Former President Donald Trump is already gearing up to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris this fall as both battle for the White House, and he’s already stepped up with his first major request to her.
Trump said Tuesday he would be more than willing to engage in multiple debates with Harris. “Absolutely. I’d want to. I think it’s important,” Trump said Tuesday when asked by Fox News’ Bill Melugin on a conference call with reporters if he would commit to debating Harris at least once. “I would be willing to do more than one debate, actually,” Trump emphasized, the network reported. Minutes later, Trump noted, “I haven’t agreed to anything. I agreed to a debate with Joe Biden.”
On Monday night, Harris announced that she had secured the nomination by obtaining backing from a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention, which is set to begin on August 19 in Chicago. For his part, Trump said debating her would be no different that debating Biden because she is responsible for the same policies.
“I think debating is important for a presidential race. I really do. I think if you’re the Democrat nominee or the Republican nominee, you have an obligation to debate. I think it’s very important,” Trump, who skipped debates during the GOP primaries because he was consistently out-polling the entire field, added.
Biden’s first debate with Trump in late June was a disaster, by all accounts. He had difficulty speaking clearly, while at other times, he appeared confused and vacant. He also made a number of false claims, most notably that no American troops had died under his watch, forgetting the 13 who perished in a suicide attack two days before he hurriedly left Afghanistan and three more in a drone strike in Jordan earlier this year.
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For a time, it seemed Biden could survive the surge of calls for him to quit the race after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that they backed Biden’s bid.
But Biden, who has long been known for a propensity to commit gaffes, continued to stumble. His missteps included a glaring error on the world stage at the NATO summit. While speaking on live television, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “Putin,” name-checking Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Zelenskyy’s Ukraine has precipitated more than two years of hellish war.
Concerns about whether Biden would conclude his campaign became the leading political narrative as the weekend approached. Then, two major events unfolded almost simultaneously – the failed attempt on Trump’s life during his rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday and Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential candidate on Monday at the Republican National Convention. These developments momentarily paused the focus surrounding Biden for a short period.