Trump vows to save America from Biden
In a dark declaration of war against Joe Biden and the Democrats, President Trump declared Thursday that the November election “will decide whether we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”
His speech accepting the Republican nomination before hundreds of supporters on the South Lawn of the White House — an unprecedented campaign setting that critics called an illegal use of government property — was a takenoprisoners call to battle for the fall campaign.
In his 25minute nomination acceptance address to the Democratic convention last week, Biden never mentioned the president by name, but called him out because, he said,
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says if she were running Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, she would tell him to boycott debates with President Trump, calling any that include him an “exercise in skulduggery.”
The San Francisco Democrat argued that a debate with the president would “legitimize a conversation” that Trump has not earned. She suggested that Biden and Trump could answer questions separately instead.
“I don’t think that there should be any debates,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference Thursday. “I do not think the president of the United States has comported himself in a way that (resembles) anybody who has any association with truth, evidence, data and facts. I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States.”
The Biden campaign has said that it will participate in the three scheduled presidential debates and a vice presidential debate. The Trump campaign has lobbied for a fourth presidential debate, which the nonpartisan, independent Commission on Presidential Debates has rejected.
Biden told MSNBC on Thursday that unnamed strategists have told him to debate Trump only with a factchecking referee present. But he said that although the president “has a somewhat pathological tendency not to tell the truth,” he will debate Trump and won’t insist on having a factchecker onstage.
“As long as the commission continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I’m going to debate him,” Biden said. “I’m going to be a factchecker on the floor while I’m debating him.”
Pelosi was responding to a question about whether Democrats and Republicans should be doing inperson campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic. She said she misses interacting with her constituents but follows scientific advice for avoiding spreading the disease.
Then she turned, unprompted, to the issue of the debates. She referred to instances during the 2016 debates in which Trump broke norms to stand close to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“I thought what he did in 2016 was disgraceful, stalking Hillary Clinton like that,” Pelosi said.
She also accused Trump of trying to undermine this year’s elections by opposing voting by mail, which he contends is prone to fraud despite evidence to the contrary, and by allowing slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service.
“I think that he’ll probably act in a way that is beneath the dignity of the presidency, he does that every day, but I think he will also belittle what the debates are supposed to be about,” Pelosi said. “They’re not to be about skulduggery on the part of someone who has no respect for the office he holds, much less the democratic process.”
Pelosi, who has been regularly reelected to her House seat by overwhelming margins, has not debated an opponent in more than 30 years. Her opponent in the November election, Shahid Buttar, held a debate last month with an empty chair after being unable to get Pelosi to respond.