A dozen of the nation’s biggest news organizations posted an open letter Sunday, urging President Joe Biden and former President Donald 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 letter notes that general election debates have “played a vital role in every presidential election of the past 50 years, dating to 1976” with “tens of millions” tuning in to watch a competition of ideas for the votes of American citizens.
“Though it is too early for invitations to be extended to any candidates, it is not too early for candidates who expect to meet the eligibility criteria to publicly state their support for – and their intention to participate in – the Commission’s debates planned for this fall,” the letter states.
The unusual move comes amid uncertainty over whether the two candidates will face off on a stage ahead of the November vote. Biden has not publicly committed to debating Trump, although he has not ruled it out.
“It depends on his behavior,” Biden said in early March.
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 anyplace” despite the Republican National Committee voting unanimously in 2022 to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The Trump campaign seems to be bucking the RNC’s decision, sending a letter Thursday to the debate commission asking for this year’s general election debates to take place “much earlier” and calling for more of them to be added to the schedule.
“While the Commission on Presidential Debates has already announced three presidential debates and a vice-presidential debate to occur later this year, we are in favor of these debates beginning much earlier,” Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in the letter to commission members.
Biden 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.”
While historically debates were confined to good-spirited discussions on public policy issues, Trump over the last two presidential cycles has deformed the tradition with uncontrolled outbursts and an avalanche of lies.
The presumptive Republican Party nominee has a proven track record of flagrantly violating debate rules and using the sizable national platform to lob nasty personal insults at his political opponents. His behavior became so unruly that in 2020 the commission took the extraordinary step of muting the microphones of Biden and Trump during portions of debates after Trump’s repeated outbursts caused the first debate to devolve into chaos.
Trump’s behavior and loose relationship with the facts have given Biden aides pause on whether it would be strategically wise to engage with him on such a platform.
“If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time, it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high,” the news organizations stated in the letter. “Amidst that backdrop, there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation.”
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