Debbie Wasserman Schultz Shuts Down Push on More Debates

The Democratic National Committee's chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is shutting down a push to add more presidential debates.

"We're going to have six debates. Period," she declared at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday, the National Review reports.

She also shrugged off calls from Democratic candidate Martin O'Malley, Sen. Bernie Sanders and others to scrap an "exclusivity clause" that punishes candidates who take part in any additional debates, the National Review reports.

"We are not changing the process," she said. "We are having six debates, and candidates will be uninvited from any subsequent debates if they accept an invitation to a debate outside of the six DNC-sanctioned debates."

O'Malley, meanwhile, continued to attack the limited schedule, answering MSNBC's "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough's question about whether the former Maryland governor thought party elites were purposefully rigging the primary for Clinton.

"I do … I'm told that this is the prerogative of the chair," O'Malley said.

"There's always an inclination I think for old relationships to kind of circle the wagons and protect one another."

"And tell our viewers who the chair is?" Scarborough prompted.

"The chair is Debbie Wasserman Schultz," O'Malley said.

But at the Christian Science Monitor event, Wasserman Schultz laughed off the rigging accusations.

"A couple of days ago, I think it was [the] Drudge Report who said that I obviously delayed the first debate to mid-October because I'm in the tank with Joe Biden," she said, the National Review reports. "So every day, someone is going to say something about my intentions. Like I said, I have a party to run."

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