CV NEWS FEED // President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Wednesday agreed to a pair of debates: one to be held next month, and the other in September.
The June 27 debate will air on CNN, while the September 10 debate will air on ABC News.
The agreement ends months of speculation over whether the two candidates would agree to any debates with each other before the November 5 election.
The June CNN debate is slated to be the “earliest general-election debate in modern history,” The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman reported Wednesday. “Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden believe firmly that if the American people get a look at their opponent on a debate stage they will be less likely to vote for them.”
The Biden campaign has reportedly made several special requests about how the debates are to take place.
“Mr. Biden and his top aides want the debates to start much sooner than the dates proposed by … the Commission on Presidential Debates [CPD], so voters can see the two candidates side by side well before early voting begins in September,” Swan and Haberman noted.
The Biden camp “want[s] the debate to occur inside a TV studio, with microphones that automatically cut off when a speaker’s time limit elapses,” the Times reporters elaborated:
And [Biden and his aides] want it to be just the two candidates and the moderator — without the raucous in-person audiences that Mr. Trump feeds on and without the participation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or other independent or third-party candidates.
It remains unclear whether the Trump campaign will agree to the Biden campaign’s proposed rules, including the mic cutoff and lack of an audience.
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“The public back-and-forth over debates started on Wednesday morning, after Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, Ms. O’Malley Dillon, sent a letter to the [CPD],” Swan and Haberman continued.
“The letter notified the group that Mr. Biden will not be participating in the three general-election debates sponsored by the commission, which are scheduled for Sept. 16, Oct. 1 and Oct. 9,” they wrote:
It was a striking decision for Mr. Biden, an institutionalist who has tried to preserve the traditions of Washington. Instead, Ms. O’Malley Dillon writes in the letter that Mr. Biden will participate in debates hosted by news organizations.
During the 2020 contest, Trump and Biden participated in two debates, both sponsored by the CPD.
The first was held on September 29 and moderated by Chris Wallace (then with FOX News), while the second took place on October 22 and was moderated by NBC News’ Kristen Welker.
A town hall-style debate, scheduled for October 15 and also sponsored by the CPD, was canceled due to Trump having recently contracted COVID at the time.
Biden’s X (formerly Twitter) account posted Wednesday morning that the president “has received and accepted an invitation from [CNN] for a debate on June 27th.”
“Over to you, Donald,” the post stated. “As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.”
FOX News reported that Trump promptly accepted.
The former president confirmed to FOX that he is “looking forward to being in beautiful Atlanta,” the city where the debate is scheduled to be held.
Notably, Georgia was the state with the slimmest margin on election day 2020. Biden edged out Trump by just under 12,000 votes in the Peach State. A recent New York Times / Siena poll now shows Trump leading there by ten points among registered voters.
Many of the president’s critics replied to his account’s X post with concerns about CNN hosting the debate.
The Media Research Center (MRC) wrote: “Surely CNN, the network that cuts away from Trump speaking for ‘our protection’ will fairly moderate a debate.”
Florida’s Voice CEO Brendon Leslie agreed, replying to Biden’s account: “You would pick CNN lol …Biden needs as many safeguards and reinforcements as possible.”
Lawyer David Freiheit referenced a media report from the 2016 cycle that suggested the Democratic nominee may have had an unfair advantage in that year’s CNN debate.
“Will you also receive the questions in advance, like [CNN] did with Hillary [Clinton]?” Freiheit asked Biden’s account.
Musician Brad Skistimas (known professionally as “Five Times August”) particularly took issue with the fact that the debates will likely be one-on-one between Biden and Trump.
“If you’re actually going to do this include [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] too,” Skistimas wrote on X.
Kennedy has been consistently polling stronger than any other non-major party presidential candidate since Ross Perot.
The independent contender himself took to X to weigh in on the news of his two opponents agreeing to a debate.
“Presidents Trump and Biden are colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want,” Kennedy wrote on the platform Friday morning, shortly after the post by Biden’s account. “They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”
However, later in the day, Kennedy claimed on X that he “will meet the criteria to participate in the [CNN] debate before the June 20 deadline.”
“I look forward to holding Presidents Biden and Trump accountable for their records in Atlanta on June 27 to give Americans the debate they deserve,” he added.
On the contrary, an NBC News report from just a couple hours earlier stated that Kennedy “currently does not meet the qualifying threshold for the first presidential debate Biden and Trump agreed to participate in.”
Prior to Wednesday, it was uncertain whether Biden’s campaign would agree to a debate with Trump.
The New York Times reported last month:
Mr. Biden has declined to commit to the three debates scheduled for September and October. His allies have expressed concerns about the [CPD], the nonpartisan group that has organized the events since 1988, and its ability to enforce its rules when Mr. Trump participates.
Mr. Trump has promised to debate and regularly taunts Mr. Biden for not following suit.
Also last month, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote an article in The Atlantic titled “Why Biden Should Not Debate Trump.”
“[T]o give [Trump] equal status on a TV stage would be a dire normalization of his attempted coup,” Frum wrote in the piece.
Every Republican and Democratic presidential nominee has debated his or her opponent on television since 1976. The first-ever televised presidential debate was famously held 16 years earlier in 1960.
