Rich Lowry to Newsmax: Biden Had all the 'Leverage' on Debate, Took Advantage of Trump

President Joe Biden and his campaign has stacked the deck for just two presidential debates, but presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took the only deal he was going to be given, National Review editor Rich Lowry told Newsmax.

"Look, Biden had the leverage because it was his side saying he might not debate and Trump sincerely wants debates and wants as many as possible — so that gave Biden the leverage to impose the conditions he wanted: an early debate," Lowry told Saturday's "America Right Now."

"You know if Biden falls flat on June 27, there's time to recover — maybe the second debate will never happen.

"No studio audience, which obviously Trump tends to feed off of, but still there's no one in the Trump camp who's crying today that they've gotten robbed."

Still, the Trump campaign stuck to its "anytime, anyplace" position on debates, because they are confident Biden cannot stand toe to toe with the Republican, Lowry added to host Tom Basile.

"You know, they want the debate, and they think even with these conditions, even with the timing, it's going to work to their advantage," Lowry said. "Now it remains to be seen."

Trump agreed to Biden-stacked conditions for the "good of the country," Lowry continued.

"One way or the other to have these guys — even if it's not the debate commission, even if it's not three, you know, after Labor Day — to in some form or another stand, you know, 10 yards away from each other, whatever it is, and try to hit each other and give their counter visions to country, that's a good thing."

Julian Epstein, staff director of the House Oversight Committee that has failed to press Democrats against allegations of Biden corruption, is praising Biden and trashing the Trump campaign, saying they could have won the "debate" on having "debates" without having to give in.

"This was a brilliant move, and for all of the smart moves the Trump campaign has this year, this was one of the dumbest," Epstein told Basile. "I mean, we've all seen hundreds of videos where Joe Biden does not do particularly well in unscripted moments, and what the White House and the Biden campaign wanted to do was take away this very unpredictable and likely bad situation for the campaign, where he would have a direct, unscripted debate — three debates post-convention

"And so what the Biden campaign did was they floated this trial balloon saying, 'Let's have this very constricted schedule: one before the convention, one after the convention,' hoping people might forget — if there's a bad performance in June — might forget about it closer to election time.

"And Trump sort of just took the debate. He took the bait."

Epstein called it "disastrous" in contrast to Lowry saying Trump took the only deal he was offered "for the good of the country."

"If Trump were smart, he would have said, 'We're going to stick to tradition, where he would challenge Biden and tell him and troll him, saying he was scared to debate under the normal schedule that time honored tradition, and Trump would have won that debate.

"But instead he hastily took the bait. And I think this was a disastrous mistake on the part of the Trump campaign."

Lowry rejected Epstein's hyperbole.

"I think a disaster overstates it," Lowry said, but added Republicans do need to stop lowering the bar of expectations on Biden, because reaching a low standard is going to come off as too much of a positive in a sea of negatives in reality.

"Biden benefits from this because Republicans talk down expectations so much and this really helped them in the State of the Union, which is not great speech or a tremendous performance, but he did stand there for 60 minutes and read a teleprompter just fine," he continued. "But the expectation was like, maybe you won't be able to do it.

"So he passed that bar and I think Republicans have to be careful about creating too low a standard here for Biden. He is president of United States and should be able to stand there for 90 minutes, making a somewhat credible performance, but we'll see."

Epstein went back to bashing Trump for not standing his ground against Biden taking all the leverage on debates."

"Any element of unpredictability works against Joe Biden, and I think that's essentially why he wanted to have this very constrained schedule," he said.

"As for, you know, Trump sort of blowing it on this one, I think the Biden campaign clearly fears an unscripted post-Labor Day three debates with an audience. If Trump had done what Bill Clinton had done to George Bush back — if you remember in '92, the Clinton campaign took these big chicken uniforms.; they were 8-feet tall and they trolled George H.W. Bush, and they said he was scared to debate.

"This is an issue that Trump would have won on by sort of just challenging Biden to conform to the normal schedule. And if he had made the case that Biden is scared and is backing down from him, he would have won that debate.

"So he has taken one of his major advantages in the fall time period, and that's why I think this was a big mistake on the part of Trump."

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