The Trump campaign is blasting the Presidential Debate Commission after last minute topic changes to Thursday’s final showdown between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. The debate was originally set to be focused on foreign policy. After emails emerged in the New York Post about Joe and Hunter Biden’s foreign money schemes, specifically with the Chinese Communist Party and Ukraine, the topics were changed.
“We write with great concern over the announced topics for what was always billed as the ‘Foreign Policy Debate’ in the series of events agreed to by both the Trump campaign and Biden campaign many months ago. The topics announced by moderator Kristen Welker (Fighting COVID-19, American Families, Race in America, Climate Change, National Security, and Leadership) are serious and worthy of discussion, but only a few of them even touch on foreign policy,” Trump Campaign Manager Bill Stepien wrote to the Commission in a letter Monday. “Indeed, almost all of them were discussed at length during the first debate won by President Trump over moderator Chris Wallace and candidate Joe Biden. As is the long-standing custom, and as had been promised by the Commission on Presidential Debates, we had expected that foreign policy would be the central focus of the October 22 debate. We urge you to recalibrate the topics and return to subjects which had already been confirmed.”
Stepien accused the Commission of covering repeatedly for Biden and turning this election cycle’s debate season into a “fiasco.”
“We understand that Joe Biden is desperate to avoid conversations about his own foreign policy record, especially since President Trump has secured historic peace agreements among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. We recall that Biden’s former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, maintains that Biden has been ‘wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.’ Biden has supported endless wars and given aid and comfort to our adversaries, including Iran, which was delivered pallets loaded with mountains of cash just as four Americans were released from captivity in Tehran. Biden also has advanced the interests of China over his 47 years as a Washington politician, putting their concerns ahead of those of America workers,” Stepien wrote.
“New information recently revealed indicates that Biden himself was mentioned as a financial beneficiary of a deal arranged by his son Hunter and a communist Chinese-related energy company. If a major party candidate for President of the United States is compromised by the Communist Party of China, this is something Americans deserve to hear about, but it is not surprising the Biden would want to avoid it. It is completely irresponsible for the Commission to alter the focus of this final debate just days before the event, solely to insulate Biden from his own history,” the letter continues.
Stepien also slammed the Commission for potential last minute rule changes and for failing to condemn second debate moderator Steve Scully after he lied to the American people about being hacked in order to cover up his anti-Trump bias.
“It is our understanding from media reports that you will soon be holding an internal meeting to discuss other possible rule changes, such as granting an unnamed person the ability to shut off a candidate’s microphone. It is completely unacceptable for anyone to wield such power, and a decision to proceed with that change amounts to turning further editorial control of the debate over to the Commission which has already demonstrated its partiality to Biden,” he said.
The fourth and final debate will take place Thursday, October 22 at 9 p.m. eastern from Nashville.