Trump campaign slams plan to change debate rules after the first unruly encounter

US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has rejected calls for any expected changes to the rules of remaining debates between him and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden following their first chaotic and acrimonious matchup.

Their first debate was held in a venue in Cleveland, Ohio on Tuesday night. There are two other debates scheduled on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 ahead of the 2020 presidential election in November. 

During the first debate which lasted 90 minutes, the two politicians kept interrupting each other and trading insults, with the moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, struggling to maintain control over the debate proceedings.

On Wednesday, the presidential debates commission announced the first “debate made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”

A day after, Trump campaign official Jason Miller said, “President Trump fully plans on participating in and winning both the second and third debates in the presidential contest here.”

“So we feel very confident but there should not be any changes to what’s been agreed to and set out, and it’s pretty notable that the Biden camp is pushing for some of these changes for the simple fact that their candidate did not win on Tuesday,” Miller said.

Trump himself took to Twitter, asking, “Why would I allow the Debate Commission to change the rules for the second and third Debates when I easily won last time?”

Biden also said later Thursday that he would not back out of the second debate scheduled in Miami.

“Yes I will participate in the next debate,” he told reporters.

His campaign spokesman Andrew Bates also said the former vice president would participate in upcoming debates under the rules laid out by the debates commission.

“The only real question left is whether the President will start following the rules in the next two debates,” Bates said in an email.

The planned changes, the details of which have yet to be announced, would come in a bid to prevent a repeat of the vitriolic first debate which triggered widespread criticism of Trump and, to a lesser extent, Biden.

Trump repeatedly bullied Biden and questioned his intelligence, while the Democratic nominee called his rival a racist, a liar and the worst president ever.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications chief, called the first debate an “embarrassment” to the United States.

First presidential debate between Trump and Biden an ‘embarrassment’ to the US: Ex-White House communications chief

The first debate between President Trump and presidential nominee Biden was an “embarrassment” to the United States, says Scaramucci.

“I don’t think anybody won. That debate, you know, was a little bit of an embarrassment to the country, frankly,” Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Wednesday.

“I didn’t like it, I think most people didn’t like that debate,” he said, noting that there must be a better system to control how upcoming debates are held.

Meanwhile, multiple polls show that voters believed Biden won the first debate.

According to a new CNBC-Change Research survey released on Thursday, Biden has opened up a 13-point lead over Trump following the first debate.

The poll shows Biden receiving 54 percent of the vote to Trump’s 41 percent, with 53 percent of likely voters surveyed saying that the Democratic nominee fared better than Trump in the debate, while only 29 percent believed the president had the better performance.

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