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More than a dozen U.S. news organizations have called on U.S. presidential candidates to commit to participating in televised debates ahead of the November election.
The statement did not mention Joe Biden or Donald Trump by name, but said it was not too early for candidates to publicly declare their participation.
The letter warned that the stakes in this year's polls were “very high”.
Trump was absent from all four Republican primary debates, but said he was eager to debate President Biden.
The statement, released on Sunday, was signed by the BBC's US partner CBS News, as well as ABC, AP CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, NBCUniversal News Group, NewsNation, NPR, PBS NewsHour, Univision and USA Today. did.
The newspaper said the televised debates have a “rich tradition” in American democracy dating back to 1976 and are watched by tens of millions of people.
“If there's one thing Americans can agree on in this era of polarization, it's that the stakes in this election are extremely high,” the statement said. It used to be that there just wasn't any replacement,” he added. The American people, their vision for the future of our country. ”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump won enough delegates to secure the nomination at their party conventions. There were no Democratic debates this presidential election cycle, but Trump secured the nomination despite missing all Republican presidential debates.
Trump, 77, has repeatedly claimed that Biden, 81, is elderly and forgetful and is too old to debate. Mr. Biden has made similar claims about Mr. Trump.
But the White House has expressed reluctance to participate in the debate, fearing that the Commission on Presidential Debates, which oversees the debate, would not be able to guarantee a “fair” match.
“It depends on what he does,” Biden told reporters when asked if he planned to participate in a debate with Trump, the Associated Press reported last month.
Televised debates are scheduled to be held in September and October.
But on the latter Thursday, Mr. Tump's campaign called for holding presidential debates “much sooner” and “much more” than originally proposed.
“Voting starts earlier and earlier, and as we saw in 2020, by the first debate, a large number of “Millions of Americans were voting.”
NPR called the match “perhaps the worst presidential debate in American history,” despite Trump's repeated interruptions, which at one point had Biden yelling, “Shut up!”
