Donald Trump says he will not join proposed
virtual debate with Joe Biden
Event scheduled for 15 October was to be held over
video after president’s Covid diagnosis
Martin
Belam
Thu 8 Oct
2020 13.44 BSTLast modified on Thu 8 Oct 2020 14.02 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/08/donald-trump-not-virtual-debate-joe-biden
Donald
Trump has refused to participate in next week’s debate with Joe Biden after it
was announced the event would be held virtually due to the president’s
coronavirus diagnosis.
The
Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) had said in a statement: “In order to
protect the health and safety of all, the second presidential debate will take
the form of a town meeting, in which the candidates would participate from
separate remote locations.”
Shortly
afterwards, Trump appeared in a phone interview on Fox Business, saying: “I
heard that the commission a little while ago changed the debate style. That’s
not acceptable to us. I’m not going to do a virtual debate. I’m not gonna waste
my time on a virtual debate, that’s not what debating is all about. You sit
behind a computer and do it, debates? Ridiculous. And then they cut you off
whenever they want.”
An official
statement from the Trump campaign said: “President Trump won the first debate
despite a terrible and biased moderator in Chris Wallace, and everybody knows
it. For the swamp creatures at the Presidential Debate Commission to now rush
to Joe Biden’s defence by unilaterally cancelling an in-person debate is
pathetic. That’s not what debates are about or how they’re done.”
The
statement went on to claim that Trump would test negative for Covid ahead of
the event, and that they would plan to hold a rally instead of taking part.
According
to the CPD’s plan, the audience and the moderator, C-Span’s Steve Scully, would
still be located in the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami,
Florida, as planned. The televised debate is scheduled for 15 October.
The revised
format would have removed any issues around how distant the two candidates
should be from each other, or whether screens should be put up between them.
This became a source of contentionbefore the Mike Pence and Kamala Harris
vice-presidential debate on Wednesday night. Eventually their teams agreed to
the debate going ahead with them both seated and at least 12 feet from each
other, with screens between them.
There was
no word on whether Scully would be equipped with a mute button. The first debate
between the president and Joe Biden was widely criticised for the number of
times Trump was allowed to interrupt the former vice-president. Both campaigns
would have to agree to any rule changes.
Eric Trump,
the president’s son, raised objections to the proposed format change, returning
to a common baseless allegation from the Trump campaign that Biden had been
using assistance.
After the
first debate, the Trump campaign ran Facebook ads falsely claiming that Biden
used an earpiece.
There is
precedent for a US election to feature a virtual debate. In 1960, John F
Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated remotely, with Nixon in Los Angeles, and
Kennedy in New York.
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