Donald Trump is making a mockery of TV debates just as he has trashed so many other norms of decent behaviour and democratic politics.
He has opted out of the first two debates between the candidates vying for the Republican nomination in next year’s US presidential election.
That does not mean that he is missing out on saturation coverage in the media. Rather than appearing on stage with the people competing against him, and who mostly refuse to criticise him anyway, he sat down for a rambling interview on his own terms with the former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.
Trump is not the only leading politician doing his best to avoid meeting their opponents on the equal ground of a TV debate.
In the past decade, prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all opted out of properly organised and regulated debates.
The three leaders debates in 2010 between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, brought about by the Sky News campaign, are still the only time that British viewers have had the benefit of debates between potential PMs to match the presidential debates which have been a feature of US politics since Nixon v JFK in 1960.
Image: Cameron, Clegg and Brown faced off against each other in the 2010 debates
America’s presidential debates have provided the model for other countries to aspire to. Now Trump is undermining that example.
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2024 is set to be a double election year in the US and UK. Politicians and the media in both countries need to start considering how debates can serve the public – by informing them fairly about the democratic choices facing them – rather than contributing to the erosion of public confidence and respect for representative democracy.
Nobody can say that Trump is not media savvy. He built his public image as the boss on the US version of The Apprentice and by putting his name to ghost-written books about “The Art Of The Deal”.
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His freewheeling conversation with Tucker Carlson revealed that he is as skilled as ever at manipulating the media to his own advantage.
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Trump skips Republican debate
During his interview he praised the medium he was appearing on – a pre-recorded interview released on X, formerly known as Twitter – and derided cable news.
“We will get better ratings using this crazy forum that you are using than probably the debate,” he jeered.
He rubbed further salt into the wounds of Fox News Channel – which hosted the Republican debate, which sacked Carlson, and which has been promoting alternatives to Trump – by describing Mike Wallace, Fox’s main debate moderator in the last two election cycles, as “a b***** little man”.
Wallace has since moved to CNN – a more frequent target of Trump’s animosity but which has also found it hard to resist the ratings he brings. Earlier this year there were ructions at the network leading to the departure of its CEO after it gave a platform to Trump, who appeared alone and unchallenged on a full-length TV “town hall” show.
Mainstream broadcasters are struggling to produce even-handed, non-partisan, election events. Unscrupulous candidates have an increasing number of invitations to appear on less rigorous outlets such as GB News or X instead.
Elon Musk, X’s proprietor, is trying to make it a forum for right of centre political discourse, as exemplified by his technically disastrous hosting of the Ron DeSantis campaign launch.
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Trump: ‘We did nothing wrong at all’
Trump is boycotting the debates while his rivals attack each other and winnow out the field to his advantage.
Vivek Ramaswamy, 38, was widely seen as the winner in the Fox debate, but his policies are so close to Trump’s that they hardly threaten the original.
After they failed to make an impression there seems little point in the two least known candidates, Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum, staying in the race.
Trump’s biggest rival Ron DeSantis turned in a lacklustre performance, as did Tim Scott. Three critics of Trump – Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie – are also still notionally in contention.
Their anti-Trump stances might appeal to the wider electorate but seem certain to cost them the support of the Republican party activists who vote in the primaries.
Trump is already hailing his fourth set of criminal charges, this time in the state of Georgia, as an opportunity to boost his support among Republicans and to rake in more donations to his campaign.
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Trump mugshot released
Carlson gave Trump the chance to say what he wanted without being challenged. He gloated that he had turned the convention on its head “that when someone gets indicted their numbers go down”.
Instead “I got indicted four times” and “I’m leading by 50 or 60 points” in the Republican nomination race. “Do I sit there [in a debate]… and get harassed by people who shouldn’t even be running for president?”. His answer is no.
As his rivals grappled with each other, Trump had the chance to get in some telling blows on his ultimate rival, Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee presumptive.
“I think he’s worse mentally than he is physically, and physically he is not exactly a triathlete.”
His cruel jibes about octogenarian Biden’s state of health raise important questions about presidential debates assuming Biden and Trump are the nominees.
The two men debated each other twice during the 2020 campaign under the auspices of the Presidential Debates Commission. A scheduled third debate was cancelled because Trump caught COVID-19.
Biden “won” both debates according to opinion polls. But Biden is now four years older and frailer. There is a danger that Trump could hijack debates between them to brutally expose Biden’s frailty – to the exclusion of all else.
Image: Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer lack charisma but the public needs to see them debate real issues at election time
In the UK, neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer have shown any enthusiasm for election debates.
Both men lack charisma but one or other of them will be the next prime minister.
The public needs to see them debate the real issues facing the country at election time – away from the awkwardly structured Punch and Judy at PMQs.
Broadcasters and regulators should be working together to hold a single head-to-head between the two to take place during the campaign.
One debate would surely not detract from the rest of the campaign in the way that it is claimed by some that three debates did in 2010.
There are some tough issues to be faced. The debate should not be “owned” by any network but rather staged in the public interest.
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There is no need for participation by any third force. The Liberal Democrats’ electoral performance over the past decade does not justify participation and the SNP are a single-issue party, not relevant to the vast majority of UK voters and without the capacity to nominate a prime minister.
