As Donald Trump attacks ABC News and suggests he may pull out of the scheduled presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Harris campaign is calling his bluff on the one major remaining sticking point: debate rules.
The Harris campaign wants the microphones for both candidates to stay on during the September 10 debate, but Trump's advisors have been refusing, saying they want the same rules as the fateful CNN debate that led to President Joe Biden scrapping his re-election bid.
At 11:00 AM ET NBC News posted video (below) of Trump from Monday morning saying he did not care one way or the other about muting the microphones, but insisting the rules should stay the same as the CNN debate.
Harris campaign senior adviser for communications Brian Fallon picked up on Trump's remarks and called his bluff.
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"Trump said unmuting the mics 'doesn’t matter to me.' Always suspected it was something his staff wanted, not him personally. With this resolved, everything is now set for Sept 10th," Fallon wrote on X.
Trump had told NBC's Jake Traylor, "We agreed to the same rules. I don't know. 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, widely reported to want to pull out of the ABC News debate, especially after his late Sunday night rant, went on to claim it is Harris, a former prosecutor, who is not a "good debater" and "doesn't want to debate."
The ex-president, now down in the polls, declared, "they're trying to change it. The truth is, they're trying to get out of it because she doesn't want to debate. She's not a good debater. She's not a smart person. She doesn't want to debate."
Politico Playbook Monday morning reported that behind the scenes, the Trump campaign is refusing to agree to the Harris campaign’s request the microphones stay on at all times.
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“It’s clear the veep’s team is hoping to get Trump to lose his cool on mic,” Playbook reported.
Harris is “more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” a “person familiar with the negotiations tells Playbook.”
“And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts,” they said. “I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”
“Our understanding,” Harris campaign's Fallon had said in a statement, “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 unclear if Trump's remarks are the final word on unmuting the microphones.
Watch Trump below or at this link.
.@jake__traylor: "Would you want the microphones muted in the debate whenever you're not speaking?"
Donald Trump: "We agreed to the same rules. I don't know, doesn't matter to me. ... The agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted." pic.twitter.com/l7d7Odd7cb — NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) August 26, 2024
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