Biden campaign shuts down Trump push for additional debates: ‘No more games’

The Biden campaign rejected the prospect of adding debates with former President Trump beyond the two that the candidates already agreed to Wednesday after Trump’s campaign suggested holding additional debates this summer.

“Donald Trump has a long history of playing games with debates: complaining about the rules, breaking those rules, pulling out at the last minute, or not showing up at all — which he’s done repeatedly in all three cycles he’s run for president,” Biden campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.

“He said he would debate President Biden anytime, anywhere, anyplace,” O’Malley Dillon continued. “In fact, he’s said and posted it dozens of times with varying degrees of comprehension and basic grammar. President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms.”

“No more games. No more chaos, no more debate about debates,” she said. “We’ll see Donald Trump on June 27th in Atlanta – if he shows up.”

Earlier Wednesday, the Biden campaign proposed holding two general election debates, one in June and one in September. Within hours, both candidates had agreed to attend, with the first set for June 27 on CNN and the second slated for Sept. 10 on ABC.

The Trump campaign in a memo to O’Malley Dillon pushed for additional debates in July and August.

“Additional dates will allow voters to have maximum exposure to the records and future visions of each candidate,” Trump campaign leadership wrote.

Trump himself posted on Truth Social that he had accepted an invitation to attend a debate hosted by Fox News and scheduled for Oct. 2, an apparent effort to pressure Biden to accept additional debates.

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

In proposing the two debates, the Biden campaign suggested coordinating with outlets that hosted GOP primary debates in 2016 that Trump participated in and Democratic primary debates in 2020 that Biden took part in to avoid any notion of bias. That would rule out Fox News as a host, as the network did not host any 2020 Democratic primary debates.

The two campaigns in setting up the two debates spurned the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has facilitated the debates between presidential candidates since 1988.

The announcement came on the heels of a New York Times poll that found Trump leading Biden among voters in five of six battleground states likely to determine the outcome of November’s election.