Biden and Trump cut a deal on debates. Then the fighting started. [View all]
Source: Washington Post
Less than two hours after President Biden made his move Wednesday to upend the nation’s presidential debate tradition, two of CNN’s top political journalists were on the phone with Donald Trump’s high command.
“We are sending you a proposal for a debate that will be in your inbox at 10 a.m.,” one of them told the Trump senior leadership, Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, in a call, before rattling off the terms of a June 27 meeting in Atlanta, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
By 10:14 a.m., Biden’s campaign had announced the president would attend the CNN event. The Trump campaign agreed minutes later. One of the most consequential disruptions to the sequence of American presidential campaigns since the first televised debate in 1960 had been completed by lunchtime.
The only thing left was for the campaigns and the country to figure out what had happened. Disagreements about the debate conditions and the agreement’s significance flared even as voters began hearing the news. At 10:56 a.m., CNN announced terms that largely followed the demands Biden had announced earlier that morning — a first meeting in June, organized by a network on Biden’s suggested list, with no live audience.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/17/biden-trump-cnn-debate-decision/
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