President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have agreed to meet for two televised debates ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Biden said on X Wednesday that he accepted an invitation from CNN for a debate on June 27, giving voters the opportunity to hear from both candidates before they cast their votes.
“Donald Trump lost two debates for me in 2020. Since then, he has not appeared for a debate,” Biden said in a video message. posted earlier in the day on X. “Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Make my friend for the day. I’ll do it twice.” Biden suggested that both candidates could meet on the debate stage for the runoff in September, referring to Trump’s secret trial in New York, joking that he is “free on Wednesdays,” the usual day off in New York. judgment.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee who refused to debate his primary rivals, responded to a proposal from the Biden campaign saying he is “ready and willing” to debate. In recent weeks, he has challenged Biden to engage in a one-on-one confrontation with him, offering to debate the president “anytime, anywhere, anywhere.”
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“Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I’ve ever faced – he can’t string two sentences together!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I am ready and willing to debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September.”
Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a letter that Biden would not participate in the traditional televised showdowns organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, citing the delay in the commission’s schedule and past struggles to prevent candidates from violating debate rules. Trump has also launched criticism at the commission, arguing that it is biased against him and starts too late in the campaign season.
The Biden campaign proposed several criteria for how the debates should be structured, calling for the debates to be hosted by a broadcasting organization that moderated a Republican primary debate in 2016, as well as one that did so in the 2020 Democratic primary, “ so that neither campaign can claim that the sponsoring organization is obviously unacceptable.” Debate moderators, Biden’s campaign argued, should be “selected by the broadcast host from among his regular staff so as to avoid ‘rig’ or partisanship.”
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“There should be firm time limits for responses and alternating turns for speaking – so that time is divided equally and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in the letter. She also argued that debates should be conducted so that voters could watch on television at home, rather than in front of live audiences “with noisy or disruptive supporters and donors, who eat up valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or mockery.”
Trump said he disagreed with Biden’s call not to debate in front of a crowd. “I would strongly recommend more than two debates,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “And for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is reportedly afraid of crowds – that’s just because he doesn’t welcome them. Just tell me when, I’ll be there. ‘Let’s get ready to make some noise!!!'”
Biden has also called for a vice presidential debate in late July, following the Republican National Convention.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
