RNC Wants To Shut Out Presidential Debate Commission Trump Claimed Was Biased

Topline

The Republican National Committee plans to block future presidential candidates from participating in debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), it informed the commission Thursday, after former President Donald Trump and his campaign repeatedly claimed CPD was biased against him.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump at Belmont University on … [+] October 22, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Key Facts

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told CPD in a letter the RNC intends to “prohibit future Republican nominees from participating” in debates sponsored by CPD, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has organized presidential and vice presidential debates since 1987.

The commission’s “failures,” according to the RNC, include not being sufficiently nonpartisan, holding the first debate after early voting had already begun and making “unilateral changes” to debates without informing the candidates.

The charges of partisanship included accusations that CPD’s board members had “publicly disparag[ed]” Trump and that the commission selected moderators the RNC believes are biased toward Democrats.

The RNC proposed a list of reforms it believes the CPD should make, such as establishing codes of conduct and term limits for its board members, but said it’s moving forward with plans to block candidates from participating now because they believe CPD will “delay any reform until it is too late to matter for the 2024 election.”

It’s “unclear” what will happen with future presidential debates if they’re not done through CPD, according to the New York Times, which first reported the RNC’s letter, but it could mean that the candidates and parties would have to negotiate debate terms directly with each other, as they did before the CPD was established.

CPD said in a statement to the Times it “deals directly with” candidates, rather than the parties, and the terms of its 2024 debates “will be based on fairness, neutrality and a firm commitment to help the American public learn about the candidates and the issues.”

What To Watch For

Whether the RNC’s plans to distance itself from the commission will actually happen, as the committee’s membership will first have to vote on the proposal at its winter meeting in February. Times journalist Maggie Haberman noted any rule change would be non-binding, and that since candidates organize with the CPD directly, they could simply ignore the RNC’s directive and debate anyway. If it does go into effect, though, the rule could give Trump cover to back out of the debates if he decides to run again in 2024, Haberman pointed out.

Key Background

Republican candidates have long complained about certain aspects of the CPD-organized debates, the New York Times notes, but the GOP’s opposition to the commission intensified when Trump became the party’s nominee. Trump blasted the commission as a “rigged deal” in 2016 because its co-chair was President Bill Clinton’s former press secretary—even though the other co-chair was the previous head of the RNC—and threatened to sit out the 2020 debates over audio issues and other lingering complaints with the commission’s 2016 matchups. Trump ultimately participated in two of the 2020 debates—but pulled out of another because he deemed the commission’s switch to a virtual format to be “not acceptable”—and his campaign repeatedly blasted CPD for its choice of debate moderators and perceived bias toward now-President Joe Biden’s campaign. “The commission’s pro-Biden antics have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien wrote in a letter to the commission on October 19, 2020, referring to it as the “Biden Debate Commission.”

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