Washington
CNN
—
President Joe Biden said he will debate former President Donald Trump ahead of this year’s election, the clearest declaration yet of his willingness to face-off with his Republican rival before voters cast ballots in November.
Still, Biden said he didn’t know yet what format the debates might take, leaving open the possibility that the three traditional on-stage events could look different this year.
“I am, somewhere. I don’t know when,” Biden said when asked by interviewer Howard Stern whether he planned to debate his predecessor. “I’m happy to debate him.”
It’s the first time Biden has said explicitly that he would debate Trump in this election cycle. Previously, he has equivocated, saying it would depend on the former president’s behavior. Some of Biden’s aides have questioned whether Trump would abide by established rules in any potential debate, and before Friday his campaign had not set out any specific debate plan.
Earlier this month, a dozen of the nation’s biggest news organizations posted an open letter urging Biden and Trump to participate in televised debates ahead of the 2024 election.
The letter was signed by a consortium of broadcast, cable and print outlets, including ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, NBC News, NewsNation, Univision, NPR, PBS NewsHour and USA Today. In the letter, the news organizations urged the candidates “to publicly commit to participating in general election debates before November’s election.”
The Commission on Presidential Debates has scheduled three presidential debates for September and October in Texas, Virginia and Utah.
Trump, who refused to participate in the Republican primary debates, has posted on social media that he will debate Biden “anytime, anywhere anywhere” despite the Republican National Committee voting unanimously in 2022 to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Biden had responded to Trump’s calls for earlier debates in February, telling reporters: “If I were him, I’d want him to debate me, too. He’s got nothing else to do.”
After Biden made his comment on Stern’s program on Friday, Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita responded on social media.
“Ok,” he wrote on X, “let’s set it up!”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
