The president of the United States, Democrat Joe Biden, announced Friday that he is willing to participate in a television debate with Republican Donald Trump, his future rival in the November elections, in what represents a change with respect to the position he had maintained until now.  It is the first time that Biden has explicitly said that he is willing to face Trump on stage, since he had previously avoided committing to it and had conditioned his participation in the debates on the “behavior” of his future Republican rival.  Biden made the announcement in response to a question from popular radio host Howard Stern during an interview on his program The Howard Stern Show in New York.  When Stern asked Biden if he would participate in a debate with his predecessor before the November election, he responded: “I will, somewhere, I don't know when, but I will be happy to debate him.”  Until now, the Biden campaign had questioned Trump's ability to respect the established rules in an eventual debate and, so far, his campaign had not finalized any plan in this regard. 

The US president's announcement comes amid great pressure from the country's major media outlets, such as The Associated Press agency and CBS, CNN, Fox and ABC, which this month published an open letter urging Biden and Trump to participate in televised debates before the elections.  Trump has also called on several occasions to hold debates and, Friday, reiterated that he is willing to participate in a face-to-face meeting with Biden "at any time and place", despite the fact that during the Republican primaries he refused to participate in the debates organized by his own party.  “Corrupt Joe Biden just announced that he is willing to debate!  "Everyone knows that he doesn’t really mean it, but in case he is serious, I answer, ANYPLACE, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME an old expression used by the Luchadores," he said in his social network Truth Social.  In the United States, the debates are organized by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which has already scheduled three presidential debates for September and October in Texas, Virginia and Utah.