'Strong chance' Trump 'chickens out' of debate with Biden to do a rally instead: columnist

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are scheduled to have their first televised general election debate in Atlanta, Georgia this Thursday, but one columnist thinks Trump may not even be on the stage.

In his latest op-ed for USA TODAY, columnist Rex Huppke argued that despite there being just 48 hours before the highly anticipated debate, the former president is giving signals that he may not show up. Instead, Huppke believes Trump will blow off the Atlanta debate for a campaign rally elsewhere.

"Until we see him set foot on the debate stage Thursday night in Atlanta, there’s a strong chance the former president chickens out and runs to the safety of a rally where he can comfortably air his myriad grievances and extract money from his gullible fans," Huppke wrote. "It wouldn’t be the first time he has blown off a debate. He refused to attend the second of three scheduled presidential debates in 2020 because it would be held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And this year, he blew off all the GOP presidential primary debates."

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He noted that some in Trumpworld are already trying to soften Trump supporters' expectations of his debate performance by suggesting that President Joe Biden may be "shot up with chemicals," as Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller has said, or that Biden could be on some other unspecified "performance-enhancing drugs."

"Where is the evidence? There is none," Huppke wrote. "When you live in MAGA-Fantasyland, no evidence is required, just fever-swamp daydreams."

Trump has lately been insisting that Biden submit to a drug test, implying without evidence that the 46th president of the United States is secretly hopped up on an unspecified substance. He made similar allegations after Biden's feisty State of the Union address in March, in which the octogenarian president spoke at length and with vigor for more than an hour. After the speech, Biden was essentially the last one to leave the House of Representatives after taking his time shaking hands with and taking selfies with House and Senate Democrats and their guests.

Biden's team rejected Trump's call for a drug test, and a spokesman for the president's reelection campaign dispelled notions that the president was using drugs.

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"Donald Trump is so scared of being held accountable for his toxic agenda of attacking reproductive freedom and cutting Social Security that he and his allies are resorting to desperate, obviously false lies," the spokesman said.

"Trump's going to talk trash like that all the time because that's what he does," Biden campaign adviser Mitch Landrieu told ABC News. "The other day you may remember he was trying to question our president's mental acuity and he could not remember the name of his own doctor so tell President Trump, bring whatever he's got -- President Biden will be standing there, ready for him."

Huppke predicted three potential scenarios for Thursday night's debate. The first, he wrote, would be that the ex-president "turns tail and runs away from the debate, screaming about how it’s unfair and he’s treated so horribly and everyone is out to get him. A WHAAAAAAAAmbulance is dispatched to pick him up and deliver him to a nearby MAGA rally, where he delivers a record-breaking two continuous hours of woe-is-me-ing."

He then added that if Trump does indeed come to Atlanta and debate Biden — which has rules stating that a candidate's microphone can be cut if they speak out of turn — that he could "storm off" the stage after failing to hijack the debate, thereby "creating a dramatic, faux-tough-guy scene he can use to raise more money to pay his copious legal bills." The third option would be that Trump does indeed debate, but that he would act like an "oafish boor" while indulging in "fact-free nonsense about 'rigged elections' and a 'Biden crime wave' and whatever else passes through his spider-filled brain."

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Click here to read Huppke's column in full.