Hey everyone. After we recorded the podcast, the Commission on Presidential Debates responded to the Trump campaign saying it would not be adding a fourth presidential debate. In fact, the Commission stated it was its understanding that the Trump campaign had agreed to participate in the already announced debates. Listen for more on why the Trump campaign is trying to have this fight.

The debate over debates heats up.

We'll discuss that today.

Plus, Mike Pence putting the Supreme Court on the ballot this November,

and Michelle Obama explaining her low-grade depression.

Hi, everyone. I'm David Chalien, the CNN political director. This is the Daily D.C.

President Trump and his campaign are ramping up its efforts to engage the Biden campaign and the

public more broadly. In this exercise we go through

of debating the debates, it's all about positioning, negotiating, trying to extend advantage where

you have it, and trying to get some leverage that you may not have immediately in your corner.

Candidates do this at every level of American politics,

but you will see that the president and Joe Biden are also sort of playing the type right now

on the debate over the debates, which is the losing candidate is the one who's trying to

drum up confusion or make demands or seek more debates, sort of create the

drama around the pre-debat moment.

Whereas the person who's leading in the polls is like, yeah, I'll show up and debate this guy.

And what you see here is the president using the fact that there's going to be so much voting by mail

and early voting happening much earlier than we've seen before. So millions of Americans will have

had the opportunity to cast a ballot in this presidential election before the first scheduled

debate on September 29th. And that is Donald Trump's way

into this argument. His tweet this morning, how can voters be sending in ballots starting in some

cases one month before the first presidential debate? Move the first debate up. A debate to me is a public

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