After President Joe Biden and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday morning agreed to two debates in June and September, Trump suddenly began trying to push a third debate all on his own.
“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on FoxNews. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday afternoon.
Trump’s campaign had announced that it had accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Biden on June 27—as well as a second invite for a debate moderated by ABC on September 10. Biden, who had previously accepted an invitation from CNN, also agreed to take part in ABC News’s debate as well. But Trump’s post seems to indicate that the former president is trying to alter the agreement on his own. Biden’s campaign accused him of “playing games.”
“Donald Trump has a long history of playing games with debates: complaining about the rules, breaking those rules, pulling out at the last minute, or not showing up at all—which he’s done repeatedly in all three cycles he’s run for president,” said Biden’s reelection campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, in a statement.
“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms. No more games. No more chaos, no more debate about debates. We’ll see Donald Trump on June 27th in Atlanta—if he shows up,” Dillion added.
Is Trump trying to make excuses and eventually weasel out of debates? He already skipped debates during the Republican presidential primaries, but those were to his political advantage as he never trailed any of his GOP opponents in the polls. In this case, chickening out would probably look very bad. It should be easy to debate an opponent you’ve dubbed “Sleepy Joe.” Of course, Trump has little room to talk, now that he’s been caught snoozing multiple times during his hush-money trial.
