President Joe Biden says he will debate Donald Trump

WASHINGTON − President Joe Biden said Friday that he is willing to debate former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, ahead of the November election in a sudden shift from his earlier reluctance to commit.

"I am, somewhere, I don’t know when but I am happy to debate him,” Biden told radio talk show host Howard Stern in an interview when asked whether he's going to debate Trump.

The Biden campaign had not said whether Biden would take part in any debates. For weeks, Trump has said he will debate Biden "anytime, anyplace" and taunted Biden for refusing to commit.

The commission has scheduled three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate in September and October. The first presidential debate is scheduled for Sept. 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign called for the Commission on Presidential Debates to add more debates and move up its fall schedule as soon as possible, noting that more than 1 million Americans probably will have already voted before the first debate.

"The time to start these debates is now," the campaign wrote in a letter to the bipartisan commission April 11.

The Biden campaign has brushed off Trump's repeated requests for early debates as the former president playing political games. "If I were him, I’d want to debate me, too. He’s got nothing else to do," Biden told reporters in February.

Trump refused to debate his Republican opponents in the GOP primary after lacking a serious threat in his path to become the presumptive Republican nominee.

In 2022, the Republican National Committee told the presidential debates commission that its 2024 nominee would not participate unless changes were made in terms of selecting moderators and scheduling debates before early voting began in any of the states. Trump had claimed that the commission was biased against him during the 2020 race against Biden.

Twelve news organizations, including USA TODAY, in an April 14 joint statement called on the presumptive party nominees, Biden and Trump, to publicly commit to general debates before the election.

Contributing: David Jackson

Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly Twitter, @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: President Biden says he is happy to debate Trump