WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has sunk so low that former Vice President Joe Biden should not even “legitimize” him by debating him in the presidential election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.
Biden has already agreed to take part in three presidential debates before the November election, but Pelosi told reporters, “I don’t think that there should be any debates.”
She explained she did not think “the president of the United States has comported himself in a way that anybody should, and has any association with truth, evidence, data, and facts,” and as a result, any debate with him would just be an “exercise in skullduggery” by Trump.
“I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States,” she said, though she acknowledged that the Biden campaign had a different view on the debates. Pelosi called Trumps’s conduct during his 2016 debates with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “disgraceful.”
The 2016 debates had often gone negative, with Trump calling Clinton a “nasty woman” in the final debate. Trump loomed over Clinton in one debate, a moment Clinton later said made her skin crawl.
Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said Biden would continue to take part in the debates. The campaign would “certainly agree with Speaker Pelosi on her view of the President’s behavior. But just as she has powerfully confronted that behavior in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, Joe Biden looks forward to doing the same on the debate stage.”
Asked later Thursday on MSNBC about Pelosi’s comments, Biden said “as long as the (Commission on Presidential Debates) continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I’m going to debate him.”
“I’m gonna be a fact-checker on the floor when I’m debating him,” he said.
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The Trump campaign, on the other hand, seized on the remarks as evidence Biden would skip out on the debates.
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said Pelosi’s comments were a “clear indication” Biden would “remain in hiding until Election Day.”
Republican Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Biden had “no business being President” if he could not debate.
The first presidential debate is scheduled for Sept. 29 at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The Trump campaign had requested a fourth debate be added or for the third debate be moved up to address an expected surge in early voting, but the Commission on Presidential Debates denied the request.
Televised debates have been held in every presidential election since 1976, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
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