“Top Republicans summoned the bureau chiefs of the five major television networks to the party’s Capitol Hill headquarters this spring for a secret meeting aimed at breaking the country’s 35-year-old system for presidential debates,” the Washington Post reports.
“With everyone in the same room, the Republican National Committee’s leadership wanted to know if the networks would agree to broadcast 2024 general election debates that were sponsored by a third-party organization other than the Commission on Presidential Debates…”
“The bureau chiefs made no definite commitments, these people said, but several expressed openness to the idea if both major candidates agreed — effectively greenlighting the party’s continued efforts to remake the most-watched events of the U.S. presidential campaign season.”