Biden trolls Trump over his Manhattan trial while offering 2 presidential debates

• President Joe Biden's campaign proposed two debates with Donald Trump.
• Biden also trolled the former president.
• The president's campaign is selling a t-shirt that pokes fun at Trump's Manhattan criminal trial.

President Joe Biden's campaign is trolling Donald Trump over his Manhattan criminal trial while pushing the former president to agree to an unprecedented summer presidential debate.

On Wednesday morning, Biden's campaign proposed two presidential debates outside the traditional nonpartisan organization that has scheduled such contests for decades. Their suggestion includes an unprecedented June debate, which would easily be the earliest major presidential debate. Biden quickly accepted CNN's proposed date for a June 27th showdown.

Biden's reelection team is selling a "Free on Wednesdays" shirt to tout their debate proposal, a not-so-subtle reference to Trump's ongoing Manhattan criminal trial. Trump is in court most of the week, and has sometimes fallen asleep throughout the trial. One of the few exceptions is Wednesdays when Justice Juan Merchan has scheduled breaks in the proceedings.

"Trump's acting like he wants to debate the President," the item's description reads. "We hear he's free on Wednesdays. Let's do it!"

The shirt costs $32 and is the latest example of a burgeoning trend where campaigns try to make money from merchandise to meet short-lived trends. Non-traditional merchandise can be lucrative to campaigns; Trump's 2020 reelection famously made more than $450,000 from plastic straw sales alone.

Trump quickly accepted Biden's offer, though he added that the pair should meet up more than twice. Traditionally, presidential candidates square off three times, which includes a town hall-style debate.

"I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds – That's only because he doesn't get them," Trump wrote on Truth, his social media platform. "Just tell me when, I'll be there. 'Let's get ready to Rumble!!!;'"

The biggest shake-up to presidential debates in decades

Biden's proposed debates would be in June and early September. His camp has also proposed a vice-presidential debate in late July after the Republican National Convention.

In addition, Biden proposed greater restrictions on when a candidate's microphone is live, an almost certain nod to the debacle that ensued during the first 2020 presidential debate when Trump continued to interrupt Biden.

Biden's campaign also moved to effectively block third-party candidates from participating in the debate. Under the commission's rules, candidates must reach a polling threshold to make the stage. Since the imposition of that requirement, no third-party hopeful has made a commission-hosted debate. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate, is the closest long shot to meeting that threshold.

Biden campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon wants to go a step further.

"The debates should be one-on-one, allowing voters to compare the only two candidates with any statistical chance of prevailing in the Electoral College – and not squandering debate time on candidates with no prospect of becoming President," Dillon wrote in her letter outlining the proposal.

Trump and Biden agree on very little, but their respective campaigns have signaled they are ready to move beyond the nonpartisan nonprofit that has scheduled presidential debates since George H.W Bush's reelection campaign in 1988. The organization, the Commission on Presidential Debates, has faced criticism in recent years, especially from Republicans, over its selection of moderators.

In a message to the commission, O'Malley Dillon echoed her Trump counterparts' previous statements that the commission's currently scheduled debates are too late in the calendar. The first debate is scheduled for September 16, with the last set to conclude on October 6, a slate that would end long after millions of Americans have already voted early in the contest. O'Malley Dillon also took issue with the way the commission chooses its venues.

"The Commission's model of building huge spectacles with large audiences at great expense simply isn't necessary or conducive to good debates," she wrote in a letter to the group. "The debates should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters, watching on television and at home– not as entertainment for an in-person audience with raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering."

In response to Trump's previous concerns, the commission said it picked its schedule carefully.

"The first debate, scheduled for September 16, will be the earliest televised general election debate ever held," the commission said in a statement earlier this month.

"As it always does, the CPD considered multiple factors in selecting debate dates in order to make them accessible by the American public. These factors include religious and federal holidays, early voting, and the dates on which individual states close their ballots."