Trump campaign sends letter to debate commission asking for more focus on foreign policy

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President Trump’s campaign manager sent a two-page letter on Monday to the Commission on Presidential Debates, asking the committee to "rethink and reissue" the topics that will be discussed during this week's upcoming presidential debate in Nashville.

“For the good of campaign integrity, and for the benefit of the American people, we urge you to rethink and reissue a set of topics for the October 22 debate with an emphasis on foreign policy," Bill Stepien tweeted on Monday.

As Stepien noted, the upcoming debate topics included fighting COVID-19, American families, national security, leadership, climate change, and race in America. "The topics announced by Kristen Welker ... are serious and worthy of discussion, but only a few of them even touch on foreign policy," Stepien said.

The campaign said that the Commission on Presidential Debates had committed to making foreign policy the central focus on the debate. The commission did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment. 

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Stepien further accused the commission of adding to a broader pattern of "pro-Biden antics." "The Commission's pro-Biden antics have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco and it is little wonder why the public has lost its faith in objectivity," Stepien said.

Biden's national press secretary, TJ Ducklo, responded by accusing the Trump campaign of lying. "The campaigns and the Commission agreed months ago that the debate moderator would choose the topics,” Ducklo said in a statement provided to Fox News.

“The Trump campaign is lying about that now because Donald Trump is afraid to face more questions about his disastrous COVID response. As usual, the president is more concerned with the rules of a debate than he is getting a nation in crisis the help it needs."

Stepien's letter came shortly after C-SPAN suspended one of its anchors, Steve Scully, the moderator scheduled for the second debate who admitted to lying about a tweet he sent to former top Trump aide and vocal critic of the president Anthony Scaramucci. That debate was eventually cancelled as Trump refused to take part in the virtual format imposed by the commission. 

Besides Scully, questions have risen surrounding Welker's ties to Democrats. The New York Post reported on Saturday that Welker "comes from an established Democratic family — who have poured cash into party coffers, and to Trump opponents, for years." According to the Post, Welker's parents donated $3,300 to Biden's 2020 campaign.

Thursday's debate comes amid multiple news reports raising questions about Biden's alleged ties to Chinese and Ukrainian business interests through his son Hunter.

Fox News reported on Saturday that one of the individuals on a controversial email thread confirmed a message that purportedly showed an equity split benefiting the former vice president. The email was from 2017, after Biden left office. 

Trump used the scandal surrounding Biden to suggest that he abused his position as vice president to enrich himself at the expense of the American people. The Biden campaign has denied wrongdoing. 

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates previously told Fox News: "Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as 'not legitimate' and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath."

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Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said on Monday that in this week's debate the president will bring up allegations surrounding the former vice president's son.

Other topics could include Trump's decision to exit the Paris Climate Agreement, which Democrats have pointed to as evidence that the president has not taken the issue of climate change seriously. Trump might highlight his administration's work in the Middle East, which has served as a point of argument for the administration's attacks on the Obama administration's Iran deal.

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.