Adam Boulton: ‘Like those old guys on The Muppets’ – bad sign for democracy as Trump and Biden call shots on how they will debate
That was easy. Donald Trump and Joe Biden duelled briefly over the airwaves about debating.
“Any time, any place, anywhere,” the Republican candidate had challenged. “Make my day, pal” the president retorted movie-style.
In just a matter of hours the two men agreed to Joe Biden‘s proposal for two televised presidential debates before the election on 5 November – at CNN HQ in Atlanta on 27 June and on ABC forum on 10 September.
There will be more role-playing between now and the agreed showdowns. Biden has already rejected Trump’s counter-offer of two further debates including one on Fox News.
But once again the US does seem on course to hold debates between the frontrunners for the White House, as it has in most of the presidential cycles since JFK took on Richard Nixon in 1960. The UK has only managed to hold proper equivalent prime ministerial leaders debates in 2010.
The two candidates will confront each other in different circumstances than previously. They will meet earlier in the cycle of the election year and without the usual rules.
Both sides have agreed to cold shoulder the widely respected Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which had proposed three debates before mass audiences closer to polling day.
The Republicans and the Democrats have decided that the CPD model is outdated because of the changing nature of campaigning and voting, the evolving demands of the media and above all because of the unique nature of this campaign in which the two main candidates have become clear so early in the year and in which they are the oldest in America’s political history.
“It’ll be entertaining, informative. Like those two old guys on The Muppets,” former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney quipped to Huffpost.
Pic: Disney/Kobal/Shutterstock
The traditional CPD debates are one of the many norms of US politics which have been subverted by Donald Trump.
According to opinion polls held afterwards as to “who won the debate?”, he is a poor debater.
He “lost” all three of his encounters with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and both of his debates against Biden in 2020.
Biden also “won” both his vice presidential debates against Sarah Palin in 2008 and Paul Ryan in 2012.
Yet what is remembered is Trump’s behaviour. He roamed about the stage and loomed threatening behind Hillary Clinton.
He invited her husband’s alleged ex-girlfriends to sit in the front row of the audience.
He called Biden “demented” before their first debate and abused him to his face, saying: “There’s nothing smart about you Joe.”
Trump refused to abide by the rules and talked over the moderator and Biden.
A senior White House correspondent summed up their first presidential debate as “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck”.
Trump refused to take the required COVID test to take part and then developed it, resulting in the cancellation of their next scheduled debate.
At their final debate, a technician was employed to switch off the participants’ microphones except during their allotted speaking time.
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It is usually the underdog who issues the challenge to debate. Biden has been trailing narrowly in key opinion polls and needs the debates to demonstrate that he is still up to the job at the age of 81.
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Many observers think that the president is actually showing fewer signs of cognitive impairment than Trump, who is only four years younger and whose rally speeches are becoming increasingly incoherent rants.
When the two men debate this summer, Biden may well “beat” Trump again. But Trump’s antics could well dominate – and they certainly impress some voters.
The problems with the debates four years ago explain why neither side wants to put the commission in charge this time.
The Republicans have accused the CPD of bias and the Democrats blame it for not keeping order.
Significantly the first debate this year, on CNN, will be in a studio without a live audience for the first time in the US presidential history.
Both sides also wanted to have their encounters earlier in the summer because there is an increasing trend to vote earlier, with some states opening their polls as early as September.
Biden and Trump during a presidential debate in Nashville in 2020. Pic: Reuters
The agreed debates will be head-to-heads between Biden and Trump, which suits them both because Robert F Kennedy Jnr is working flat out to get on enough state ballots to qualify for a CPD debate.
Polling suggests he would take votes from each of them and could have a decisive impact on who wins.
President Biden gift wrapped his debate invitation with the cheeky tag “I hear you are free on Wednesdays” because the criminal court where Trump is currently on trial does not sit on Wednesdays.
The dates they’ve agreed are actually a Tuesday and a Thursday but the dig still stands.
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The first Biden-Trump debate in 2020 drew 71 million viewers in the US making it the third most-watched presidential debate behind only Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Ronald Reagan versus Jimmy Carter in 1980.
But average audiences for the debates are diminishing.
Nate Silver, a leading political statistician, points out they are one of the few fixed points in a campaign which can have some direct impact today when “almost nothing moves the polls these days because the candidates are so well known and everybody is so partisan”.
America’s news networks have found out that Trump drives up ratings, even when the station’s editorial policy opposes him.
CNN gave his rallies saturation coverage in 2016 and apologised more recently when Trump was allowed to monopolise a “town hall” on the channel.
Now the networks and their guest debaters have parted company with the protections provided by the CPD and its heavily regulated debates before live audiences on university campuses.
They will be under pressure to show they can provide fair and informative programmes for their viewers and not just entertainment.
The precedents for success are not good from the UK, where broadcasters abandoned working together following a rigid formula after 2010.
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By competing against each other they effectively gave the whip hand to the politicians, who were free to withdraw or bestow their favours.
