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RNC Refuses to Participate in Biased Presidential Debates 

RNC Refuses to Participate in Biased Presidential Debates 

The Republican National Committee (RNC) this week voted to withdraw from all presidential debates sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a nonprofit that has hosted high-profile political debates since 1988.

The vote was unanimous. 

For months, the RNC has threatened to cut ties with an organization it views as biased and unwilling to make commonsense changes like establishing term limits for board members. 

“[The CPD] is biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage,” argues Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

McDaniel pointed to the 2020 presidential election, during which the CPD held its first presidential debate after 26 states had started voting. The CPD is also guilty of making changes to debate formats without notifying participants and has completely failed to uphold its so-called “nonpartisanship” by appointing board members who are clearly biased against Republicans. 

In 2020, the group actually selected a debate moderator who used to work for Joe Biden and attempted to hold its second debate virtually (the event was cancelled after Trump refused to attend).

The icing on the cake occurred during the final presidential debate of 2020 when CPD officials decided to mute candidates’ mics after “interruptions” from former President Donald Trump.

As Trump himself argued when he was a presidential candidate, the head of the CPD previously worked for Bill Clinton. And let’s not forget the 2016 scandal when then-DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile slipped then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a debate question ahead of the event (click here to read previous article).

“Why can’t Reince [Priebus] feed me information prior to a debate?” joked Trump. “I am so angry at the Republicans. I want to be fed information like Hillary gets.”

Moving forward, the RNC plans to “find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people.” 

In January, the committee signaled its decision to remove itself from CPD events when it announced that it would ask future GOP candidates to avoid appearing in CPD debates.

Sources:

RNC Votes to Withdraw From Presidential Debates 

RNC votes to withdraw from Commission on Presidential Debates 

RNC unanimously votes to withdraw from commission that sponsors presidential debates 

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3 Comments

  1. John Hewett

    If they want to have unbiased debates, they need to have a conservative moderator asking the liberal candidate questions and a liberal moderator asking the conservative candidate questions. The problem is that this is to simple to solve.

    • Lawrence

      When Trump debated demented joe he had to debate joe and Chris Wallace at the same time. That’s proof of biased elections and emboldened the voter fraud.

  2. Rat Wrangler

    Had the 2020 election debates been fair, there would have been three people on the stage, as the Libertarians had a candidate for president on the ballots of all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Not only was that candidate not invited by the Commission, she was denied entry when her Party asked that she be included. Considering how many people hated Mr. Trump at the time, and how many distrusted Mr. Biden, who knows how the election would have turned out had Dr. Jorgensen actually debated the other two candidates.