#Trump campaign asks Biden for debate ‘confirmation’ amid Pelosi’s plea to skip

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Joe Biden (left), US President Donald Trump (center) and Nancy Pelosi
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President Trump’s campaign on Monday requested “written confirmation” from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden that he will debate Trump before the election.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, writing on behalf of the campaign, cited House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call last week for Biden to skip the debates. Biden quickly rejected that idea.

“While he may verbally give vague assertions of his intentions, there is no way of knowing what his handlers truly have planned for him,” Giuliani, the former New York mayor, wrote in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Giuliani wrote that the remarks from Pelosi (D-Calif.) are “especially alarming” and that “Pelosi became the highest-ranking Democrat official to urge Biden to cancel debates, adding her voice to other prominent Democrats advising the same.”

Biden campaign spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Giuliani also asked for information on alternate debate sites in case sponsors pull out due to the coronavirus pandemic, and again raised complaints that the debates are scheduled after many mail-in ballots are distributed.

“The very first ballots in the nation will be in voters’ hands in North Carolina on September 4 [and] eight million Americans in 16 states will have the opportunity to vote before the first scheduled debate arrives on September 29,” he wrote.

Trump recently blasted the Commission on Presidential Debates after he unsuccessfully sought to reschedule a debate with Biden to early September, so voters could tune in before casting mail-in ballots.

Biden’s campaign refused Trump’s request for more debates, but the former vice president also rejected Pelosi’s call for him to drop out of the debates.

Biden told MSNBC on Thursday that “as long as the Commission [on Presidential Debates] continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I’m going to debate him.”

“I’m gonna be a fact-checker on the floor, while I’m debating him,” Biden said.

Trump senses an opportunity against Biden after using debating forums to crush a series of competitors in 2016. Trump often claims Biden, 77, is senile, and on Wednesday suggested that Biden be drug-tested before the debates to make sure he doesn’t use performance-enhancing drugs.

The first debate is scheduled for Sept. 29 in Cleveland, Ohio, followed by an Oct. 15 debate in Miami, Florida, and an Oct. 22 debate in Nashville, Tennessee.