It’s official: The Republican National Committee unanimously voted to withdraw from the “biased” Commission on Presidential Debates over the organization’s refusal to offer Americans a “free and fair forum” to evaluate presidential candidates.
“To be clear: we are not walking away from debates. We are walking away from the CPD,” the RNC said in a statement.
The decision comes after a year-long rule change battle between the CPD, which repeatedly refused to adopt the RNC’s list of debate reforms, and the RNC, which accused the commission of deliberately failing to “provide a fair and impartial forum.”
The CPD has a history of favoring Democrats by naming left-wing journalists as moderators who happily hijack Republican candidates’ talking time. In the 2020 election cycle, the CPD chose Fox News’s Chris Wallace, who asked slanted questions favoring Biden, and Steve Scully, who incompetently tweeted a private conversation he had with a notable anti-Trumper and then falsely claimed he was hacked.
After the 2020 election, when the CPD used Covid-19 as an excuse to delay the first presidential debate until after mail-in balloting in some states began and then hired a moderator who once worked for Joe Biden, the RNC and others were fed up with the CPD and its leadership.
The RNC demanded board term limits, limited public commentary on candidates by CPD staff, and a punishment process for moderators who “have apparent conflicts of interest due to personal, professional, or partisan factors.” Any attempts by the RNC to fix the CPD’s partisanship and affinity for the corrupt corporate media, however, were routinely ignored. Even when then-President Donald Trump tried to reason with the CPD, the commission didn’t budge.
As a result, the RNC has pledged to find “newer, better debate platforms” free of the corporate media’s corruption and political establishment’s bias.
“Debates are an important part of the democratic process, and the RNC is committed to free and fair debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates 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,” Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said.
