Nexstar Able To Do 90 Minute Oz-Fetterman Debate

HUNTINGDON VALLEY, Pa. — The campaign manager for the Dr. Oz campaign, Casey Contres, released the following statement about the Nexstar debate:

Last night, we spoke to Nexstar’s representative, who told us they were more than capable of hosting a 90 minute debate.

The Oz campaign has agreed to Fetterman’s demand for closed captioning – which is both unprecedented and disallowed on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We have agreed to allow Fetterman to have two practice debates so he can be comfortable with closed captioning. We agreed to the date of October 25th, even though Nexstar originally offered both candidates October 5th.

The Fetterman campaign is lying again that “goal posts were moved” by the Dr. Oz campaign. In fact, it is the opposite. The Oz campaign agreed to a 60 minute debate on October 5th WITHOUT closed captioning. Now, the Fetterman campaign wants a 60 minute debate WITH closed captioning. That’s literally the dictionary definition of moving the goal posts. Not only that, but the Fetterman campaign NEVER specified a debate length in their list of requests to Nexstar – they only made requests about closed captioning, which we accepted.  If John Fetterman wanted a 60 minute debate, he could have agreed to the October 5th debate without closed captioning. Now he is asking for, and we are totally fine with, using the closed captioning system – which is cumbersome, delays John Fetterman’s responses, and will result in fewer questions being asked by the moderators.

Our campaign believes it is in the best interests of Pennsylvanians to hear the candidates debate as much as possible. John Fetterman has repeatedly ducked debates. He’s refused to debate more than once, and only after absentee ballots are sent to voters. Now John Fetterman is trying to use his stroke to get out of having to take as many questions from a moderator as possible.

This is about the Democratic process. We’re simply asking for 30 more minutes so Pennsylvania gets the debate they deserve. Why is that so hard? It should be easy.