JOE Biden’s campaign said Monday that the former vice president will participate in the three previously announced fall debates with President Donald Trump.
In a letter to the Commission of Presidential Debates, Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said that the former vice president will agree to the commission’s proposal of three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate with independent moderators.
The planned debates will be on September 29, October 15 and October 22. A vice presidential debate will be held on October 7.
“Joe Biden looks forward to facing Donald Trump in a multi-debate series that the American people have come to expect from their leaders; we hope that President Trump would not break that tradition or make excuses for a refusal to participate,” O’Malley Dillon said in the letter.
The announcement comes after Trump said last week that he was asking his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to negotiate for a fourth face-to-face debate with Biden. Giuliani was also going to negotiate an earlier start to the debates then late September because absentee balloting will begin in some states by early September.
In addition, the Trump campaign is interested in having a say in picking the moderators.
The Biden campaign shrugged off the president’s request saying, “Now that Donald Trump is trailing so badly in the polls, and is desperate to change the subject from his failed leadership of the country, we are seeing reports that he has his own proposal for debates– after having said just six months ago, that he might not want to participate at all in planned dates,” the letter read.
O’Malley Dillon went on to criticize Trump’s campaign stance calling it a “debate distraction.”
“No one should be fooled: the Trump campaign’s new position is a debate distraction. The Trump position seems to be saying that he will debate if he can pick the moderators: clearly the President, who largely conducts interviews only with favorable news outlets, is afraid of facing questions from a neutral moderator,” she wrote.
“The Trump campaign proposal for elaborate negotiations is merely an effort to dodge fair, even-handed debates.”
O’Malley Dillon also asked the commission to confirm that it has made debate arrangements should COVID threaten the planned debate.
“Nothing should prevent the conduct of debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on these dates; again, we do not want to provide President Trump with any excuses for not debating,” she wrote.
