New York Times columnist and Trump-hater Thomas Friedman’s article on his concern over Biden debating Trump received some attention over July 8-9. He argues that the debates are not a “good way” for Biden to “reintroduce himself” after his hibernation at home in Delaware. Trump “needs these debates much more than Biden does…. So Biden needs to make Trump pay for them in the currency of transparency and fact-checking.” (Curiously, he chooses to label these two as “universal principles.")
First, Trump has to release his tax records from 2016-18. Why? Trump’s financial records ‘could’ expose ties to Russian banks and Putin. Second, there would have to be a “real-time fact-checking team” that would occupy the last ten minutes of the debate, to “report on any misleading statements, phony numbers or outright lies either candidate had uttered.”
Friedman doesn’t say who should be the “fact-checker,” but he clearly believes he is the omnipotent one who can pontificate on Trump’s supposed lies.
