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For the second time in less than a week, Donald Trump has called on Joe Biden to go “man-to-man” in another debate with no moderators, but this time the ex-president has thrown in a round or two of golf as well.
Swinging at one topic after another at a Florida rally Tuesday, Trump challenged the incumbent “the chance to redeem himself in front of the entire world” after Biden’s painful to watch June 27 debate spectacle live on CNN.
“Let’s do another debate this week so that sleepy Joe Biden can prove to everyone all over the world that he has what it takes to be president,” declared Trump to his MAGA base in the Sunshine State, dangling out Sen. Marco Rubio as a potential VP pick. “But this time it will be man-to-man, no moderators, no holds barred,” Trump added, sounding a lot like his factitious invite of July 5.
“Just name the place, anytime, anywhere.”
Still fighting a war on many fronts to retain both his party and the public’s faith that he is the man to beat Trump and complete another term, the 81-year-old Biden had one of his best days in over a week on Tuesday. Delivering some domestic and, with a strong speech at the NATO Summit in DC, international realpolitik, the self-declared “running the world” POTUS ended Tuesday in a more robust position that he went into the day.
However, if Donald Trump thought the Biden campaign was going to treat his offer “officially challenging crooked Joe to an 18-hole golf match” on live TV on one of his own courses with anything more than contempt, he was sadly mistaken. Now, maybe Trump was right that the game between the rivals “will be among the most watched sporting events in history, maybe bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters,” but otherwise the Biden team weren’t playing around.
“Donald Trump hasn’t been seen in public for 12 days, now he’s inviting fictional serial killers to dinner, teasing lil’ Marco Rubio, praising Project 2025 architect Tom Homan, and challenging the President of the United States to golf,” said Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson James Singer in a statement this evening.
Then the still reeling reelection campaign tried to turn the tables on their 2020 and now 2024 rival just days before the GOP convention opens in Milwaukee, a town 78-year-old Trump reportedly called “horrible” to some fellow Republicans last month.
“We’d challenge Donald Trump to create jobs, but he lost 3 million,” said the Biden-Harris team. “We’d challenge Donald Trump to stand up to Putin, but he bent the knee to him. We’d challenge Donald Trump to follow the law, but he breaks it. We’d challenge Donald Trump to not destroy our country, but that’s all his Project 2025 aims to do.”
“Joe Biden doesn’t have time for Donald Trump’s weird antics – he’s busy leading America and defending the free world,” Singer concluded. “Donald Trump is a liar, a convict, and a fraud only out for himself – par for the course.”
Of course, it was Biden who got into trash talk with Trump over golf in the train wreck June 27 face-off. In one of the few direct exchanges of the night between the two, and one of the few times that night that Biden seemed engaged, the current POTUS challenged the rather bloated former POTUS to a golf game “if you (Trump) carry your own bag.” Trump responded by calling Biden’s boosts about his handicap “a lie.” Embarrassing everyone on-stage, including moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, the back and forth ended even more schoolyard than before with Trump stating “let’s not act like children,” and Biden reacting “you are a child.”
Yep, that’s the two senior citizens running for to be the most powerful person on Earth.
In terms of real debates, Trump and Biden are set to meet up again on ABC on September 10 at 9 pm ET – which is eons away in political terms.