US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he would be happy to take part in a debate with Donald Trump. His Republican rival declared that he could debate Biden even in the courtroom where his criminal trial is taking place.
Joe Biden said in an interview with controversial radio host Howard Stern that he is ready to debate with Donald Trump. “I don't know when, but I'd love to debate him,” Biden said in a live interview from New York.
It was the president's clearest declaration so far about a potential election debate. Earlier, in March, he claimed that whether he would agree to the debate “depends on his (Trump's) behavior.”
US President Joe BidenSHAWN THEW/PAP/EPA
Biden's rival almost immediately reacted to his statement, proposing a televised debate during a Trump rally in Michigan or even in a Manhattan courtroom where the Republican politician is being criminally tried on charges of concealing payment for the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels before elections in 2016.
“He is in New York today, although he probably doesn't know it, and I am too, (because) I am stuck (there) in one of the many court cases that he (Biden – ed.) initiated. (…) In In fact, let's have this debate in the courthouse tonight – on national television! I'll wait,” Trump said in a post on his social media site.
Biden talks to non-mainstream media
Friday's live conversation with the scandalous Stern was one of the few interviews given by the 81-year-old president. In the past, Donald Trump was a frequent guest of the radio host, who discussed topics related to sex and, among others, the attractiveness of his daughter Ivanka.
The conversation with Biden focused mainly on personal topics from the president's life. Biden revealed, among other things, that after the death of his first wife and 13-month-old daughter in a car accident in 1972, he had suicidal thoughts and was considering jumping off a bridge.
For Biden, the conversation with Stern was one in a series of media appearances outside the traditional mainstream. Previously, he gave interviews, among others, on Spanish-language Univision television and radio, several radio stations aimed at African-American audiences, comedy shows and podcasts, and on a popular liberal YouTube channel.
As the Politico website wrote on Wednesday, the New York Times editorial staff is frustrated by the reluctance to give interviews to traditional media. According to Politico, the refusal to conduct interviews for “NYT” – which has interviewed every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt – was intended to motivate the newspaper's publisher AG Sulzberger to encourage journalists to be more critical of the president.
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