President Biden's team is concerned about the potential risks of allowing him to debate former President Trump, with some fearing that it could expose the Chief Executive on live television.
President Biden's team is reportedly concerned about the potential risks of allowing him to debate former President Trump, with some fearing that it could expose the Chief Executive on live television.
During a Friday interview with Howard Stern, Biden said he would be "happy to debate" Trump. The former president answered the challenge, saying he would be willing to debate that very night."
However, Politico politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin suggested that Biden's staff would be hesitant to let that happen, fearing that it could give Trump a platform to attack the president and potentially damage his image.
"Biden folks don't want him to debate," Martin said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "They don't want to give Trump that platform and risk exposing Biden like that on national TV."
Martin argued that if Biden does debate Trump, it will be a sign that he needs to gain or regain ground to win the election. "I think it will be a tell for us this summer that Biden has got ground to make up still," he said.
Biden's former press secretary, Jen Psaki, who was also on the "Meet the Press" panel, didn't contradict Martin's assessment. She suggested that rejecting an offer to debate would also be hazardous for the president's image.
"I was thinking, if I was in my old job from two years ago, you also don't want him to say ‘no,’ because ‘no’ is weak, and ‘no’ is fear, so you have to say ‘yes,’" she said. "They both have to say ‘yes.’ Now, whether this happens, we all know there’s lots of things that need to be negotiated."
Martin's comments were met with laughter from some commentators on the NBC panel, who questioned Trump's eagerness to debate with Biden.
"One of the issues that they will undoubtedly both have to deal with if they debate, Geoff Bennett, is what is happening in the Middle East," said "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker. "We are seeing how fraught that issue is. It’s playing out on college campuses all across the country with these protesters."
PBS News Hour co-host Geoff Bennett said that while many prominent young people are concerned about the war in Gaza, it is the state of the economy that will be a greater influence on the youth vote.
"We’ve seen President Biden trying to calibrate his message, on the one hand condemning antisemitism on college campuses, on the other hand defending students’ rights to protest," he said. "I’ve talked with Biden allies who say that yes, these protests are significant. It’s unclear right now what the impact will be, in large part because the students that are actively engaged in these demonstrations as the Biden campaign sees it, they are a subset of a subset of the electorate."
Bennett suggested that instead, "It will likely be on economic issues and the high cost of living and so on and so forth. But it really speaks to the ways in which President Biden has a challenge, really, in trying to keep together this broad disparate coalition of voters."