The influence of broadcast television is waning but it is still the most powerful news medium in the world.
Properly managed TV debates are still the best way to inform the wider voting public about the democratic choices before them – by watching the debates themselves and through the comment and analysis which percolates through afterwards.
Carefully curated debates on both sides of the Atlantic in 2024 would prove that broadcasters can be part of the solution rather than, inadvertently, contributing to the further degradation of democratic politics.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff advert featuring a clip of Ronald Reagan.
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific summit in South Korea, he also said he had reviewed the commercial and told Ontario Premier Doug Ford not to air it.
“I did apologise to the president,” Mr Carney said on Saturday, confirming earlier comments made by the US president on Friday.
“I told [Doug] Ford I did not want to go forward with the ad,” he added.
The private conversation with Mr Trump happened at a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president on Wednesday.
The commercial, commissioned by Mr Ford, included a quote from Republican former president Ronald Reagan saying that tariffs cause trade wars and economic disaster.
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TV advert deepens trade rift between Trump and Canada
In a post on Truth Social, he wrote: “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”
The ad by the Ontario government has a voiceover of Ronald Reagan criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they cause job losses and trade wars.
The video uses five complete sentences from a five-minute weekly address recorded in 1987, but edited together out of order.
The ad does not mention that the former US president was explaining that tariffs imposed on Japan by his administration should be seen as a sadly unavoidable exception to his basic belief in free trade as the key to prosperity.
Meanwhile, Mr Carney said his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday were a turning point in relations after years of tensions.
He also met Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the summit.
Donald Trump has said he is designating Nigeria a “country of particular concern” as “thousands of Christians” are being killed there.
Posting on Truth Social, he said radical Islamists are committing “mass slaughter” and Christianity is “facing an existential threat” in the West African nation.
The US president said he was asking officials to “immediately look into this matter, and report back to me”.
Mr Trump quoted figures suggesting 3,100 Christians had been killed in Nigeria, but did not state any source for the numbers or timeframe.
He stated: “We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”
Nigeria now joins North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China on a list of countries “of particular concern” due to violations of religious freedom.
The move is one step before possible sanctions – which could mean a ban on all non-humanitarian aid.
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The Nigerian government has vehemently rejected the claims. Analysts have said that, while Christians are among those targeted, the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in the country’s Muslim-majority north, where the most attacks take place.
Mr Trump’s move follows efforts by Republican senator Ted Cruz to get fellow evangelical Christians to lobby Congress over claims of “Christian mass murder” in Nigeria.
Boko Haram – which kidnapped more than 270 schoolgirls in 2014 – is the main group cited in previous warnings by US and international governments.
The group has committed “egregious violations of religious freedom”, according to a 2021 report by the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
It said more than 37,000 people had been killed by Islamist groups in Nigeria since 2011.
Churches and Christian neighbourhoods have been targeted in the past, but experts say Muslims are the most common victims of Boko Haram attacks, which routinely target the police, military and government.
Other groups operating said to be operating in the country include Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
About half of Nigeria’s population is estimated to be Muslim, who mostly live in the north, with roughly the other half following Christianity.
US travellers are currently urged to “reconsider” travel to Nigeria due to a threat of terrorism, crime, kidnapping and armed gangs. The UK advises its citizens along similar lines.
The US is drastically cutting the number of refugees it will allow into the country to 7,500, and giving priority to white South Africans.
The new figure, announced on Thursday in a memo in the Federal Registry, the official journal of the US administration, is a dramatic reduction from last year’s 125,000, set by former president Joe Biden.
No reason was given for the decrease, but the note said the admission of the 7,500 refugees during the 2026 fiscal year was “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest”.
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The notice posted to the register’s website said the 7,500 admissions would “primarily” be allocated to Afrikaner South Africans and “other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands”.
It is half the 15,000 total set for 2021 during Donald Trump’s first term in office at the height of the COVID pandemic, which reports said was the previous lowest refugee admissions cap.
Refugee rights groups were quick to condemn the proposal, with International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) president Sharif Aly, saying that by “privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicising a humanitarian programme”.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Global Refuge, said: “Concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the programme’s purpose as well as its credibility.”
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Human Rights First president, Uzra Zeya, called it a “new low point” in US foreign policy, which will “further destabilise front-line states that host over two-thirds of the world’s nearly 43 million refugees, undermining US national security in tandem”.
Image: US President Donald Trump showed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa printed-out articles in the Oval Office. Pic: AP
In May, Mr Trump confronted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House, claiming white farmers in his nation were being killed and “persecuted”.
A video purporting to show burial sites for murdered white farmers was played but was later shown to be scenes from a 2020 protest in which the crosses represented farmers killed over multiple years.
The South African government has vehemently denied that Afrikaners and other white South Africans are being persecuted.
In January, the US president suspended the US Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP) to, in his words, allow US authorities to prioritise national security and public safety.
During the Oval Office meeting, Mr Ramaphosa said only that he hoped that Trump officials would listen to South Africans about the issue, and later said he believed there is “doubt and disbelief about all this in [Mr Trump’s] head”.