Joe Biden has dismissed calls from his White House predecessor Donald Trump to “immediately” schedule a presidential debate.
Trump skipped every debate this primary season. He continues to refuse to debate his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, a long-shot contender for the GOP’s nomination.
“Well, if I were him, I’d want to debate me, too,” Biden told reporters when asked about Trump’s challenge while the president was at a small Las Vegas boba tea shop during a campaign stop. With a bubble tea in hand, Biden added: “He’s got nothing else to do.”
Although the primary season is not yet over, both Biden and Trump are considered their parties’ presumptive nominees and have a clear desire to turn their attention to the general election.
Biden, who is technically also still in the primary season, has also refused to debate several distant rivals for the Democratic nomination.
Trump made his debate challenge on The Dan Bongino Show, NBC reported. Bongino is a conservative talkshow host who for years has boosted Trump as well as Republican conspiracy theories – all widely discredited – that the 2020 election was “rigged”.
This is not the first time Trump has said he would like to debate Biden. In December, he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would “look forward” to a debate. “How about 10 debates?” Trump added.
Biden, for his part, has focused recent campaign stops on retail politics – avoiding the kind of massive rallies in which Trump is known to thrive. Biden’s boba shop visit was part of an ongoing tour to a string of small-scale venues, including Cook Out in North Carolina and a taproom in Wisconsin.
Trump has been performing strongly in polls pitting him against Biden. Notably, an NBC survey published on Sunday shows Biden with a deficit of five percentage points in a hypothetical electoral rematch with Trump.
But Trump is facing more than 90 criminal charges accusing him of trying to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after leaving the Oval Office, and illicit hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed an extramarital sexual encounter with the former president.
If Trump were to be convicted of a felony, the NBC poll found, his five-point lead would flip to a two-point lead for Biden.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges pending against him.
