Bernie Sanders agreed to debate his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in a Fox News-hosted debate. Not surprisingly, Hillary declined.
But what about a Sanders/Trump debate?
On Jimmy Kimmel Live Wednesday night, Trump said he was open to the idea of debating Sanders, provided a network paid them for their time and those remunerations went to charity.
“If I debated him [Sanders] we would have such high ratings and I think we should take that money and give it to some worthy charity,” said Trump.
Sanders responded via Twitter:
Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016
The Sanders campaign says “backchannel discussions” about the potential debate Trump are in the works:
While Camp Sanders may be taking the debate discussion seriously, the last word from Trump’s people was that The Donald’s remarks were “tongue-in-cheek.”
“I think it would benefit voters from across the country and I have to believe it would be one of the most-watched debates in presidential politics,” Jeff Weaver said Thursday on MSNBC.
“Let’s see if he has the courage to go one-on-one with Bernie Sanders,” he added.
The Sanders campaign is seeking to ramp up pressure on Trump to follow through on his Wednesday night remarks to late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, said he’d be open to debating Sanders if the proceeds went to charity.
Sanders’s camp seized on the remarks and is trying to pressure the businessman to follow through.
“The senator wants to do it,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told The Hill. “We’ll see if Trump meant what he said.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
A Trump official earlier Thursday characterized the mogul’s remarks as “tongue-in-cheek.”
Still, the official said Trump’s team is considering the possibility after the remarks have received so much media attention.
Trump adviser Sarah Huckabee Sanders told MSNBC on Thursday that Trump is “happy” to debate Sanders “at any point.”
But everything has a price:
Trump says he'll debate Sanders if the debate can raise "something over $10 million"
— Leigh Munsil (@leighmunsil) May 26, 2016
Trump is probably right. A Trump/Sanders debate could and likely would be ratings gold. Hillary would be marginalized ahead of the general election and bonus, she’d appear cowardly for refusing to debate Sanders. So really, this debate is a thing that must happen. For America.
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Comments
Queue up scene from Back to the Future: If Hillary does show up to the Enchantment by the Sea dance er I mean debate, she’ll start to disappear.
I suspect she’s got a prior engagement with FBI to do another security review of her email.
does===> doesn’t
With John Miller/Barron, every statement has an expiration date.
Often the next sentence.
That would make it an expectoration date?
Trump has been working on shortening that type of delay. Next sentence is too far away. Take this, for example: “I don’t want to have guns in classrooms although in some cases teachers should have guns in classrooms”. I think that can work for him; he can sound idiotic that much faster.
On topic: In this debate, which of them is taking “dumb” and which is taking “dumber”?
Trump Obtains Enough Delegates to Clinch Republican Nomination!
Where is Clinton!?
Debates in presidential campaigns are excruciatingly pointless.
At best, the people who make careers of searching for blunders, infelicities and “gotchas” get a new mine of raw material. Which is inconsequential to anyone else, and no indicator of future presidential job performance.
In the Westminster parliamentary system, a display of witty debate repartee is considered to be important … but that has little to do with national elections, as the office of Prime Minister isn’t filled by the votes of the electorate at large. It also leads to government disasters such as the years-long standoff between David Lloyd George and Alexander Haig during the Great War. Lloyd George was perhaps the quintessential Welsh silver-tongued devil, while the taciturn Scot, General Haig, was totally tongue-tied in public. This led the PM to believe that the General was a bit brain-damaged … and that belief had serious consequences for British strategy on the Western Front.
Well, at least presidential candidate debates don’t condemn millions of men to spending their formative years sitting in the mud in Flanders, so debates are relatively harmless. But they’re pure kabuki.
Trump has nothing to lose and lots to gain by debating Sanders.
The upside is he will win over the Bernie Bro’s who care more about “berning” down the Establishment than actual Sanders policy positions. And if some of his supporters decide they like Bernie better, so what? The DNC ain’t gonna ever let him win the nomination.
Debating him could also serve to make Bernie appear to be the “presumptive nominee” on the Dim side, thus making Hillary struggle that much harder to even get to the nomination. Let the nominating process tear her to shreds.
These two guys might be doing it just to piss Hillary off.
If the monies earned from the debate go to women’s health causes, the #WarOnWomen and #BernieBro narratives would be nuked.
Trump cannot debate one-on-one; he will be exposed as a lightweight who knows nothing but one-line platitudes and insults.
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American debates as currently structured are a joke anyway.
Instead of 1-2 minute soundbite answers to gotcha questions posed by “journalists” trying to make names for themselves, have real debates. Let the candidates ask the questions & answer as they see fit, with only a timekeeper to ensure equal time & prevent them from coming to blows.
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Let each decide how he uses his own time. Give detailed explanations, ask questions of the opponent, or just bloviate to run out the clock. Then voters can decide at the end who was more responsive & presidential.
The only rule is: when your half of the total time is used up, you are silenced for the remainder – so budget your time wisely or face a dead mike as the opponent castigates you.
Trump and Sanders wouldn’t really be debating each other one-on-one. They’d be debating Clinton in absentia.
They’d agree the American political and economic system is rigged by powerful elites like the Clintons, then agree to disagree on how they propose to fix things.
This is a masterstroke. Hillary thought she had shut Bernie down by refusing to debate. And now Bernie and the tramp are going to debate behind her back. That is beautiful strategy!
In case you missed their first debate:
https://youtu.be/9In0Xf8HH4k
I like the idea.
Didn’t Trump call California the world’s largest insane asylum or something similar?
Didn’t Hilary vote to build a border fence while in congress?
Does Bernie want to take 75% of Trump’s income in taxes? (*)
Didn’t Trump say he liked Bernie Sanders?
Didn’t Sanders call Trump an “embarrassment for our country”?
Didn’t Hilary say that to solve the immigration problem we should all learn a second language like Spanish?
Yeah this should be good. Maybe the rest of us should just build a wall during the debate and make sure Trump and Sanders and part of California is on the other side.
*(Bernie’s top income tax rate is “only” 52%, but he adds a new employer tax of 6% on top of the employer/employee 15.4% social security and 2.2% medicare. If you own your own company and pay both the employer / employee taxes, that’s about 75%.)
Donald’s time to sack-up was months again. He’s too afraid to debate someone on real substance issues. But as long as it means raising his ratings and bottom dollar than I’m sure he’s all about it. I bet his cheerleaders at Fox News are all about it too.