President Trump has all but said that he will be running for president again in 2024, and the Republican National Convention’s (RNC) move to clean up the debate moderation by bucking against the Commission on Presidential Debate (CPD) may indicate that Trump will indeed be tossing his hat into the ring one more time.
The RNC recently announced their plans to mandate that presidential candidates who are seeking the Republican nomination to promise not to participate in debates that will be moderated by the CPD, according to a previous report from RSBN.
This is significant because the CPD has been notoriously left-leaning in their debate moderation, tapping moderators from CNN’s Anderson Cooper to Fox News’ progressive Chris Wallace.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the CPD was formed in 1987 with the aim to help provide fair and balanced moderation during debates. However, over the last few years, the moderators have made a bad habit of covering for liberal candidates and interrupting conservative ones. For example, RSBN reported that during one of President Trump’s debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016, the moderators interrupted him 26 times compared to Hillary Clinton’s 12 times.
President Trump has long complained about the lack of fair and balanced moderation, and even refused to participate in the second presidential debate in 2020 against Joe Biden because, according to the WSJ report, he disagreed with the decision to hold it virtually in light of the coronavirus “pandemic.”
The RNC’s move to require Republican candidates to pledge against participating in debates moderated by the CPD perhaps signals that Trump himself still holds significant sway over the GOP platform, and is subtly paving his own way to step back into the political spotlight.
It also begs the question of who would moderate presidential debates going forward, and whether or not an alternative to the CPD would provide real, balanced moderation for presidential candidates.