A former Republican senator who now sits on the board of directors for the Commission on Presidential Debates ripped President Trump for accusing the organization of being biased against him.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post, former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., claimed Trump’s “attack on the debate commission is an attack on the election itself,” adding that Trump’s accusations could do “incalculable” damage to both the upcoming presidential debate and the election itself.
Trump called out the commission for setting him up against biased moderators, two of whom have had ties to the Democratic Party, and changing the debate topics to issues that were not agreed upon beforehand.
Danforth, however, argued that neither the moderators nor the topics were chosen to give Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden an edge.
“First, all the debate moderators the commission chose are highly professional and experienced. When the selection of the moderators was announced Sept. 2, neither campaign objected,” he wrote.
“It’s also nonsense to suggest that the commission has allowed the Biden campaign to steer the final debate away from foreign policy,” he added. “As the Trump campaign knows, subject matter for the debates is outside the commission’s province and is chosen solely by the moderators.”
Danforth went on to claim that “the fairness of our presidential debates and, in turn, the presidential election” is “at stake.”
The moderator chosen for the upcoming final presidential debate–NBC’s Kristen Welker—has longstanding ties to the Democratic Party.
She and her parents have donated thousands of dollars to Biden’s presidential campaign and former President Barack Obama’s past campaigns. She was also a registered Democrat as of 2012.
“Kristen Welker is terrible. I mean, she is totally partisan,” Trump said this week. “Her father and mother are big supporters of Joe Biden for a long time. They’re supporters of the Democrat Party, and she deleted her entire [Twitter] account.”
