John Danforth, a Republican and former US senator from Missouri who has been on the Presidential Debate Commission since 1994, said Trump’s attacks on the debate commission are “just wrong.” The debate commission is non-partisan and strives to remain neutral, while Trump repeatedly claims the debate on Thursday night is “so set up.”
The moderator and debate topics were determined and agreed to weeks ago, and the co-chairman says the president’s strategy appears to be to challenge the validity of the election should he lose.
Danforth noted that like other members of the commission he has maintained a “strict vow of silence” regarding personal feelings about the campaign, but now that the President and his supporters “have attacked the commission’s integrity, I feel compelled to respond.”
The Trump campaign has accused the debate commission of protecting their preferred candidate, Biden.
Danforth said, “The same people who decline to extend the presumption of fairness to members of the commission rightly assert that Amy Coney Barrett will put aside her personal beliefs on the Supreme Court. But more importantly, the attack is just wrong.”
“(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),” Danforth wrote.
Story at CNN.
