Opinion
Review & Outlook
Why Is Donald Trump Afraid to Debate?
He’s ducking exchanges with his competitors who could challenge his record and platform.
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 20, 2023 6:37 pm ET
Donald Trump has a big lead in the polls for the GOP presidential nomination, but he’s acting as if he has already won. After skipping the first GOP debate, he is also planning to blow off the second one, scheduled for next week at the Reagan Presidential Library in California. Instead Mr. Trump will give a speech to union workers in Detroit.
Why is Mr. Trump afraid to confront other Republicans without the aid of a teleprompter? Is he worried he’d look his age at 77 next to younger candidates? To state the obvious, Mr. Trump is running to be President and leader of the free world. Voters deserve to hear him defend his record and his platform.
• Abortion.Mr. Trump said this weekend that Gov. Ron DeSantis made a “terrible mistake” by signing Florida’s six-week abortion ban. Yet Mr. Trump refuses to explain where in pregnancy he’d draw the line, saying vaguely that “we’ll come up with a number.”
How? By spinning a giant wheel, like on a TV game show, except marked with “10 weeks,” “15 weeks,” and so forth? The public takes the abortion question seriously, and Mr. Trump owes a serious answer.
• Covid-19.Whose pandemic policies worked? Mr. Trump has exchanged barbs with Mr. DeSantis, and a recent Trump advertisement intones that “Lockdown Ron” failed Florida. But Florida was one of the earliest states to reopen, and it became a mecca for many Americans fleeing the locked-down blue states.
“Even January of 2021, I was getting hit by the White House task force under Trump,” Mr. DeSantis recalled recently. “Weeks before he left office, they were sending us missives to Florida, saying, ‘Impose a mask mandate, and close bars and restaurants and businesses.’” Covid was a classic example of an unexpected crisis that Presidents have to face, and Mr. Trump’s record deserves a public vetting.
• Trade and tariffs.Mr. Trump wants to impose a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports, which would cost Americans something like $300 billion a year, while inviting retaliation and alienating friends and allies. Sen. Tim Scott’s new economic plan says he would “avoid blunt trade wars with our friends and allies that hurt consumers and set us back in the mission of isolating China.” It sounds like a good subject to debate.
• Foreign policy.Mr. Trump believes so much in the art of the deal that he has pledged to have the Ukraine war “solved in 24 hours.” Maybe his fans take this seriously and not literally, but he ought to explain what he means. Former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his book that Mr. Trump signaled privately he wouldn’t defend Taiwan if China invaded. Is that what he thinks now?
• Jan. 6, 2021. Was Mike Pence right, before and after the Capitol riot, to insist on counting the Electoral College votes for President Biden? During the first GOP debate, the consensus on the stage was yes. Mr. Trump should give his response, including his answer to why his contrary theory wouldn’t let Vice President Kamala Harris reject Republican electors after the 2024 campaign.
• Age and competence.The public is understandably worried about the visible decline of Mr. Biden, who is 80 years old and would be 86 at the end of a second term. Yet Mr. Trump would be 82 at the end of his second term in 2029, and he isn’t exactly in shape to set records at the YMCA senior triathlon. Do the concerns about age not apply to him?
If Mr. Trump wasn’t able to tame the federal leviathan the first time, why should Republicans believe he can do it next time? And who would agree to serve in a second Trump Administration after all the good people he fired and then belittled in the first one?
• Electability. If the GOP fields a candidate from Mr. Biden’s generation, instead of someone more vigorous, wouldn’t it be giving up an advantage over the incumbent? And did Mr. Trump really try to delete the security tapes at Mar-a-Lago to hide his classified files, as the strongest indictment against him alleges?
Mr. Trump’s advisers may be telling him he shouldn’t appear lest he say something that hurts his legal defense. But that’s a sign of weakness, not strength, and he’ll have to answer those questions eventually. What is the former President afraid of?
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Appeared in the September 21, 2023, print edition as 'Why Is Donald Trump Afraid to Debate?'.
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