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Agent Orange foolishly accepted the challenge. So the first debate will take place in Georgia on June 27. It will air on CNN, to be moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

Here鈥檚 why Trump has already lost: there will be no studio audience.

Imagine a Trump speech in an empty stadium. There is no sea of red hats cheering as Dear Leader inverts reality and force-feeds his cultists a word salad off the teleprompter.

The big, fat lies have no feedback loop to sustain them. When Trump gushes about Al Capone or muses about shark attacks, there is no zombie applause. When he hails the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter as a 鈥渨onderful man鈥� or makes up easily disprovable facts and figures, it all dies in the silence of the gullible lambs.

Trump said he wanted to debate Biden. Biden called his bluff. Trump is doomed.

This is why hours after the debates were set 鈥� the second will take place Sept. 10 on ABC 鈥� GOP operatives were recoiling to their fainting couches. They know the Trump grand illusion relies upon his ride-or-die fanatics. But if partisan boosters aren鈥檛 thundering after every crazy word, all you鈥檝e got left are the crazy words.

And on a debate stage, crazy words tend to lose elections.

Another mental exercise. Donald Trump is exactly the same. But now he鈥檚 an unknown pensioner. He sits down beside you on a park bench. You glance over and wonder why there are white goggle marks around his eyes. Why is his skin the colour of marigolds at sundown? Is that human hair or did Trader Joe鈥檚 Pasta dispatch culinary artists to Gorilla Glue uncooked linguine to his scalp in layered cross-hatches?

Then he starts talking about how pigeons are communists. The radical left wants to outlaw swings. You politely walk away with a grimacing smile. But if he said that as strangers gathered around to whoop in agreement, you鈥檇 wonder if you were missing something.

A debate with no audience exposes the essential Trump 鈥� a lunatic on a park bench.

Team Biden also cut out the middleman. Per Reuters: 鈥淏iden said he would not take part in the traditional televised showdowns organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, rejecting the non-partisan organization that has managed them since 1988.鈥�

Good riddance. The silly putty rules during the 2016 and 2020 debates allowed Trump to bellow over Hillary Clinton and then Biden. The disruptions were always off topic. Why? Trump has no command of any topic. He doesn鈥檛 know anything. If you asked him to explain how tariffs work, he鈥檇 tell you his golf handicap. If Trump were an extinct dinosaur, scientists would assign the name Ignoramus Interruptus.

Next month鈥檚 debate will include measures to guard against interjection. Moderators should cut mics when time runs out on a given response. Put Trump on mute already. Oh, his mouth will still be motoring. His arms will flail like a sky jumper free-falling with an entangled chute. But TV viewers will not hear him run his poisonous yap.

Biden will detail his achievements. Trump will be reduced to an unhinged mime.

I would also encourage CNN to get tough on lying. A backstage team of fact-checkers, working with AI, can easily test the veracity in real time of any false claim. At this point, a marsupial with severe hearing loss could fact-check Trump.

Are his lips moving? OK, he鈥檚 lying.

Agreeing to debate Biden may be Trump鈥檚 dumbest move yet.

Now independents, the demo that swings American elections, will be presented with a stark contrast stripped bare of robotic cheerleading. Biden versus Trump. Mano-a-mano. Two competing visions. Two very different moral characters. One question:

Vote for the guy who cares about the country or the guy who only cares about himself?

By baiting Trump into hastily agreeing to debate, Joe Biden has proved yet again that he is playing 5D chess as his opponent licks the tiddlywinks from a Happy Meal.

It鈥檚 been amusing to watch Trump surrogates and sycophants try to reduce expectations or offer pre-emptive excuses this week. Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and come-to-life mannequin from a Saks Fifth Avenue window, predicted the debates would be 鈥渞igged.鈥�

Even Trump鈥檚 daughter-in-law expects him to get shellacked.

My hunch: Donald Trump will wiggle out of these debates with Joe Biden.

He鈥檚 getting tired of all this losing.