(PresidentialWire.com)- Almost immediately after the Commission for Presidential Debates announced on Thursday that the second presidential debate would be made virtual, President Donald Trump said that the proposed format was not acceptable and that he would not waste his time participating.
The decision to make the event virtual comes as the president continues to recover from the Chinese coronavirus after testing positive last Friday.
Democratic presidential nominee initially suggested that he would not take part in the event at all if President Trump was still suffering from the virus, and said he wouldn’t even reschedule the debate if the president was still contagious by October 15.
The newly-proposed virtual debate format, however, satisfied Biden’s concerns but would change the format greatly.
During an interview with the Fox Business Network on Thursday morning, President Trump said the virtual format is “not acceptable to us.”
“I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate,” he said, explaining that a virtual debate makes it more likely that a biased moderator would cut him off.
“I’m not gonna do a virtual debate,” Trump said on Fox Business just now.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 8, 2020
The Biden campaign seemed thrilled by the proposition, announcing that he would take part in the virtual debate. Hardly surprising for a candidate who has spent most of his campaign in his basement, reading from a teleprompter.
“Vice President Biden looks forward to speaking directly to the American people and comparing his plan for bringing the country together and building back better with Donald Trump’s failed leadership on the coronavirus that has thrown the strong economy he inherited into the worst downturn since the Great Depression,” far-left deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield told the press.
Bill Stepien, the campaign manager for the Trump re-election campaign, described the virtual event as a “bail out” for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“For the swamp creatures at the Presidential Debate Commission to now rush to Joe Biden’s defense by unilaterally cancelling an in=person debate is pathetic,” he said. “We’ll pass on this sad excuse to bail out Joe Biden and do a rally instead.”
White House doctors confirmed this week that the president is still recovering from the virus, having not experienced a fever and symptoms for several days.
