‘Just wrong.’ Debate commission member calls Trump accusations ‘nonsense’ in op-ed

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A member of the Commission on Presidential Debates wrote an op-ed published Tuesday in The Washington Post pushing back against President Donald Trump’s attacks on the commission.

The nonpartisan commission, which has sponsored presidential debates since the 1988 election, is in charge of selecting debate moderators, negotiating rules with candidates’ campaigns and setting the dates and locations of debates.

But the president has recently lodged unfounded accusations that the commission is currying favor with Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign and treating Trump’s campaign unfairly.

John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri who has been on the commission since 1994, wrote in the op-ed that he felt “compelled to respond” to those attacks on the “commission’s integrity.”

“The president’s apparent strategy is to challenge the validity of the election should he lose,” Danforth wrote. “We saw this strategy initially in his claims that mail-in ballots are the tools for massive election fraud. Now we see it as well in his assertion that the debates have been rigged by the commission to favor former vice president Joe Biden.”

Danforth called the idea that any member of the commission would unfairly push an agenda “ironic.”

“But more importantly, the attack is just wrong,” he wrote.

Specifically, Danforth addressed the president’s criticisms directed at Fox News’ Chris Wallace, who moderated the first debate on Sept. 29, the commission’s decision to host the second debate virtually and the planned topics of the third debate, which will take place Thursday.

Trump’s campaign has clashed with Wallace following the debate.

Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, wrote in a letter to the commission this week that Wallace directed “almost all of his venom” at the president during the debate and acted as a “third combatant.”

Steve Cortes, an adviser on Trump’s campaign, attacked Wallace’s performance during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” earlier this month, saying he wasn’t a “neutral moderator.”

Wallace responded by pointing to the president’s interruptions during the debate.

“The president interrupted me and the vice president 145 times,” he said. “So I object to saying I harangued the president. I know it’s a talking point.“

Danforth wrote in the op-ed that all moderators chosen by the commission are “highly professional and experienced.”

“When the selection of the moderators was announced Sept. 2, neither campaign objected,” he wrote.

Trump and his campaign have also criticized the commission’s decision to hold the second debate, a town hall, virtually for safety reasons following the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis.

The commission announced Oct. 8 that the debate scheduled for Oct. 15 would take place in separate, remote locations. The president refused to participate and instead the two candidates held separate televised town hall events during the same time slot.

Following the announcement, Trump’s campaign called the decision “pathetic,” saying the Commission on Presidential Debates was rushing “to Joe Biden’s defense.”

“This is nonsense,” Danforth wrote of the accusation that the decision was made to favor Biden. “Speaking again for myself, had I wanted to help the Biden campaign, the last thing on my mind would have been to restrain the technique President Trump exhibited in the first debate.”

He also said the decision was made solely with safety in mind.

In the letter Monday, Stepien requested that the commission “rethink” the planned topics of the third debate announced by moderator Kristen Welker: fighting COVID-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership.

Stepier wrote that the third debate is “always billed as the “Foreign Policy debate” and that only a few of the topics “even touch on foreign policy.”

He accused the commission of using certain topics to help Biden.

But Danforth wrote that debate topics are chosen by moderators.

“It’s also nonsense to suggest that the commission has allowed the Biden campaign to steer the final debate away from foreign policy,” he wrote.

Danforth wrote that it’s “always fair” to question an organization’s decisions but that’s there a difference between criticism and accusations of corruption.

“It is not the honor of the commission that is at stake here,” he wrote. “What is at stake is Americans’ belief in the fairness of our presidential debates and, in turn, the presidential election. When that faith is undermined, the damage to our country is incalculable.”