Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he’s begun to prepare for next week’s presidential debate, but that more intense preparation begins on Thursday.
“I started to prepare but I haven’t gotten into it really heavily, we’ll be beginning tomorrow,” Biden told reporters as he boarded a flight from an airport in New Castle, Delaware, near his home in Wilmington.
MODERATOR CHRIS WALLACE SELECTS TOPICS FOR FIRST BIDEN-TRUMP DEBATE
The former vice president was flying to North Carolina, where he was making his first campaign stop during the general election in the crucial battleground state.
The first debate between Biden and President Trump will take place Tuesday, Sept. 29, at Case Western University and the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. The showdown is being moderated by “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace.
The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates on Tuesday announced the issues that Wallace has selected as topics for the debate. They are the brutal Supreme Court nomination battle, the worst pandemic to strike the globe in a century, a national economy flattened by the coronavirus, the protests and violence that have flared in cities across the nation this summer, the Biden and Trump records, and the integrity of the election – another crucial issue considering the president for months has railed against expanded voting by mail amid the pandemic, repeatedly charging that it would lead to a “rigged election.”
Biden and Trump will debate twice more – on Oct. 15 in Nashville, Tenn., and Oct. 22 in Miami, Fla.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Vice President Mike Pence will debate once in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 7. All four showdowns will start at 9 p.m. ET and will run for 90 minutes without any commercial interruption.
Biden last debated in March – in a one-on-one face off with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont – who at the time was the former vice president’s last remaining rival for the Democratic nomination. The president hasn’t formally debated a political opponent since his showdowns with then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election.