Noted mediocrity Michael Knowles took a victory lap Tuesday over Donald’s Trump commanding lead in national Republican primary polls holding despite his decision to not participate in the first presidential primary debate, which he had defended as politically smart. That this is where his analysis begins and ends once again puts the lie to Jeremy Boreing’s hilarious suggestion last year that the Daily Wire is a place of exceptional standards (just in case employing Candace Owens wasn’t enough of a clue).

Knowles simply ignores the main problem with Trump not debating, which has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with merit. Given how much Trump horrifically botched during his presidency, he owes it to conservative and Republican voters—both the ones he’s trying to convince to vote for him, and the ones who could be stuck with him as their nominee through no fault of their own—to answer real questions about how a second term would be any different, and how he plans to win the general election despite everything weighing against him. After all, it’s clear by now that nobody in conservative media in a position to land an interview with him is interested in asking.

An entire primary without any venues where the frontrunner has to face scrutiny is a farce that leaves Republicans no standing to talk about the DNC rigging their primaries against Bernie Sanders or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., superdelegates, coronations, any of it.

Knowles pretty plainly doesn’t care about any of that, but there was one challenge he saw fit to answer: the fact that in not debating, Trump has given Joe Biden a ready-made excuse to not debate either if Trump is his opponent. Knowles dismissed the point on the grounds that: “He’ll do it if it’s in his interest. That is and always has been a fundamental rule for any competent political campaign.”

Of course Biden would most likely refuse to debate regardless of what Trump does (assuming Biden is the Democrat nominee). And on the off chance he does step up, of course Trump would decide whether or not to meet him on stage based on whatever his campaign determines is best for him then, regardless of the precedent set in the primary. None of that has anything to do with why this is a problem.

Political opponents refusing to face each other in person before the American people is not normal, yet it’s something that nominee Biden very much needs. The 80-year-old president’s mental frailty is his biggest weakness, and a major public episode is one of the few things that could deliver a Trump victory. So it’s imperative that his handlers keep him out of as many uncontrolled public appearances as possible.

If Trump goes through the entire primary without debating once and still gets the nomination, it will make it vastly easier for Biden to spin his own decision not to debate, and seriously weaken whatever mileage Republicans might have otherwise gotten out of his inability or unwillingness to face his challenger.

It’s been a recurring theme of MAGA grift punditry to take these questions as if they begin and end with the primary. Trump’s doing fine now without debating, so who cares? The indictments are only making him stronger among Republicans; why wouldn’t the general electorate feel the same way? But that’s not how it works. That’s not how it ever worked. Choices have long-term consequences as well as short-term ones…including the choice to gin up an audience with superficial analysis and overconfidence that sets them up for disappointment—and the country up for disaster.