Now that the national conventions have come and gone, Donald Trump is turning his attention toward potential excuses for getting out of the presidential debates. He's made it clear he wants the two presidential debates that happen on the same night as NFL games to be rescheduled, because heaven knows we cannot practice our national democracy on Sporting Nights. He claims to have received a letter from the NFL moaning about the "ridiculous" scheduling of those debates; as per usual for Trump, that turned out to be a lie.
The Commission on Presidential Debates is unimpressed with Trump’s complaints, noting that the debates are scheduled a year in advance and that the republic has indeed survived previous presidential debates being held on sporting nights. But it's difficult to see this as anything but Trump laying the groundwork for skipping one or more of the debates entirely.
He did the same thing during the Republican primaries, skipping a Fox News debate over the mere presence of his enemy-of-the-moment Megyn Kelly, then bowing out of a March scheduled Fox debate after claiming nobody on his staff had told him it was happening while opining that "we've had enough debates," so there. He's also been obsessed throughout the process with the notion that his presence in the debates is primarily a gift to the media outlets that host him—and one that can be stripped, if he's not feeling magnanimous.
It's entirely possible he'll do the same with any or all of the debates against Hillary Clinton. If the past is any indication, he'll start by suggesting that the host, in this case the Commission on Presidential Debates, has insulted him in some fashion—perhaps by scheduling the nights to conflict with things his voters would rather watch. He might protest that there is no point to the debates anyway, as they're merely tools for networks to get ratings at his expense. He may declare that The Mean Woman Has Been Treating Him Badly, and simply run away.
After a convention that was widely seen as somewhere between pathetic and disastrous and days of bad press about him caused, once again, by his own enormous mouth, he's probably not to eager to get on a stage with Hillary Clinton. Place your bets: Will he back out? And what excuse will he use this time around?