Updated: October 8, 2020 7:07:42 pm
US President Donald Trump gestures in front of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, USA (Photographer: Chris Kleponis / Polaris Images / Bloomberg)
US President Donald Trump on Thursday declined to participate in next week’s debate with Democratic candidate Joe Biden moments after organizers announced it would take place virtually due to the president’s diagnosis of COVID-19. .
“I’m not going to have a virtual debate with Democratic challenger Joe Biden,” Trump was quoted as saying by the AP news agency to Fox News.
The announcement by the nonpartisan Presidential Debate Commission cited the need to protect the health and safety of everyone involved in the second presidential debate.
Read | Donald Trump calls his illness a ‘blessing from God’
The candidates “will participate from separate remote locations,” while the participants and the moderator will remain in Miami, the commission said.
Follow LIVE updates of the US elections.
Biden, for his part, said he and Trump “shouldn’t have a debate” as long as the president remains positive for COVID. Biden told reporters in Pennsylvania that he was “looking forward to a debate with him.” but he said “we are going to have to follow very strict guidelines.”
Trump was diagnosed with the coronavirus a week ago and said he was eager to discuss Biden on the Miami stage and said, “It will be great!”
Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, in the first presidential debate in Cleveland, where Trump mocked Biden for his habit of wearing a mask in public. Biden said he tested negative for the coronavirus on Friday, three days after facing Trump in his first debate. (Doug Mills / The New York Times)
Trump was still carrying the virus when he was discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, but his doctors have not provided any detailed updates on his status. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with mild to moderate symptoms of COVID19 can be contagious for as many days and must be isolated for at least 10 days.
It is not the first debate in which the candidates are not in the same room. In 1960, the third presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy was broadcast with the two candidates on opposite shores.
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