WASHINGTON – After months of doubts about whether general election debates would take place, President Joe Biden and Republican candidate Donald Trump agreed to participate in two of them: one in June and the other in September.
But there are still some details to be worked out, including the formats of the events and who will moderate. Here’s what we know so far:
Trump and Biden agreed to two debates. The first will be at 9pm. Eastern Time on June 27 at the CNN studios in battle-critical Atlanta. “To ensure the candidates can maximize the time allotted for the debate, no audience will be present,” CNN said in a statement. To qualify, candidates must receive at least 15% in four national polls of registered or likely voters that meet CNN’s standards.
Anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would moderate the debate, CNN said.
The second debate will take place on September 10th and will be presented by ABC. While ABC has not yet detailed where this debate will take place, the format or its moderators, it has set the same 15% voting threshold as CNN.
“It is a great honor to accept the CNN debate against Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website. “Likewise, I accept the ABC News versus Crooked Joe debate on September 10.”
Biden said he did the same.
“Trump says he will provide his own transportation,” Biden wrote in the X. “I will bring my plane too. I intend to keep it for another four years.”
The first debate will take place in a crowded and unstable political calendar, before either candidate becomes their party’s official nominee at the summer conventions — scheduled to begin July 15 for Republicans and Aug. 19 for Democrats.
The June 27 showdown will come after the expected conclusion of Trump’s criminal trial for hiding the money in New York, Biden’s mid-June overseas trips to France and Italy and the end of the Supreme Court’s term. That term will include a decision on whether Trump is immune from federal prosecution for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The debate will also come before the expected start of two criminal trials on opposite coasts of the president’s son, Hunter.
The second debate would take place before most states begin early voting — although some military and overseas ballots may have already been mailed.
The Trump campaign is also pushing for more debates. In a memo on Wednesday, senior campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles sent a memo to Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon saying, “we believe there should be more than just two opportunities for the American people hear more from the candidates themselves. ” They proposed holding one debate per month, with events in June, July, August and September, in addition to a vice-presidential debate.
“Additional dates will allow voters maximum exposure to each candidate’s records and future visions,” they wrote. The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the Trump team’s push for additional confrontations.
Trump has also expressed other preferences. In a Wednesday morning interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, he agreed that debates “should last two hours” and also said he would prefer men to stand rather than sit.
“A standing podium is important,” he said, adding that he thinks Biden wants to sit. He also said he would prefer events to take place in larger venues, before a live audience.
“It’s just more exciting,” he said.
The Biden campaign outlined its own preferences in a letter Wednesday. It wants candidates’ microphones to be muted when they are not recognized to speak, to promote “orderly procedures,” and opposes live studio hearings.
“Debates should be conducted for the benefit of American voters, watching them on television and at home – not as entertainment for an in-person audience with noisy or disruptive supporters and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or mockery. ” wrote O’Malley Dillon.
Biden’s team also argued that third-party candidates should be excluded. “Debates should be one-on-one, allowing voters to compare the only two candidates with any statistical chance of prevailing in the Electoral College,” wrote O’Malley Dillon, “without wasting debate time with candidates with no prospect of becoming president.”
There should also, she wrote, “be firm time limits for responses and alternating turns for speaking – so that time is divided equally and we have an exchange of views rather than a spectacle of mutual interruption.”
The Biden campaign also proposed that this year’s debates be hosted by any broadcasting organization that hosted a 2016 Republican primary debate, in which Donald Trump participated, and a 2020 Democratic primary debate, in which President Biden participated. In that case, “neither campaign can claim that the sponsoring organization is obviously unacceptable: if both candidates have previously debated on their airwaves, then neither can object to such a venue.”
These criteria would eliminate Fox News, which did not host a Democratic primary debate in 2020, and NBC News, which did not host a Republican debate in 2016 — although its corporate affiliates CNBC and Telemundo co-hosted one debate each that year. .
The agreement between the campaigns now leaves out the Presidential Debate Commission, the non-partisan group that has organized them for more than three decades. Both campaigns have expressed long-standing concerns about the commission’s operations, with Trump blaming it for microphone issues during a 2016 debate and the Biden campaign calling its plans “out of step with changes to the structure of our elections and with the interests of voters”.
Both sides particularly questioned the dates announced by the commission, arguing that debates should take place earlier, before voting begins.
In a statement, the debate commission noted that it was “created in 1987 specifically to ensure that such debates occur reliably and reach the widest television, radio and streaming audience. Our 2024 sites, all higher education sites, are prepared to host debates on dates chosen to accommodate early voters. We will remain ready to execute this plan.”
It’s unclear whether any third-party candidates will qualify for the debates, but CNN and ABC’s criteria appear to pose a challenge to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He criticized the plan on X on Wednesday, accusing Trump and Biden of “conspiring to trap America in a direct confrontation that 70% say they don’t want.
“They are trying to exclude me from the debate because they are afraid I will win,” he wrote. “Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”
In addition to voting requirements, both CNN and ABC said that to qualify, a candidate’s name must appear on enough statewide ballots to qualify him or her to reach 270 electoral college votes.
So far, Kennedy has qualified for the general election in three states — California, Michigan and Utah, according to AP Elections Research. He is listed as an independent or minor party candidate in eight more states, but has not yet qualified to vote in them. They are Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Those 11 states have a combined 123 electoral college votes, meaning he would need to vote in other states to qualify.
___ Colvin reported from New York.
