Biden Dismisses Pelosi Suggestion to Skip Debates, Pledges ‘I Will Be a Fact-Checker on the Floor’ While Debating Trump

Former Vice President Joe Biden dismissed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that he shouldn’t “legitimize” President Donald Trump by debating him, and promised to fact-check Trump in real time when they do meet on the stage.

On Thursday afternoon, the ex-veep appeared on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, where host Andrea Mitchell played video of Pelosi’s remarks for him.

“I do not think the President of the United States has comported himself in a way that anybody associates with truth, evidence, data, and facts. I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.

“What do you think about that, would you consider it, not debating the president?” Mitchell asked.

“No, I’m going to come — as long as the commission continues down the straight and narrow, as they have, I’m going to debate him,” Biden said, and added that “I’m going to be a fact checker on the floor while I’m debating him, in fact.”

“But look, the one thing that’s going on so far is the vast majority, with notable exceptions, of the news media have been fact-checking the things they’ve been saying during the convention, and it’s just one lie after another,” Biden continued. “Lying lying lying lying, one after another.”

“But the debates are going to take place, I’ve been recommended to me by a number of very competent people who know their way around, including leading Republicans, that I shouldn’t debate Trump unless there’s a fact checker on the ground, in there in the debates saying ‘that’s true, that’s not true.’ But look, I think everybody knows this man has a somewhat pathological tendency not to tell the truth,” Biden said.

Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that Biden was trying to avoid debating him.

Watch the clip above via MSNBC.