President Joe Biden’s campaign on Friday rejected two additional debates that former President Donald Trump’s campaign said it had agreed to.
One of these was a proposal for a presidential debate hosted by NBC News and Telemundo. The other was for a vice presidential debate hosted by Fox News at Virginia State University, a historically black university.
“I have accepted a fourth presidential debate against Crooked Joe Biden, this time with NBC & Telemundo,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday afternoon. “It is important as Republicans that we WIN with our Great Hispanic community, which Biden has devastated with crippling inflation, high gas prices, crime in our streets and border chaos. … This is all in addition to accepting an invitation from Bret Baier and Fox News’ Martha MacCallum will host the vice presidential debate at Virginia State University, or another Virginia location to be named later.
A spokesperson for NBC News confirmed that the network had offered a debate for both campaigns.
Trump’s acceptance of debates that would have reached larger Latino and Black audiences appeared intended in part to embolden the Biden campaign, which has struggled to connect with these communities that were crucial to his 2020 election.
“The debate about debates is over,” a Biden campaign official said. “No more games.”
In a statement Friday evening, the Trump campaign responded by blasting Biden’s decision.
“The Telemundo/NBC debate would be widely watched by Hispanic voters, but Biden’s handlers are terrified of allowing him to defend his disastrous record,” campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said. “Crooked Joe Biden is too ‘cobarde’ to address the Hispanic community and take accountability for his failures on the debate stage!”
This week, the Trump and Biden campaigns bypassed the traditional Commission on Presidential Debates process and agreed to two presidential debates: one hosted by CNN in Atlanta on June 27, and another by ABC News on September 10, with the location still to be determined not known. to be determined.
The Biden campaign also accepted an offer for a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS News, but so far the Trump campaign has not done so — instead accepting the separate, competing Fox News proposal for that debate.
Neither the Trump campaign nor CBS News returned requests for comment Friday on the status of that debate.
Biden’s campaign official said that in the letter about the debate terms he accepted, the campaign left the door open to the possibility that CNN or ABC News could partner with Telemundo or Univision or another Spanish-language channel.
CNN has announced that it will not allow a studio audience to attend the debate.
For each of the two presidential debates, candidates will have to meet certain requirements to appear on stage, including being on the ballot in enough states to obtain at least 270 electoral votes, accepting “the rules and format of the debate” and receiving at least 15% in four national polls of registered or likely voters.
On Wednesday, the debates came together quickly in public. After challenging Trump to two debates in a television studio — a break from the committee’s tradition of holding them on a college campus — the Trump campaign quickly agreed.
But that agreement followed private, informal conversations between Republican and Democratic challengers that began after the president’s interview with radio host Howard Stern late last month, in which Biden said he would “love” to debate Trump.
Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon also said in a statement Wednesday that there would be “no more debate about debates.”
“President Biden made clear his terms for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” she said in a statement. “No more games. No more chaos, no more discussion of debates. We will see Donald Trump in Atlanta on June 27 – if he shows up.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
