US: Biden says open to 2 presidential debates against Trump

Following repeated challenges from Donald Trump in recent weeks, US President Joe Biden made his most direct comments yet on the prospect of holding televised presidential debates during the election campaign this year. 

"Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then he hasn't shown up for a debate," Biden said in a short video posted online. "Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice." 

The president also made a veiled reference to Trump's legal problems and the mid-week breaks from his various court appointments. 

"So let's pick the dates, Donald. I hear you're free Wednesdays," Biden said.

The second part of Biden's post incorporated an appeal for campaign donations and said the debate would pit "me and this grassroots team versus Donald Trump and his MAGA minions."

"It will be democracy versus authoritarianism. Revenge and retribution versus a vision for our future," Biden wrote.  

Trump 'ready and willing,' calls for 'very large venue' 

Biden's campaign recommended seeking in June and September, well before the November vote.

Trump, who declined to participate in the Republican presidential primaries but nonetheless won the primary votes comfortably, responded soon after in the affirmative, saying he was "ready to Rumble!"

"I am Ready and Willing to debated Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September," Trump wrote on his Truth Social website with characteristic disregard for the proper use of capital letters that persisted throughout the post. 

He described Biden as the "WORST debater I have ever faced," and called for a "very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds." 

The 2020 debates were watched by roughly 80 million people in the US alone, some of them in rather unusual venues like this makeshift drive-in movie theater outside the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoImage: Jeff Chiu/AP Photo/picture alliance

Biden campaign recommends early debates, hosted by news channels

Biden and Trump had been sparring on the issue on and off for months in their public comments, though it was still not clear whether televised debates would materialize, or where or when. 

Biden campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon on Wednesday sent a letter to the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, established in 1987 in a bid to ease the often difficult process of arranging such debates, saying that Biden would not take part in its announced dates.

She said that the current structure the Commission uses was "out of step with the changes in the structure of our elections and the interests of voters." 

Instead, she said the campaign was recommending direct talks with the Trump campaign to arrange a pair of debates hosted by television news channels. Biden's team recommended scheduling the first as soon as June. The elections are on November 5. 

In the past, both Biden and Trump's teams had questioned the commission's proposed dates, saying that they took place too late, after early voting began and therefore potentially after some people cast ballots.

Early in-person voting dates vary drastically by state, if the process is permitted at all, but it can begin more than a month before polling.

Trump and Biden faced off in two presidential debates in 2020. Perceived results varied quite broadly but most TV pollsters saw either a clear or a narrow Biden victory in both. Respondents were more unanimous in their opinion that the debates were more "negative" than positive in tone; around four in five viewers held that opinion. 

msh/lo (AFP, AP, Reuters)