Never Trump’s Bill Kristol Calls for Presidential Debates to Be Canceled

Never Trump stalwart Bill Kristol, the former editor and founder of the now-defunct Weekly Standard, tweeted Tuesday that the presidential debates should be canceled in favor of three vice presidential debates.

Kristol commented in the wake of former Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) would be his running mate in the 2020 presidential election.

“Just an innocent thought: We’ve seen Biden in office for over four decades, and we’ve seen Trump nonstop for the last four years,” Kristol tweeted. “We’ve seen enough to make up our minds about them. So let’s skip the presidential debates but have three vice-presidential debates.”

Just an innocent thought: We’ve seen Biden in office for over four decades, and we’ve seen Trump nonstop for the last four years. We’ve seen enough to make up our minds about them. So let’s skip the presidential debates but have three vice-presidential debates.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 11, 2020

It is not the first time Kristol has suggested a departure from the democratic norm. In 2017, he suggested that he would support a coup against President Trump.

Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 14, 2017

Kristol is only the latest opponent of President Donald Trump to endorse the idea that Biden should not debate Trump.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, CNN contributor Joe Lockhart, and former Hillary Clinton adviser urged Biden not to debate Trump — or, in Friedman’s case, not to debate him unless Trump released his tax returns and agreed to live, real-time “fact-checking.”

Ironically, CNN called the discussion of whether Biden should, or should not, debate Trump an “imaginary controversy” cooked up by conservative pundits.

Harris is scheduled to debate Vice President Mike Pence on Oct. 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. It will be their only debate in the general election.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.