Tom Zawistowski, president of the We the People Convention, said he believes former President Donald Trump made a mistake in agreeing to a CNN debate against President Joe Biden.
Both Trump and Biden announced Wednesday that they accepted an invitation to participate in a presidential debate at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta on June 27.
“It is my great honor to accept the CNN Debate against Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST PRESIDENT in the History of the United States and a true Threat to Democracy, on June 27th,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Trump and Biden also agreed to participate in a debate hosted by ABC on September 10.
While Trump has previously said he would debate Biden at “anytime, anywhere, and anyplace,” Zawistowski said he should not have agreed to participate in debates in which Biden sets the terms and rules.
“I believe that [Trump] has the upper hand. I believe he was doing a great job of putting Biden and his people on defense, because, obviously, we all think that Trump would destroy Biden in a debate. So when Biden finally said, ‘Okay, I’m going to debate you,’ that was good, but we were just shocked that President Trump would agree to the terms that he did,” Zawistowski explained on Thursday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“I have people pushing back at me saying, ‘Trump said he’d, debate him anywhere, anytime,’ but he never said under any rules…It’s going to be on CNN again, which, to me, makes no sense since they’re a fading, leftist, mouthpiece propaganda machine which only has 600,000 viewers during primetime. That’s not a real outlet. Second of all, they’re going to have all these rules like no crowd, can’t have any crowd, but I don’t even know if you notice this, but he also agreed that they could mute his microphone so that he can’t interrupt Biden. When Biden says something that’s a lie, Trump agreed they could mute his microphone. There’s no reason to agree to this. We certainly don’t think that’s the art of the deal,” Zawistowski added.
In addition to the technical terms of the debate, Zawistowski also pointed out different measures CNN may take behind the scenes to give Biden an edge.
“I’m concerned that it’s going to be like the fake January 6th committee where it’s staged, literally. For instance, there’s nothing they won’t do. So they will do things to the lighting. They will make Trump look worse than Biden with the lighting…One of the big concerns is that they’re going to give Biden the questions,” Zawistowski said.
Zawistowski suggested that Trump require that he and Biden both pick their own moderator who poses questions to the other candidate so that neither candidate knows which questions will be asked during the debate.
“It should be a thing where both Trump and Biden get to pick one moderator and the moderator Trump picks is the only one to ask questions of Biden and the moderator that Biden picks is the only one to ask questions of Trump. That way no one can know the questions. That’s a very basic thing,” Zawistowski said.
“We don’t want to see [Trump] in another trap. We want to see the end to this where they are calling all the shots,” Zawistowski added.
Zawistowski theorized that Biden’s decision to accept a debate with Trump is a “move of desperation” on behalf of the Biden campaign, which the former president should not give in to.
“What bothers me with this is that this is clearly a move of desperation,” Zawistowski explained.
“I think a lot of people are seeing this two ways. There’s one group of people who are saying, the people who want to bring in Michelle Obama or want to bring in Newsom or somebody and want to get rid of Biden, they push for this [debate] because this could be the end of Biden. It could just blow him up. The other side of the group is saying, ‘We are just free falling in the polls and nothing we’re doing is working and so we’ve got to stage this phony debate to try to make Trump look bad and make Biden look good.’ Neither one of those, I’m not sure necessarily, is in our best interest,” Zawistowski added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Joe Biden” by Joe Biden. Background Photo “Debate Stage” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
