Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Trump, called for extra debates between the two presidential candidates this year, saying that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has stayed largely out of view.
“We get a total of less than an hour of Joe Biden a week,” she said during an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. “That’s great for Joe Biden, but there will be a campaign. There will be debates, hopefully many of them, more of them than usual, because we haven’t had a normal election season so far.”
Since 2000, there have been three debates each presidential election cycle between the major party candidates.
Trump’s campaign is optimistic he will join a series of virtual events before the month is over and has hoped that rallies could be possible, albeit modified to comply with new social distancing measures.
Trump resumed some travel in May, including a visit to Arizona, where he toured a manufacturing facility for N95 masks, but a lockdown on public events because of the coronavirus put a stop to the raucous campaign rallies that Trump has become known for.
Conway said that with only two out of every 10 seats filled, these might look “more like” Biden rallies.
Still, some White House allies, uneasy about the optics of Trump’s current travel routine in which aides can often be seen socially distanced and in masks, are pressing for a return to programming as usual. Trump, too, has asked why campaign events have not resumed if White House travel is considered safe, Politico reported.
“In the not too distant future, we’ll have some massive rallies, and people will be sitting next to each other,” Trump said at the end of April.
“The goal is to get as close to a traditional Trump event as possible, as we’re entering the warmer months here without having to change too much,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
