Eric Trump: Joe Biden does not have the 'aptitude' to debate my father

Trump Organization executive vice president Eric Trump said on Thursday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden does not have the "aptitude" to debate his father, President Trump, after a New York Times op-ed questioned whether Biden should debate.

Trump said on Fox & Friends” that Biden has been on the “wrong end” of every single trade deal and had supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, which cost the United States 70,000 factories.

“He doesn’t know what he is saying. He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s taking the liberal talking points: let’s defund the police. He wants open borders, he wants closed schools, he wants total anarchy, he wants to raise taxes in this country,” Trump said.

Trump reacted to the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman urging Biden not to participate in the three upcoming debates with President Trump unless the president agrees to "two conditions" Friedman has proposed.

"I worry about Joe Biden debating Donald Trump. He should do it only under two conditions. Otherwise, he’s giving Trump unfair advantages," Friedman began his column Tuesday evening.
Friedman said the "conditions" should be that Trump must release his tax returns from 2016 to 2018, and that both campaigns should agree on having a "real-time fact-checking team" hired by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

The columnist suggested "10 minutes before the scheduled conclusion of the debate, this team report on any misleading statements, phony numbers or outright lies either candidate had uttered. That way no one in that massive television audience can go away easily misled."

"Debates always have ground rules. Why can’t telling the truth and equal transparency on taxes be conditions for this one?" Friedman asked.

Trump said that the New York Times is trying to convince a candidate not to go into a debate.
“Honestly, guys, I’m not trying to be fresh here but if you want to know the truth, Biden is actually in a really tough spot because he does not have the aptitude to debate my father. At the same time, if he backs out of the debate, everybody in the country will know that he did not have the aptitude to debate my father” Trump said.

“No one has seen Biden. The guy has been in his basement for the last four months. He hasn’t been out. The few times he has been out, he’s stuttered through sentences, he hasn’t been able to get through a cohesive thought and they’re literally trying to convince the guy not to get on the stage where you’d have 40-50 million people each time see somebody who could potentially become the commander in chief of the free world.”