16 May—Clint Eastwood wannabe Joe Biden threw down the gauntlet yesterday: “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice. So let’s pick the dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.” [Trump’s silly hush-money trial gives him Wednesdays off.]

And Henry VIII wannabe Donald Trump picked up the gauntlet in his inimitably, delightfully obnoxious way: “I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September. I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds—that’s only because he doesn’t get them. Just tell me when, I’ll be there. Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!”

Oh boy, the big Biden-Trump fights. 27 June and 10 September. Can’t wait? Perhaps the best thing about this pair of burlesques is that Joe and Donald have wisely bypassed the well-intentioned but gratuitous and absolutely ridiculous Commission on Presidential Debates to put on the TV shows.

Of course, the TV shows won’t really be debates in any serious sense of the word, not even in the sense of the ludicrous mouthing-off opportunities that pass as presidential—and most other political—debates these days. So let’s call them quasi-debates. And Joe Biden and his advisors know that every bit as well as Donald Trump and his keepers. The quasi-debates will be be farces at best, deliberative travesties, disputative disasters, forensic freak shows.

The lead freak and star of the show, of course, will be Donald Trump. He can’t help it. He doesn’t want to help it. He revels in flaunting his freakishness and stardom. And he does it so well, brilliantly in fact. That’s why his flock fawns over him.

Trump doesn’t know how to debate. He doesn’t even know how to argue. Being a natural-born, spoiled, malignantly charismatic bully, he’s never had to argue simply because people have always been afraid to question him in any way. And we know how Republican politicians would dutifully crap their pants at his command.

So it doesn’t matter that Donald Trump can’t be bothered with facts or civility. Why should televised quasi-debate performances be any different from his other public appearances, after all? Trump is at his best clowning around and strutting his stuff in front of a live audience, of course, but he won’t hold back as long as he’s on camera.

Ignorant, discourteous, boorish, vulgar—that’s Donald Trump. And that’s precisely why he’ll win the quasi-debates in the way that counts. His ardently mindless fans and supporters eat it up. “Vulgar,” after all, comes from the Latin word for “common people.” And that says it all. Trump isn’t common in the common sense of the word, mind you. But he’s really common.

Trump won’t have to debate or even make an appearance to win. But he’ll be there anyway, just to perform as only he can. He loves it. He’s a showman par excellence. And that’s all that matters.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, will be serious, well-prepped, and well-behaved, as always. He’s not a showman par anything. But he’ll try not to be as dull as usual. So in each quasi-debate Dirty Joe will be sure to get in several (carefully rehearsed) digs at Trump. On substance, there’s no doubt the President will win the quasi-debates. Given his opponent’s intransigent, carefully calculated ignorance, he can’t lose.

Joe Biden’s performances will likely reassure voters that he’s intellectually, mentally, and physically fit for the job he wants to keep. Even though he doesn’t deserve to keep it any more than Donald Trump deserves to take it back . . .