Biden Calls for Live Fact Checking at Presidential Debates

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leaves after speaking on safe school reopening, in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sept. 2, 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Wednesday called for live fact-checking at the upcoming presidential debates with President Donald Trump.

“I’ve begun to prepare by going over what the president has said, and the multiple lies he’s told,” Biden told reporters in Delaware in response to a question about how he is preparing for the debates.

“What I’d love to have is a crawler at the bottom of the screen, a fact-checker when we speak,” he added. “If we really wanted to do something, I think that would make a great, great debate if everything both of us said was instantly fact-checked by an agreed-to group of people out there that we move forward, but that probably wouldn’t get very far in the debate.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

“I’m looking forward to debating the president and I’m going to lay out as clearly as I can what I think we have to do to bring this country back,” Biden said.

Fox News’ host Chris Wallace will moderate at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio on Sept. 29, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced on Wednesday.

The second debate, slated for Miami on Oct. 15, will be moderated by Steve Scully, an executive producer for C-SPAN.

Kristen Welker, a White House correspondent for NBC News, was tapped to moderate the third debate, scheduled for Oct. 22 in Nashville, Tennessee.

USA Today’s Washington bureau chief Susan Page is assigned to moderate the sole vice presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). It will debate in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 7.

In a repeat from the 2016 election, Trump has called for drug tests before each debate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently said that Biden should pull out from the debates. The Trump campaign responded by asking for a written confirmation from the Biden campaign that the former vice president still intends to participate in the debates.

The Trump campaign has asked the Commission on Presidential Debates to schedule the debates earlier to adjust to early voting. Early in-person voting and mail voting will have already begun in a number of states before the first debate.

The campaign has also requested assurances from the commission that alternate venues for the debates have been set up in case a COVID-19 outbreak prevents one of the scheduled venues from hosting the debate.

“We require information regarding which television studios, in which cities, have been approached and arranged as alternate locations where the events could be held,” the letter to the commission stated. “Without this sort of detailed information, we remain convinced that Biden will retreat to the safety of his remote video link, where he can rely on handlers, a teleprompter, or notes positioned near the camera as he clearly did on CNN last week.”