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Later Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “absolutely” prepared to debate the likely Democratic nominee, though he quickly added, “I haven’t agreed to anything. I agreed to debate with Joe Biden.”

The latest sign of trouble came last night. The New York Times reported:

Advisers to former President Donald J. Trump said they would not commit to another debate, one they had already agreed to participate in, now that the Democrats have changed candidates from President Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris.

The written statement from Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, was weird, even by 2024 standards. It said there’s “chaos” in Democratic politics (there’s not). It said Biden is corrupt (he isn’t). It suggested Barack Obama opposes Harris (he doesn’t). It suggested it was necessary to use Obama’s middle name (it’s not). It said the opposing party is called the "Democrat Party" (it's not). It also said “many” Democrats want to nominate someone other than Harris (they don’t).

But after combing through the nonsense, the bottom line was simple: Team Trump concluded that it would be “inappropriate” to “finalize” the existing debate schedule until after the Democratic National Convention......

When we last kicked this around, it seemed as if there were a couple of possible explanations for the antics. One was that Trump was engaged in a mind-numbing “work the refs” exercise, whining incessantly about ABC, in part in the hopes that the network will tilt the debate in his favor and in part to preemptively have an excuse in case Harris fares well in an upcoming standoff.

The other possibility is that Trump and his team are simply afraid of how he’d perform against the incumbent vice president.

All things considered, the latter explanation appears to be the accurate one.