Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden
Joe Biden The memo: Trump uses convention to target key states Pence condemns Kenosha violence, supports police in convention speech Biden praises Milwaukee Bucks response to Jacob Blake shoots MORE on Thursday said he would debate President Trump
Donald John The Memo: Trump Uses Convention to Focus on Major States Conway Hots Trump as ‘Women’s Champion’ Former ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ Star Trace Adkins Sings at GOP Congress MORE short to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi Democrats seek probe into DHS chief for possible violations of Hatch Act Overnight Health Care: CDC test amendment approved by White House task force | CDC says asymptomatic people do not need tests, draws criticism from experts | No coronavirus response deal until late September? Grass not optimistic House goes MORE one day post (D-Calif.) Suggests that Biden should not “legitimize” the incumbent president by participating in debates.
“No. As long as the commission continues now, as they have, I will debate him,” Biden told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell when asked if he would consider not debating Trump following Pelosi’s comments.
“I’ll be the fact check on stage while I debate him,” Biden said.
The former vice president, who has already agreed in writing to three presidential debates with Trump, said he had received other recommendations that he should not debate Trump without a fact-checker present because of the president’s tendency to make false statements, but he shrugged her off.
“Look, I think everyone knows that this man has a somewhat pathological tendency not to tell the truth,” Biden said.
Biden added that this week’s Republican National Convention is characterized by “one lie after another,” referring to fact-checks conducted by the media at this week’s convention.
Biden’s remarks came roughly an hour after Pelosi told a news conference that she did not believe there should be presidential debates during the 2020 campaign.
“I do not think the President of the United States has behaved in a way that everyone has an association with truth, evidence, data and facts,” Pelosi said. “I would not legitimize a conversation with him or a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States.”
The leading House Democrat said that, instead, each candidate should take separate steps to answer questions about their policy positions, saying that a debate with Trump would be ‘an exercise in indebtedness’. She acknowledged in her remarks that Biden’s campaign “thinks differently here.”
The Commission on Presidential Debates has scheduled three presidential debates for Sept. 29 in Cleveland, Oct. 15 in Miami and Oct. 22 in Nashville, Tenn., As well as a vice presidential debate on Oct. 7 in Salt Lake City. Biden has agreed to participate in all three presidential debates.
The Trump campaign has unsuccessfully pushed to add a fourth debate or else move the last debate up to early September, arguing that the debate should begin before the early vote begins. The committee rejected that proposal.
Joe Lockhart, a leading Democratic strategist and former White House spokesman for the Clinton administration, called on Biden not to debate Trump last month, and wrote in a CNN report that Trump’s propensity for misleading remarks was uniquely suited to him. made for the debate stage and that Biden would make a mistake in agreeing to debate with him.
Other Democrats, however, have argued that Biden should debate Trump, against that idea.
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