but it doesn’t sound like a full-blown commitment.
And Clinton and the Democrats are not behind the scheduling – the group actually responsible for that is the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which is made up of both Republicans and Democrats.
The Clinton campaign declined comment, and the Democratic National Committee was not immediately available for comment.
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“While we’d obviously wish the Debate Commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Mr Trump”, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy tweeted Saturday in response to Politico’s Alex Weprin and the Associated Press’Mike Sisak.
