Trump Accuses Hillary Of Rigging Debate Schedule That’s Been Set Since September

It looks like ol’ Donnie Boy is already looking for a way to squirm out of participating in the presidential debates this fall.

Knowing that in all likelihood the debates will be one-on-one with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, with third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein unlikely to break the 15% threshold in the polls, the GOP candidate started laying the groundwork for backing out by claiming the whole thing is rigged. Late Friday night, Trump sent out a tweet complaining about two of the debates being scheduled at the same time as NFL games.

As usual, Hillary & the Dems are trying to rig the debates so 2 are up against major NFL games. Same as last time w/ Bernie. Unacceptable!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2016

The real estate mogul is attempting to echo a criticism that Bernie Sanders levied against the Democratic National Committee during the Dem primary. At that time, Sanders and short-lived candidate Martin O’Malley grumbled that the Democratic primaries were scheduled on off-peak nights when fewer people would watch.

Of course, what Bernie really wanted was more debates in order to gain momentum against Hillary. (Something he did receive in the end.) Meanwhile, it is pretty apparent that Trump is trying to find a good excuse to drop out of at least one, if not all, the debates.

The funny thing is that he’s lobbing these accusations at Clinton and Democrats when they had nothing to do with this. The debate schedule was finalized ten months ago by the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates. They had whittled the dates and locations down after receiving 16 applications from different universities and organizations.

The dates for the debates are 9/26, 10/9 and 10/16, with the first two falling on Monday and Sunday, respectively. The NFL will have primetime games on both nights. The final debate will be on a Wednesday night.

Now, will the mainstream media highlight that the schedule has been in place months before either party had a primary vote cast and Clinton had nothing to do with it, or will they uncritically parrot Trump’s accusation?