For weeks, Kamala Harris claimed that the debates Donald Trump agreed to do with Joe Biden, scheduled for September 10 on ABC News were sacrosanct. When the former president pointed out that a new Democratic candidate meant there should be new negotiations about locations and rules, the mainstream media howled, claiming that Trump was “backing out” of the debates when he insisted that there should also be a debate on Fox News.
The New York Times wrote at the time that “the change, which Mr. Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social, raised objections from the Harris campaign and appeared to throw a potential showdown between the rivals into question.
A campaign official for Ms. Harris on Saturday accused Mr. Trump of scheming up the Fox News debate to distract from reneging on his commitment to the ABC debate. Mr. Trump had agreed to that debate in May, before President Biden dropped out of the race and before Mr. Biden’s calamitous performance in a CNN debate on June 27.
‘Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,’ Michael Tyler, the communications director for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. ‘He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10.’”
Trump finally relented and agreed to the previously arranged set up, but now that the Democrats have come to realize that Kamala Harris is her own worst enemy, the Harris-Walz campaign has demanded that the rules for the debate be changed to benefit her.
Politico writes that Harris doesn’t want the microphones to be muted during the debate, something that Biden insisted upon last June.
Back when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection, his campaign came to an agreement with Trump’s: There would be two debates — CNN’s on June 27 and ABC’s on Sept. 10 — conducted by mutually negotiated rules. One of Biden world’s red lines — which the Trump team agreed to — was that microphones would “be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” as CNN announced on June 15.
Now, the sides have flipped. Harris’ campaign wants the mics to be hot at all times during the ABC debate, as has historically been the case at presidential debates.
“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, told Playbook in a text message last night, confirming our reporting. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.”
It’s clear the veep’s team is hoping to get Trump to lose his cool on mic.
“She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” one person familiar with the negotiations tells Playbook. “And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and … I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”
Rather than focusing on issues that matter, because Kamala doesn’t seem capable of discussing them without sounding deranged, the Democrats want to manufacture a “girl boss moment” like she had during the debate against Mike Pence in 2020.
The Trump campaign has said, “Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules. If Kamala Harris isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize, that’s their problem. This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump.”
