The NFL, however, denied sending any letter to Trump.
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In a tweet on Friday night, Trump incorrectly said that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are “trying to rig the debates”.
Her rival, Donald Trump, previously hinted that he may skip the presidential debates because two of the three clashed with National Football League games. The commission said it was “impossible” to avoid all sporting events.
The RNC is playing dumb and acting like they never heard of the debate schedule that was set by a bipartisan commission in 2015.
The commission noted that in a four-year period, there are four general election debates – three for presidential candidates and one for vice presidential candidates. “I don’t know how the debates were picked and I don’t know why those particular dates were picked”.
“CPD believes the dates for the 2016 debates will serve the American public well”.
Trump also stated to ABC News that Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were both against the NFL.
“There is a nonpartisan, independent commission that sets up the debates, right?” The NFL announced its 2016 schedule in April this year though it has traditionally scheduled games on Sundays, Mondays and, more recently, Thursdays.
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”. But as the NFL’s stature grew in the 1970s and ’80s, the presidential debates gave them a wide birth, with no face-offs between top-tier contenders running opposite pro-football games. “I got a letter from the NFL saying, ‘This is ridiculous.'” An NFL spokesman said they would prefer a different debate schedule, but there was no letter to Trump.
“Hillary Clinton wants to be against the N.F.L.”, Mr. Trump said. Their third debate, which ran opposite a Monday Night Football game between the Lions and Bears, did take a significant dip in the ratings, drawing 59.2 million viewers.
“The CPD did not consult with any political parties or campaigns in making these decisions”, the group said.
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“So we’re going to sit down with the commission in the next week or so and we’re going to start talking to them and we want to make sure we have a broad audience, understanding, watching the debates”, Manafort told CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “Like she did with Bernie Sanders, where they were on Saturday nights, when no one’s home”. It is co-chaired by former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf and Mike McCurry, a former press secretary in Bill Clinton’s White House.