Since then the subsequent debate-style election programmes have not made a significant informative or influential impact on the campaigns. The viewers, a.k.a the electorate, have lost out.
This year the two people vying to be the leader of the free world are calling the shots on how they will debate.
It is hardly encouraging for democracy that a senior senator like Mitt Romney’s first comparison is with The Muppet Show.
At least 51 people have died after heavy rain caused flash flooding, with water bursting from the banks of the Guadalupe River in Texas.
The overflowing water began sweeping into Kerr County and other areas around 4am local time on Friday, killing at least 43 people in the county.
This includes at least 15 children and 28 adults, with five children and 12 adults pending identification, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a news conference.
In nearby Kendall County, one person has died. At least four people were killed in Travis County, while at least two people died in Burnet County. Another person has died in the city of San Angelo in Tom Green County.
People comfort each other in Kerrville, Texas. Pic: Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP
Large piles of debris in Kerrville, Texas, following the flooding. Pic: Reuters//Marco Bello
An unknown number of people remain missing, including 27 girls from Camp Mystic in Kerr County, a Christian summer camp along the Guadalupe River.
Rescuers have already saved hundreds of people and would work around the clock to find those still unaccounted for, Texas governor Greg Abbott said.
But as rescue teams are searching for the missing, Texas officials are facing scrutiny over their preparations and why residents and summer camps for children that are dotted along the river were not alerted sooner or told to evacuate.
AccuWeather said the private forecasting company and the National Weather Service (NWS) sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before the devastation, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas.
Debris on the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt. Pic: AP Photo/Julio Cortez
An overturned vehicle is caught in debris along the Guadalupe River. Pic: AP
The NWS later issued flash flood emergencies – a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
“These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,” AccuWeather said in a statement that called Texas Hill County one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the US because of its terrain and many water crossings.
But one NWS forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.”It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” he said.
Officials said they had not expected such an intense downpour of rain, equivalent to months’ worth in a few short hours, insisting that no one saw the flood potential coming.
One river near Camp Mystic rose 22ft in two hours, according to Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the NWS’s Austin/San Antonio office. The gauge failed after recording a level of 29.5ft.
A wall is missing on a building at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
Bedding items are seen outside sleeping quarters at Camp Mystic. Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
A Sheriff’s deputy pauses while searching for the missing in Hunt, Texas.Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
“People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast,” Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at AccuWeather, said in a statement.
“We know we get rain. We know the river rises,” said Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, the county’s top elected official. “But nobody saw this coming.”
Judge Kelly said the county considered a flood warning system along the Guadalupe River that would have functioned like a tornado warning siren about six or seven years ago, before he was elected, but that the idea never got off the ground because “the public reeled at the cost”.
A drone view of Comfort, Texas. Pic: Reuters
Officials comb through the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas. Pic: AP/Julio Cortez
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was asked during a news conference on Saturday whether the flash flood warnings came through quickly enough: “We know that everyone wants more warning time, and that is why we are working to upgrade the technologies that have been neglected for far too long.”
Presidential cuts to climate and weather organisations have also been criticised in the wake of the floods after Donald Trump‘s administration ordered 800 job cuts at the science and climate organisation NOAA, the parent organisation of the NWS, which predicts and warns about extreme weather like the Texas floods.
A 30% cut to its budget is also in the pipeline, subject to approval by Congress.
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Professor Costa Samaras, who worked on energy policy at the White House under President Joe Biden, said NOAA had been in the middle of developing new flood maps for neighbourhoods and that cuts to NOAA were “devastating”.
“Accurate weather forecasts matter. FEMA and NOAA matter. Because little girls’ lives matter,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a national security and intelligence analyst at Sky’s US partner organisation NBC News.
Elon Musk says he has created a new political party – the America Party –
after asking his followers if he should do so in an online poll.
It follows his public falling out with Republican President Donald Trump.
On Friday, the billionaire had asked his followers on X whether a new US political party should be created.
On Saturday evening he wrote on the same platform: “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!
“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.
“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
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Trump threatens to ‘put DOGE’ on Musk
The world’s richest man made the announcement just one day after President Trump signed a tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk had fiercely opposed.
Musk had previously said we would form and fund a new political party to unseat lawmakers who supported the bill.
From bromance to bust-up
The Tesla boss backed Trump’s election campaign with more than a quarter of a billion dollars, later rewarded with a high profile role running the newly created department of government efficiency (DOGE).
But observers of the two men, both with huge wealth and reputations, wondered how long the bromance would last.
Donald Trump gave Musk a warm send-off in the Oval Office in May. Pic: Reuters
In May Musk left the role, still on good terms with Trump but criticising key parts of his legislative agenda.
After that, the attacks ramped up, with Musk slamming the sweeping tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination” and Trump hitting back in a barbed tit-for-tat.
Trump earlier this week threatened to cut off the billion-dollar federal subsidies that flow to Musk’s companies, and said he would even consider deporting him.
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