Harris’ campaign said Monday that Donald Trump’s team is pushing to keep microphones on for the big debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in an effort to prevent the Republican presidential nominee from being made a fool of.
This comes as the former president is raising doubts about whether or not he will run for office.
Harris and Trump will face off in their first debate in just over two weeks on Sept. 10 on ABC News, but the campaigns appear to be at odds over the rules, with Trump’s team having agreed to the ones set in June, when President Biden was the likely nominee, while Harris’ campaign wants a change.
“We have told ABC and other networks looking to host a potential debate in October that we believe both candidates’ microphones should be on for the entire broadcast,” Brian Fallon said in a statement.
“We understand that Trump’s advisers prefer the microphone to be muted because they don’t believe their nominee can act as president for 90 minutes on his own,” Fallon continued.
Harris’ campaign says Trump’s team wants microphones muted when it’s not a candidate’s turn at the Sept. 10 debate, while Trump is raising questions about whether he will even show up.
The response is the latest in a series of tense back-and-forth negotiations between the campaigns over the debate after Harris replaced Biden at the head of the ticket.
Trump and Biden were originally scheduled to debate twice, first in June and then again in September.
But Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate was a catalyst for him to drop out of the race less than a month later amid growing concerns among Democrats about the 81-year-old’s ability to serve a second term.
After Harris became the nominee, she said she was ready to hold the debate with Trump on Sept. 10 and was open to subsequent debates, but their only agreed-upon showdown now appears to be in jeopardy.
In a post Sunday night, the 78-year-old questioned whether he would debate Harris on ABC News in just over two weeks.
“This morning I watched ABC FAKE NEWS, both the ridiculous and biased interview by journalist Jonathan Carl (K?) with Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and his so-called Trump Haters Panel, and I wonder, why would he do the Kamala Harris Debate on that network?” Trump wrote.
The former president went on to criticize ABC News panelist Donna Brazile on Sunday, suggesting he would give the questions to Harris after she leaked topics from the CNN town hall to the Clinton campaign in 2016 while she was a political analyst there.
He also noted that Harris’ friend runs ABC and questioned whether anchor George Stephanopoulos might be involved.
“You have a lot of questions to answer! Why did Harris turn down Fox, NBC, CBS and even CNN? Stay tuned!!!” Trump wrote in his post.
Asked about Monday morning’s debate in Virginia, the former president said he wanted to have a fair debate, but suggested that couldn’t happen on ABC News.
Earlier this month, Trump claimed he would go head-to-head with Harris and had agreed to three debates, including one on ABC News, as well as one on Fox News on Sept. 4 and another on NBC in late September.
Harris’ campaign responded to her late-night post in its statement Monday morning.
They said they suspect the Trump campaign has not even told their candidate about the microphone dispute.because it would be too embarrassing to admit that they don’t think he can take on Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.
Fallon said the vice president is ready and that Trump should…Stop hiding behind the mute button.
Asked about Monday’s debate, Trump said he didn’t like the fact that microphones were muted in June, “but it turned out fine.”
The former president said he believes it should be the same and that his campaign “accepted the same rules.” He accused Harris of “trying to avoid the issue” because she is “not a good debater” or “an intelligent person.”
Harris has not formally accepted any additional debate offers beyond the Sept. 10 one, but told reporters while speaking on the tarmac in late July that she was open to it.
Former President Trump and President Biden participated in a debate on June 27 in Atlanta. The face-to-face confrontation raised alarm bells about whether the 81-year-old president was ready for a second term.
The dispute over muting microphones carries some irony, as it was a rule the Biden campaign had originally pushed to put in place when he was still a candidate ahead of the June debate.
But the move appeared to backfire on the president, who appeared slow to respond on camera and failed to call Trump out on his false statements in real time.
This unleashed an avalanche of criticism that continued to mount until Biden dropped out of the race on July 21.
