On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison responded to a question on whether the Harris-Walz campaign should accept 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump’s proposal for three debates by stating that we’ll have to see if Trump will do the ABC debate because he’s afraid to debate 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.
NBC News National Affairs Analyst John Heilemann asked, “[T]he debate or debates [are] an open question now. The only — apart from Trump’s incoherence yesterday — the one piece of news he made yesterday was that he has now accepted, gone back to accepting the notion that this ABC debate that was previously scheduled with him and Joe Biden, he will do the debate, apparently, he seems to be on for that. And Kamala Harris, basically, yesterday, came out and said, great, glad to hear it. That’s what I wanted to do. But he continues to suggest that there should also be a debate that precedes that on Fox News and then a debate that he says is nearly negotiated completely with NBC later in September. So, I’m curious about what you think about what the Harris campaign, in addition to doing what they’ve done already, which is say, yes, we’re going to be there at the ABC — the previously scheduled ABC debate, what they should do about Donald Trump’s proposal of two additional debates. Just to point out, three debates is the conventional number that we see in presidential campaigns. In years past, that’s what’s normally been done under the Commission on Presidential Debates. So, do you think that the Harris campaign should accept those proposals or counterpropose or what?”
Harrison responded, “Well, what we have to see — because Donald Trump is changing his mind like the weather, what we have to see, and I think the Vice President said this yesterday, let’s see if he actually shows up to the debate — the ABC debate in September. Because I’m not certain that he actually will. I believe that he is scared to debate our Madam Vice President, because he understands how strong she is, how focused she is, and she is going to prosecute the case against him.”
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