Trump just nixed the second debate. Mike Pence showed us why.

Opinion by Greg Sargent

Columnist

Oct. 9, 2020 at 12:08 a.m. GMT+9

The massive illusion-manufacturing machine that has evolved into being to sustain the Cult of Trump is arguably devoted to propping up one mirage above all others: Coronavirus simply isn’t a problem worth worrying much about anymore, because it has been largely vanquished by President Trump’s stupendous and heroic leadership.

Anything that disrupts this illusion is unacceptable to Trump. Which might help explain why he just announced that he will not attend the second presidential debate on Oct. 15 against Joe Biden, now that it will be a virtual one, as the Commission on Presidential Debates has decided.

“That’s not acceptable to us,” Trump told Fox News just after that news broke. “I’m not gonna waste my time on a virtual debate.”

The truth of the matter is that a virtual debate would rupture the entire illusion that Trump’s reelection depends upon, simply by virtue of its very existence.

For many months now, Trump has required large swaths of the Republican Party to, alternately, either treat the coronavirus as no big deal, or acknowledge it as a fearsome foe, but only to the degree that this showcases how heroic his near-total triumph over it truly was.

But most voters don’t see it this way. New polling shows large majorities don’t believe the virus is under control and want more government action against it even if it holds back the economic recovery. Voters think Biden (who embodies that position) will better handle the virus by lopsided margins. Approval of Trump’s performance on it is in the toilet.

Pence struggles to manage Trump’s grand illusion

Vice President Pence’s debate with Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) on Wednesday night revealed the basic problem here: It’s just not possible to navigate the vast disconnect between the illusion Trump is requiring Republicans to sustain and the realities perceived by majorities of voters.

This problem infected every falsehood and absurdity Pence uttered. He tried to hail Trump’s early restrictions on travel from China for saving “millions” of lives, but that’s nonsense: Not only did those restrictions not have nearly the impact he claimed, but Trump’s weeks of depraved dereliction allowed the virus to rampage out of control here long after that, with catastrophic consequences that continue today.

Pence also blamed the virus on China and insisted Trump would hold that country accountable. But that tries to make disappear the fact that Trump spent weeks praising China’s handling of it to sustain the lie that he had it under control here. Everyone knows Trump didn’t take the virus seriously throughout that entire period because they witnessed it in real time.

Pence also insisted that Trump marshaled a big governmental response to the virus, and laughably claimed that the Biden-Harris plan is to simply do more of the same. But as Biden’s running mate demonstrated, the answer to this, like the answer to all of Pence’s dissembling on this topic, is a simple one.

“Whatever the vice president’s claiming the administration has done, clearly it hasn’t worked when you’re looking at over 210,000 dead bodies in our country,” Harris retorted.

The truth is all around us, staring us in the face, every day.

Trump’s illusion is imploding

The mere existence of a virtual debate would forcefully underscore that truth. It would show that Trump has been so derelict in trying to treat this virus as being behind us — or as something he largely crushed out of existence — that he caught it himself, and may have even become a superspreader in his own right.

Notably, a key reason the Commission on Presidential Debates had to nix the next in-person debate is precisely that Trump can’t be counted on to tell the full truth about his condition or to take steps to keep it from spreading to others. The White House still will not say when Trump last tested negative, and is refusing to disclose when and how he was tested before the last debate.

That leaves it as an open possibility that Trump knew he was infected before debating Biden in person. Which means he can’t be trusted to level with us before the next debate, either.

A virtual debate would further implode Trump’s illusions. It would perfectly capture that Trump has become the embodiment of all his failures throughout, to the point where he himself has become a personal spreader of the virus and a dire threat to those around him.

This has in turn forced Trump and his spinners to invent fictions to justify his pulling out. And so Trump told Fox he won’t attend the virtual debate with Biden because he “beat him easily in the first debate” (which the latest polls show to be false), suggesting he doesn’t need any more of them that aren’t on his terms.

Trump also insisted that the new format suggests the next debate will be rigged against him. This claim was picked up by Trump’s eldest son and most devoted propagandist, who declared that a virtual debate will allow moderators to give Biden “the questions beforehand.”

These fictions are necessary, of course, because the real reason for pulling out cannot be acknowledged. It would rupture the illusion on which Trump’s reelection depends. But that illusion is collapsing, and as the virus spreads further in White House and GOP ranks, that will only get worse. Pence’s failure to sustain the illusion was only the beginning.

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