“LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE”: Biden Proposes June and September Debates with Trump, Who Accepts Dates

President Biden said Wednesday that he will not participate in the decades-old tradition of three fall meetings organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, instead calling on his Republican rival Donald Trump to join him for two televised presidential debates in June and September.

Trump responded minutes later saying he accepted Biden’s offer. “I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds.”

“Just tell me when, I’ll be there,” he continued, before referencing a tag line from professional boxing. “’Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!”

The public announcement follows private back-channel discussions about possible meetings. The officials with the Biden and Trump campaigns have privately had informal conversations on debates in recent weeks, focused on meetings that would not involve the commission, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private events.

The Biden proposal, outlined in a video message and letter to the commission, called for direct negotiations between the Trump and Biden campaigns over the rules, moderators and network hosts for the one-on-one encounters. He proposed a separate vice-presidential debate in July, after the Republican nominating convention and before the Democratic nominating convention.

“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he is acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice,” Biden said in the video released Wednesday that referenced the weekly break in Trump’s New York criminal trial. “So let’s pick the dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.”

Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon cited the commission’s proposed schedule and past struggles to keep candidates from violating the debate rules in the letter explaining the decision.

“The Commission’s model of building huge spectacles with large audiences at great expense simply isn’t necessary or conducive to good debates,” she wrote. “The debates should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters, watching on television and at home – not as entertainment for an in-person audience with raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering.”

Trump and the Republican National Committee have also expressed interest in bypassing the commission, which has convened presidential debates since the 1988 election. The commission has already scheduled one vice-presidential and three presidential debates, starting on Sept. 16 with a presidential candidate meeting in Texas that would have been simultaneously broadcast by major broadcast and cable news networks.

“Let’s set it up right now,” Trump told Biden in a social media video on May 9. “I’m ready to go anywhere that you are.” Trump suggested debating in D.C. – perhaps at the White House – or in New York.

The Biden proposal will be the subject of extensive negotiations between the two camps over the coming weeks, with Biden advisers now expecting proposals to come in from networks. Biden’s team has requested that only broadcast networks that hosted Republican primary debates in 2016 and Democratic primary debates in 2020 be eligible to host the first debate. Only four networks – CNN, ABC News, Telemundo and CBS News – hosted debates for both parties during those cycles.

Biden proposed that the moderator should be selected by the broadcast host from its “regular personnel,” with firm time limits for answers, equal speaking time, alternative turns to speak and microphones that are active only during each candidate’s turn. The first debate would take place after the June 15 conclusion of the Group of Seven summit in Italy and the conclusion of Trump’s criminal trial in New York. The September debate would take place before the start of early voting.

“Americans need a debate on the issues – not a tedious debate about debates,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in her letter.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, an independent nonprofit with a bipartisan board, did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. The organization began sponsoring presidential debates after the two major-party presidential campaigns in 1984 struggled to agree on terms.

Until then, debates had been inconsistent events, subject to significant disputes between the candidates. Republican Richard M. Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy were the first to meet in a televised presidential debate during the 1960 election campaign. The next major-party presidential debate took place in 1976, followed by directly negotiated debates in 1980 and 1984.

The commission sought to standardize the practice as a neutral arbiter, creating a candidate qualification standard of at least 15 percent in national polling and a ballot access requirement that provided a path to victory in the electoral college. The commission also picked the locations, moderators and formats, eventually setting a pattern of three fall presidential candidate debates, including one town hall-style event, and one vice-presidential candidate debate.

That system has met bipartisan resistance in recent years. Biden’s advisers were furious about the commission’s failure to enforce agreed-upon masking and coronavirus-testing requirements at the first debate in 2020. Three former aides later said that Trump had tested positive for the virus days before that meeting with Biden, though he only made his condition public afterward. Biden’s aides also objected to the debate commission’s failure to contain Trump’s outbursts during the first meeting.

The Republican National Committee announced in 2022 that the party would leave the commission’s debate system altogether, calling the body “biased” because it started the 2020 debates after voting had begun, its board members had criticized Trump and it had failed to consult the campaign on some format issues. The RNC also objected to the commission’s 2020 decision to hire a debate moderator, C-SPAN anchor Steve Scully, who had briefly interned during college in Biden’s Senate office in 1978.

Two top Trump campaign advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, announced last month that the timing of the commission’s first debate was “unacceptable.”

“We are committed to making this happen with or without the Presidential Debate Commission,” they wrote in a statement. “We extend an invitation to every television network in America that wishes to host a debate, and we once again call on Joe Biden’s team to work with us to set one up as soon as possible.”

Commission co-chair Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, was optimistic as late as Tuesday that his organization’s system would endure, saying in a Zoom call with members of the moderate group No Labels that he had not heard from either campaign but expected to in the coming months.

“We do a pretty good job of walking down the middle,” Fahrenkopf said. “We don’t take sides.”

Fahrenkopf said the commission’s debates could not be scheduled until after Sept. 6, the last date when states determine which candidates appear on their November ballots, since ballot access is a condition of debate eligibility under the commission’s rules.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party contenders would not qualify under the commission’s rules, given their current polling and ballot access. But the Biden proposal would cut them out of major-party debates even if their polling rises in the coming months and they qualify for enough ballots to win the electoral college.

Biden hinted at his decision to leave the commission system and directly negotiate debates with Trump during an April 26 interview with SiriusXM host Howard Stern. Even though the commission had already announced the dates for its debates, Biden told Stern that the time and place for their encounters were still uncertain.

“Somewhere, I don’t know when,” Biden said. “I am happy to debate him.”

(c) Washington Post