Dana Bash

The Harris-Walz team has a plan to coax Trump into another debate. According to NBC News, the Democratic National Committee will accuse Trump of being a chicken in the hopes of getting under his skin: “The chicken billboards, which will first appear at Trump’s rally Monday in Indiana, Pennsylvania, include a digitally altered image of Trump in a chicken suit alongside the words ‘There’s no debate: Donald Trump’s a chicken.’” The tactics here aren’t subtle, but considering Trump’s penchant for taking the bait, it just might work. But if Operation Chicken lays an egg, then the last big televised event of this campaign season is next week’s vice presidential debate, when Ohio senator J.D.

On Thursday, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris agreed to debate September 10 on ABC. That’s good news for voters. They deserve to see and hear the two candidates contest the issues and explain their differences, unfiltered. The differences are dramatic. They need to be fleshed out, and they need pushback from the other side. In fact, voters deserve more than a single debate. They deserve two or three so the issues can be explored in depth, away from scripted speeches, advertising spin, and biased media coverage. The debates will be more valuable if they follow the model set by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who moderated the face-off in Atlanta between Trump and Joe Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee.

It's been twelve years since the infamous moment when CNN's Candy Crowley interjected herself into the presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, providing a live "fact check" which was, in reality, her factually inaccurate opinion.  The moment was embarrassing enough that debate commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf would later describe their selection of Crowley as a moderator as a "mistake"; she was widely criticized for both inserting herself too much into the debate and letting it get out of hand.

The upcoming June 27 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the first of its kind — a former president debating a current president, with a massive list of subjects to animate the discourse. But there is one topic in particular that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash must bring up if this debate is to have any respectability from the voters: they must confront Joe Biden about his lies in the 2020 debates. These lies have been acknowledged publicly by Tapper at least, and by Bash to a lesser degree.

Just call him Dunk Burgum! North Dakota governor Doug Burgum suffered a late setback on the eve of the first Republican presidential debate. Burgum was whisked off to the ER Tuesday night, according to CNN’s Dana Bash, after “suffering an injury while playing a game of pick-up basketball with his staff.” The rumor on the ground in Milwaukee is that Burgum has injured his Achilles, per Cockburn’s spies, throwing his appearance at tonight’s debate into doubt. Cockburn has reached out to the Burgum campaign for confirmation. Billionaire Burgum made a surge for the debate stage thanks to a creative fundraising scheme that saw a $1 donation rewarded with a $20 gift card. Could that mega-splurge have been in vain?