The September 10 presidential debate will feature muted mics, ABC News announced Thursday, rejecting Vice President Kamala Harris’s last-minute attempt to change the rules.
The announcement substantiates claims that the Harris campaign attempted to redirect the media’s focus on debate drama to distract from this week’s third anniversary of the Biden-Harris administration’s deadly Afghan withdrawal.
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The announcement also underscores the Harris campaign’s strategy of giving itself an escape hatch in case Thursday’s CNN interview with Harris goes poorly.
“At this point, Team Harris is going to be taking an ‘L’ when they finally accept, as the debate rules aren’t changing, or they’ll take an even bigger ‘L’ if they back out of the debate because the Dana Bash/CNN interview goes poorly,” a top Trump ally told Breitbart News.
The debate dispute goes back to when President Joe Biden was still in the race. Both candidates agreed on two debates (CNN on June 27 and ABC on September 10), with Biden insisting that microphones “be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” CNN reported on June 15.
Harris then joined the race. Last week, both the Trump and Harris campaigns had ABC News’s debate rules in writing and both sides confirmed to the network the debate was a “go,” the Trump ally said.
This combination photo shows Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at an event, August 15, 2024, in Bedminster, New Jersey, left, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on August 16, 2024. (AP Photo)
To apparently avoid too much media attention on the anniversary of the deadly Afghan withdrawal in the coming week, the Harris campaign requested on Sunday that ABC News and other networks unmute candidates’ microphones, an idea Trump continued to oppose on Tuesday.
“I have reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. 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,” Trump said.
The Harris campaign continued to play games with debate rules on Wednesday by refusing to agree on having muted microphones at the September 10 debate on ABC.
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One person familiar with Harris’s negotiations told Politico Playbook that Harris wants an unmuted mic to save her from word salads. “She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” the person said. “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].”
More is here on Harris’s word salads.