Whilst begging fat former President Trump to show up for the first primary debate in Milwaukee, titular Republican Party leader Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel last month warned the disgraced loser that he might end up giving President Joe Biden an excuse to skip the 2024 general election debates in the very likely event that they’ll end up facing each other, the New York Times reports.

The warning, which has pretty much gone unheeded since it’s all but certain now that Donald will in fact skip the debate, underscored another divide between Trump – whose minions see the general debates vs Biden as an absolute must-have – and Ronna – who has worked hard to try to undercut the Commission on Presidential Debates and force an outside alternative. The best part is the whole reason why she did it was because Trump melted down on stage so badly at his first debate against Biden and then did poorly in the second and final debate. Now Biden has all the leverage and can goad Trump into an official sanctioned debate with “unfair” moderators like Chris Wallace again.

Already some Dems are playing into the leverage. “I think the fact that Trump is utterly irresponsible and turns every event into a circus and a platform for disseminating disinformation is the basis for saying: This isn’t worthwhile,” former Obama Administration and campaign political strategist David Axelrod told the Times. Axelrod said it was also “valid” to question whether Biden could or should ultimately deny voters another showdown with Trump however, saying “whether you feel in a close race you could get away with that – and whether the public would accept it – is another question.”