President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Oct. 22.
Jim Watson and Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden on Wednesday challenged former Donald Trump to two head-to-head debates before the November election, with several conditions.
“Make my day pal,” Biden said in a video calling out the presumptive Republican nominee to debate him twice, once as early as next month, the other in September before early voting begins.
Both proposed showdowns would be held without the involvement of the non-partisan commission that typically organizes presidential debates.
Trump quickly fired back and accepted the challenge from the Democratic incumbent in a post on his Truth Social account.
“Just tell me when, I’ll be there,” wrote Trump. ” ‘Let’s get ready to rumble!!!”
The Biden campaign on Wednesday sent a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates saying it will not participate in the organization’s traditional debates, which were scheduled to take place on Sept. 16, Oct. 1 and Oct. 9.
“The years-long Presidential Commission model for these debates is out of step with changes in the structure of our elections and the interests of voters,” Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in that letter.
Biden instead proposes debating Trump first as soon as late June, when the campaign expects Trump’s New York hush money trial to be over and Biden will be back from the G7 Summit.
The debates would exclude any other candidate for the White House, including Robert Kennedy Jr., “not squandering debate time on candidates with no prospect of becoming President,” O’Malley Dillon wrote.
In Biden’s video, posted on the social media site X, the president said, “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again.”
“Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice. So let’s pick the dates, Donald,” Biden said.
“I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” the president cracked, referring to the day when court is not in session for Trump’s ongoing trial.
Trump in his Truth Social post wrote: “Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced – He can’t put two sentences together! Crooked is also the WORST President in the history of the United States, by far.”
Trump added, “It’s time for a debate so that he can explain to the American People his highly destructive Open Border Policy, new and ridiculous EV Mandates, the allowance of Crushing Inflation, High Taxes, and his really WEAK Foreign Policy, which is allowing the World to ‘Catch on Fire.’ I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September.”
“I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds – That’s only because he doesn’t get them,” Trump wrote.
To ensure the appearance of fairness, the Biden campaign said that it wants the debates to be held by a news organization that hosted a 2016 Republican primary debate which Trump participated in, and a 2020 Democratic primary debate which Biden participated in.
The campaign added that each candidate should have firm time limits for responding to questions and that when a candidate is not speaking, his microphone should be turned off to avoid “a spectacle of mutual interruption.”
