Commission rejects Trump request for fourth debate
WASHINGTON
Members of the Commission on Presidential Debates on Thursday rejected the Trump campaign’s request for changes to the fall debate schedule, declining to shift the debates earlier or add a fourth debate to the calendar.
President Donald Trump and his campaign had argued that the current debate schedule, which calls for three debates between Trump and Joe Biden in late September and October, would render them all but useless to the many Americans who will by then already have voted by mail.
“How can voters be sending in Ballots starting, in some cases, one month before the First Presidential
Debate. Move the First Debate up,” Trump said Thursday morning in a tweet. “A debate, to me, is a Public Service. Joe Biden and I owe it to the American People!”
The president’s urging came one day after Rudy Giuliani, a campaign adviser to Trump, wrote to the commission to discuss the timing of the debates and sent a list of two dozen journalists “for consideration as moderators.”
In its response to Giuliani on Thursday, the commission said that people planning to vote by mail could wait until after viewing the debates to send in their ballots if they so choose.
“While more people will likely vote by mail in 2020, the debate schedule has been and will be highly publicized,” the commission, which is nonpartisan, said in the letter. “Any voter who wishes to watch one or more debates before voting will be well aware of that opportunity.”
Campaigns have no formal say in the debate schedule, which was set months ago; and at least technically speaking, the commission has sole discretion when it comes to selecting moderators. But officials have already had to change the location of two of its four events after a pair of universities that were set to host pulled out because of concerns about the coronavirus.
The first presidential debate is scheduled to be held Sept. 29 in Cleveland; the second Oct. 15 in Miami; and the third Oct. 22 in Nashville, Tennessee. A vice presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 7, will be held in Salt Lake City.
In his letter to debate officials, Giuliani wrote that “as many as 8 million Americans in 16 states will have already started voting” early by the time the first debate takes place.
“Simply put, the commission’s current approach is an outdated dinosaur and not reflective of voting realities in 2020,” Giuliani wrote. “For a nation already deprived of a traditional campaign schedule because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it makes no sense to also deprive so many Americans of the opportunity to see and hear the two competing visions for our country’s future before millions of votes have been cast.”
Biden’s campaign had mostly dismissed his opponent’s proposals, calling them a “distraction,” while affirming that Biden would take part in the events as planned.