The September 10 presidential debate will feature muted mics, as announced by ABC News on Thursday, rejecting Vice President Kamala Harris’s last-minute attempt to change the rules. This decision supports claims that the Harris campaign aimed to shift media focus from the upcoming third anniversary of the Biden-Harris administration’s deadly Afghan withdrawal towards the debate drama.
The announcement further highlights the Harris campaign’s strategy of providing itself an escape route in case the CNN interview with Harris on September 10 goes poorly, as per a top Trump ally. 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,” the ally stated.
The debate dispute began 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,” as reported by CNN 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 that the debate was a “go,” the Trump ally explained.
To seemingly 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. Trump continued to oppose this idea 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 announced.
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. One person familiar with Harris’s negotiations told Politico Playbook that Harris wants an unmuted mic to save her from word salads, stating, “She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her. 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 information on Harris’s word salads can be found here.