NANCY Pelosi again urged Joe Biden not to debate Donald Trump because "it's a waste of time listening to him speak."
On Thursday morning, Pelosi told reporters she didn't think there "should be any debates" because the president wouldn't present "truth, evidence, data and facts."
Speaking on MSNBC, the House Speaker echoed this warning after Biden had already confirmed he would be debating Trump.
"Why I said he shouldn't debate him has nothing to do with Joe Biden. Joe Biden will be – he is great as a debater," Pelosi said.
"What it is is about how totally inappropriate, that's the nicest word I can think of, the president is," she continued. "He has not even the slight flirtation with truth, fact, evidence, data.
"The president has not shown any respect for the office that he holds. And I don't expect that he will have any respect for the debates for that office."
But by the time Pelosi spoke to Ari Melber on "The Beat," Biden already told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell it would be happening.
"As long as the commission continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I'm going to debate him," Biden said.
"The debates are going to take place," he continued, adding there would be a "fact-checker on the floor" and accusing Trump of "lying, lying, lying."
"I think everybody knows this man has a somewhat pathological tendency not to tell the truth."
Earlier that day, Pelosi had said she hoped Biden would walk away from the debate stage.
“I don't think that there should be any debates,” she said.
“[I don't think] the president of the United States has comported himself in a way that anybody should, and has any association with truth, evidence, data, and facts.”
She said if Biden debated him, it would just be an “exercise in skullduggery” by Trump.
On Wednesday, Trump indicated he may demand that Biden take a drug test beforehand.
"I don't know how he could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie [Sanders]," he told the Washington Examiner.
Trump and Biden will battle it out during the official presidential debates with their running mates, Vice President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris facing off once.
The first is scheduled for Cleveland, Ohio on September 29; the second, in Utah on October 7; the third, in Miami on October 15 and in Nashville on October 22.
The US presidential election will be on November 3 – but Trump's team wants the debates to take place earlier.
Earlier this month, in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, Rudy Giuliani said the current schedule was an "outdated dinosaur and not reflective of voting realities in 2020."
Giuliani called for the final debate to be moved up to the first week in September.
"For a nation already deprived of a traditional campaign schedule because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, it makes no sense to also deprive so many Americans of the opportunity to see and hear the two competing visions for our country's future before millions of votes have been cast," he wrote.
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