Well, that was easy.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden challenged Donald Trump to debate him, saying in a video message that the former president “lost two debates to me in 2020” and hasn’t debated anyone since. “Pick the dates, Donald,” Biden said, proposing two matchups—in June and September. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” the president added, referring to Trump’s regular day off from court in his felony hush money trial. Trump, for his part, quickly accepted. “I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe,” the former president wrote—prompting CNN to offer up a June 27 showdown to both campaigns. “Over to you, Donald,” Biden wrote of the offer. “As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.” Trump shortly accepted and later agreed to yet another face-off for September 10 on ABC.
And, with that, it seems we’re in for another round of Trump-Biden debates—as well as a proposed undercard between Vice President Kamala Harris and whichever sycophant Trump picks to fill out his ticket. The last time, in 2020, was an excruciating ordeal, as Trump sought to overcome his inability to speak substantively on anything by steamrolling both Biden and the moderators. “Will you shut up, man?” an exasperated Biden asked during the first debate of that cycle, speaking not only for himself but for a COVID-weary nation that had been listening to Trump’s ravings for four years.
Biden is seeking to avoid a repeat of that ugly exhibition: First, his proposal cuts out the Commission on Presidential Debates, which Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a letter was geared toward “huge spectacles”—not substance—and was “unable or unwilling to enforce the rules in the 2020 debates.” The Biden campaign is calling for the debates to feature just the candidates and a moderator, without an audience—a return, of sorts, to the format of the first presidential debate in 1960, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The Biden team also called for the microphones to be cut when it is not the candidate’s turn to speak, an obvious effort to prevent Trump from talking over him. It requested that only networks who have previously hosted primary debates in 2016 and 2020—CNN, ABC News, Telemundo, and CBS News—be eligible to host a 2024 debate (apparently cutting out NBC News and Fox News) and for the debates to be held earlier in the cycle, in June and September, so that they are “meaningful to all voters—not just those who cast their ballots late in the fall or on Election Day.”
“Americans need a debate on the issues,” O’Malley Dillon wrote to the commission. “Not a tedious debate about debates.”
Of course, keeping any debate featuring Trump focused “on the issues” is a tall task. The former, president—whose campaign also reportedly proposed additional debates in July and August—is surely hoping to use the stage not to draw policy distinctions between the two, but to overpower Biden. Removing the audience and enforcing microphone rules could make it harder for Trump to do so, but he’s still sure to find a way to bluster and distract. The challenge for Biden, who trails Trump in recent polls as he seems to struggle to get credit from voters for his legislative achievements, will be to break through that noise and lay out the stakes for November—without letting Trump drag him into the muck.
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