Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Oct. 22, 2020.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden and Donald Trump on Wednesday scheduled two debates shortly after the Democratic incumbent issued a blunt public challenge to his Republican predecessor.
CNN is scheduled to air the first presidential debate on June 27 at 9 p.m. ET in Atlanta with no studio audience. The anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate, CNN said.
ABC News will host the second debate on Sept. 10. “ABC News will make the debate available to simulcast on additional broadcast and streaming news networks in America,” the outlet said.
Ahead of the two scheduled events, Biden directly addressed Trump and dared him to debate him.
“Make my day, pal,” Biden said in a video released earlier Wednesday.
Trump shot back in a Truth Social Post: “Just tell me when, I’ll be there.”
“Let’s get ready to rumble!!!” Trump wrote. “I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September.”
Both showdowns will be held without the involvement of the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized such debates in contests for the White House since 1988.
Biden’s campaign told the commission that it would not participate in three debates scheduled by the group in mid-September and October, objecting to their timing, format and a failure in the past to enforce rules.
In a letter Wednesday to the Commission on Presidential Debates, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote, “The years-long Presidential Commission model for these debates is out of step with changes in the structure of our elections and the interests of voters.”
Biden’s campaign objected to the commission scheduling debates after early voting had already begun and treating the debates as more of an entertainment program, O’Malley Dillon wrote.
She also said the commission has consistently failed to enforce debate rules, leading to “noisy spectacles of approval or jeering.” During the 2020 debates, Biden and Trump regularly broke out into shouting matches as they each tried to get a word in edgewise.
Trump’s campaign on Wednesday also called for two other debates, in July and in August.
The former president later posted on Truth Social that he would accept a Fox News debate on Oct. 2. Biden’s campaign did not confirm that the president would attend any debates other than those hosted by…
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