In any case, Stelter asked Miller whether Trump wanted the debate dates changed:

Jason Miller: We would not like the debates not be head to head against major NFL games. We like to see some—that's something we'll be discussing as we got into negotiations.



Brian Stelter: Will Trump skip the debates if they are continued to be scheduled on football nights?



Miller: Brian, we want as many people to be watching the debates as possible. That's our spirit of it. The Clinton camp would like these debates to be head-to-head with the NFL games. So, we're going to go in and start negotiations...

In other words, Miller was unwilling to commit to Trump debating. Stelter pressed Miller further, pointing out that there was no evidence that Clinton wanted the debates head-to-head with NFL games. “Why did Mr. Trump say that Clinton is trying to rig the debates?” Stelter asked. Miller replied:

Brian, if you take a look back at Hillary Clinton's track record in the primary, numerous times they had pushed to go on and have debates at the same time as other big events that were going on, head to head against things that would be big conflicts and keep voters excluded. Our focus, we want as many people involved as possible.

Miller is right that the Democratic debates were scheduled for mysteriously low-profile times. Many observers presented this as evidence of the Democratic National Committee trying to engineer low-profile meetings to aid Hillary Clinton. If so, the decision may not have paid off: Clinton ended up having a tough race against Senator Bernie Sanders, but she consistently performed well in debates.

But all of that is irrelevant to the presidential debates. Unlike primary debates, which are scheduled with cooperation between the candidates and their campaigns, their respective party committees, and the networks that will broadcast them, the general-election debates are produced by the Commission on Presidential Debates. It’s an independent organization created after the 1984 elections, which has run the debates in every presidential-election year since. The debates are shot by pooled press, and they’re available to networks to air but have to be aired in their entirety, without commercials, on the premise that they’re providing a national public service and shouldn’t be monetized.

The idea that the CPD is working to throw the debates doesn’t bear much scrutiny. CPD announced the dates for the debates in September 2015. And while the commission studiously insists it’s nonpartisan, it is in practice mostly a bipartisan body, made of former political hands of both parties. The chairs are Frank Fahrenkopf, a former head of the RNC, and Mike McCurry, former press secretary under Bill Clinton. Other Republicans on the commission include former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and former Senator Olympia Snowe. It’s not a body that seems likely to throw the debates in favor of Clinton. (McCurry even publicly counseled her against running.) Neither of the parties gets a role in scheduling or planning the debates, nor do the candidates, although the candidates typically negotiate some mutually agreed-upon rules.