Donald Trump and his supporters are attacking CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash before the presidential debate. It is a bad strategy that already failed in 2020.
After CNN’s Kasie Hunt ended an interview with Trump’s spokesperson because she would not stop attacking the CNN moderators, CNN issued a statement defending Jake Tapper and Dana Bash:
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined. They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.
Trump is attacking Bash and Tapper in what is widely viewed as a losing strategy of complaining about the debate before it starts.
We don’t have to rely on the opinions of others to know that this strategy is bad.
Trump and his supporters used the same tactics before the first general election debate with Joe Biden four years ago.
Trump attacked 2020 debate moderator Kristen Welker as:
“She’s a radical Democrat,” Trump told supporters on Monday in Arizona, adding that the journalist has been “screaming questions at me for a long time.” The onstage attack follows him tweeting Saturday how Welker has “always been terrible & unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters, but I’ll still play the game.”
Donald Trump has few policy positions and no interest in governing. Trump’s only concern is getting people to vote for him so that he can return to power. Given these circumstances, the ex-president can’t debate President Joe Biden, so he is going to debate the moderators instead.
Again, we know this because he has done it before.
One of Trump’s favorite tactics during the 2016 Republican primary debates was to attack the moderators. Trump thought that it displayed dominance and toughness while getting a rise out of the audience.
This ploy won’t work in 2024, because there will be no audience. It will be Donald Trump, Joe Biden, the moderators, and an empty studio.
By attacking the moderators, Trump is showing his weakness. The ex-president is trying to distract from his performance. It is the plan of a candidate who expects to lose, and is trying to build in an excuse for his defeat.
The more Trump and his allies complain about the moderators that they agreed to, the less confident they are about the outcome of the debate.
