New Delhi: The Trump campaign wants foreign policy to be the central focus of the third and final presidential debate, slated for 23 October, and has written to the non-partisan US Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) that organises the highly anticipated televised events.
In a letter to the CPD Monday, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said: “We had expected that foreign policy would be the central focus of the October 22 debate. We urge you to recalibrate the topics and return to subjects which had already been confirmed.”
In a tweet that included the letter, Stepien went on to dub the commission the ‘BDC (Biden Debate Commission)’.
The final presidential debate will take place at Belmont University in Tennessee, and begins at 6:30am IST.
Our letter to the BDC (Biden Debate Commission) pic.twitter.com/ZsY5JfMbT7
— BillStepien (@BillStepien) October 19, 2020
This isn’t the first controversy to hit the final debate between US President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Among the other issues to crop up are questions raising the credibility of debate moderator Kristen Welker by citing her alleged links to the Democratic Party, a new debate rule about muted microphones to ensure candidates don’t interrupt each another and even speculation that the final debate may not take place at all.
On 9 October, the CPD cancelled the second debate that was scheduled for 15 October following safety concerns given Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis and his refusal to participate in a virtual debate.
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Feud over debate topics, rules
When the Trump campaign accused the CPD of deliberately leaving out the topic of foreign policy to “solely insulate” Biden from his foreign policy track record, Biden’s press secretary T.J. Ducklo said, “As usual, the President is more concerned with the rules of a debate than he is (about) getting a nation in crisis the help it needs.” He further added that the campaigns and the CPD agreed months ago that the debate moderator will be the one to choose the topics.
The topics announced by Welker last week include Covid-19, ‘American families’, race, climate change, national security and leadership. Each topic will get a 15-minute segment.
After both candidates repeatedly interrupted each other during the first presidential debate on 29 September, the CPD introduced a new rule about muting microphones for parts of the debate so that each candidate gets the full, uninterrupted two minutes at the beginning of each 15-minute segment to present their argument.
The Trump campaign said the President is committed to debating Biden despite “last-minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate”.
The CPD defended the rule by saying, “It is in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.”
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Attacks on debate moderator
Trump has attacked the 44-year-old NBC correspondent Kristen Welker as “terrible” and “unfair”, and says she is among the “Fake News reporters”.
She’s always been terrible & unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters, but I’ll still play the game. The people know! How’s Steve Scully doing? https://t.co/uS3EWzfFPy
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2020
Trump’s attack is a marked change from his earlier perception of Welker.
During a news conference in Switzerland in January this year, he complimented Welker for her promotion as a weekend anchor on NBC’s Today show. “They made a very wise decision,” Trump had told Welker.
Last Saturday, the New York Post published an article on Welker’s alleged “deep Democratic ties” that claimed her parents “poured cash” into the Democratic Party. After Fox News covered the article in a new segment, senior CNN anchor Jake Tapper hit out at the news channel, calling their coverage “hideous and unjournalistic”.
If any other outlet started covering the political donations of *the parents* of folks who work at Fox there would be widespread outrage and rightly so. This is hideous and unjournalistic. And another example of how bad actors use standards against those who uphold them. https://t.co/4FlfsVeyLU
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 19, 2020
Also read: Trump talks conspiracy theories, Biden questions policies in dueling split-screen town halls
Will the debate happen?
During a town hall discussion last Thursday, Biden demanded Trump take a test a day before the debate and if it wasn’t negative, he would not feel comfortable participating. This raised speculation on whether the final debate will proceed as planned given that the second debate had been scrapped. On Monday, Trump said he was open to taking a test before the debate.
While the possibility of the final debate being cancelled remained, some argued that the debate could further polarise the electorate and hurt the integrity of election results.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, former US Representative Donna F. Edwards said that more presidential debates will “make the destabilizing chaos worse” and that Trump did not need another “prime-time opportunity to enable him to stir a pot that is simmering to a boil”.
The US presidential election will take place on 3 November.
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