The Kamala Harris campaign denied that it had reached an agreement for the current vice president to debate former president Donald Trump on September 10.
Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday that the terms for the debate to be hosted by ABC News were settled. The Harris campaign contested the former president’s assertion, referring to remarks made by Trump earlier in which he seemed favorable to some of the Harris team’s terms.
“Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates – but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!” the campaign told Reuters in a statement.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that both sides had agreed on terms for the ABC debate. The debate rules would be “the same as the last CNN Debate,” including a stipulation that the mic of a candidate would be turned off while the other is speaking, Trump said.
“I have reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris,” the former president wrote. “It will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business, on Tuesday, September 10th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”
“The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden,” he added. “The Debate will be ‘stand up,’ and Candidates cannot bring notes, or ‘cheat sheets.’ We have also been given assurance by ABC that this will be a ‘fair and equitable’ Debate, and that neither side will be given the questions in advance (No Donna Brazile!).”
Trump had previously remarked that he would prefer mics to be hot at all times during the debate but that the agreement already in place, which his campaign had negotiated when President Joe Biden was the presumed Democratic nominee, stipulated that only the candidate speaking would have a live mic.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted. I didn’t like it the last time, but it worked out fine. Ask Biden how it worked out, it was fine. And I think it should be the same,” Trump told reporters.
The Harris campaign’s hesitancy to accept the terms of the September 10 debate follows earlier claims from Harris’ campaign that Trump was avoiding taking the stage with Harris. In July, Harris accused Trump of “backpedaling” away from the debate that the Trump campaign had agreed to with Biden’s camp. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said at the time that Democrats could still switch their nominee again after the Democratic establishment and the media had already pressured Biden to drop from the race.
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