It started out as a joke. Donald Trump offered to debate Bernie Sanders if the sponsor of the debate would donate 10 million to charity. Things got even more interesting when Bernie Sanders quickly accepted the challenge. Now, Bret Baier of Fox News said that the candidates and Fox News were in serious negotiations to make it happen. He reports that the progress is encouraging. Baier says that it could be a debate or it could be a townhall meeting.
“We’ve been talking for the past couple days with the Sanders campaign and the Trump campaign about a possible debate before the June 7 California primary. Those things are progressing, believe it or not. Both campaigns are expressing real interest, and it’s not a joke, and it’s happening, and some event will happen before the primary. We’re kinda working out the details, so we’ll see if we have something to announce.”
“There’s either going to be this full-blown debate, which we’re trying to get across the finish line, or there may be a town hall. But I think the debate is still very much a possibility.”
Hillary has been invited, too, but don’t hold your breath. If she didn’t want to debate Bernie, there’s little chance she’d want to debate Bernie AND Trump. I hope they take my advice and not put an empty chair on the stage. I think it would be grossly unfair to Bernie and Donald to have to compete against an object that is superior to the candidate too scared to appear.
“The case being, for both of them, it’s upside. The person who is not there … is Hillary Clinton. One would assume that that is going to be some of the focus of their talking points up on the stage. I think they both look at it as an opportunity, not a problem.”
Sanders appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show and this is the back and forth they had on a Sanders/Trump debate:
“He wants to know if you will debate him,” Kimmel said to Trump.
“Yes, I am. How much will he pay me?” Trump responded.
Trump doubled down on the debate discussion while in Bismarck, N.D.
“I’d love to debate Bernie. He’s a dream,” he said. “If we can raise for maybe women’s health issues or something. If we can raise $10 or $15 million for charity, which would be a very appropriate amount.”
Sanders thanked Kimmel Thursday night for “making the debate possible.”
“You made it made it possible for us to have a very interesting debate about two guys who look at the world very very differently,” Sanders said to Kimmel.
Kimmel quipped, “Oh boy, do you look at things very differently.”