Trump suggests he may pull out of Sept. 10 ABC debate

Former President Donald Trump suggested Monday that he might pull out of a scheduled ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10 because he said the network was hostile to Republicans.

Speaking at a Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia, Trump said he watched ABC News' “This Week” on Sunday and didn't like the way Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, was treated.

“When I saw the hostility to this idea, I said, 'Why am I doing it? Let's do it with another network.' I want to do it,” Trump told reporters.

Asked whether he would participate in the debate, Trump said: “We're thinking about it. We're thinking about it. They want to change the rules, too. You know, the agreement was that we're going to keep the same rules. Now, all of a sudden, they want to change the rules because she can't answer questions. … Why doesn't she do something like what I'm doing right now? She can't speak. We can't have another idiot as president.”

Trump said he wanted to have a “fair debate” and was open to “tough questions.”

ABC “should really be out,” he continued. “I would much rather do it on NBC. I would much rather do it on CBS. Frankly, I think CBS is very unfair, but the best of the bunch, and I certainly do it on Fox, I would even do it on CNN. I thought CNN treated us very fairly the last time.”

Asked whether he wanted the microphones to be muted during the debate, Trump said: “We agreed to the same rules. I don't know. I don't care. I would probably prefer to have them on, but the agreement was that it would be like last time. In that case, they were muted.”

Michael Tyler, Harris' campaign communications director, said on MSNBC Monday that his team preferred live microphones “so that the American people can see both candidates for who they are and hear everything that comes out of their mouths.” He also said Trump also appeared to prefer that scenario.

“I think his position is the same as Donald Trump’s on this issue, because he added in that same interaction that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if the mics are hot or not, and frankly, he’d prefer them to be hot,” Tyler said. “So I think that problem is solved.”

Negotiations over the rules for the September 10 debate reached an impasse overnight, partly because of a disagreement over whether candidates would have active microphones.

Harris' campaign said it asked ABC to have both candidates have “active” microphones throughout the debate so they could pick up all comments, regardless of who was speaking.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Harris' campaign, said Trump advisers prefer candidates' microphones to be muted when their opponent speaks “because they don't think their candidate can act like a president on his own for 90 minutes.”

“The vice president is ready to respond in real time to Trump’s lies and constant interruptions,” he added. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.AP

Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, however, said the two campaigns had already agreed to the debate rules, which he said mirrored those used during the June CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden. That debate was conducted with microphones muted, which was requested by the Biden campaign. Miller also said the Harris campaign requested that the candidates be seated during the debate and allowed to take notes.

“We said there would be no change to the agreed-upon rules,” Miller said. “If Kamala Harris is not smart enough to repeat the messages that her operatives want her to memorize, that’s their problem. This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They don’t allow Harris to give interviews, they don’t allow her to give press conferences, and now they want to give her a debate cheat sheet.”

Fallon, the Harris campaign spokesman, denied that Harris' team had requested a sit-down debate with notes allowed.

The disagreement over the rules, which was first reported by Politico, also comes after a social media post from Trump Sunday night suggesting he might withdraw from the debate because of what he called a biased interview on ABC's This Week.

'[W]Why should I participate in the debate against Kamala Harris on this channel? Trump wrote.

NBC News spokesman Stephen Labaton said the network was and is in contact with the Trump and Harris campaigns about the possibility of hosting a debate.

Representatives for ABC, CNN and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The September 10 debate was originally scheduled several months ago, before Biden dropped out of the race.

After Biden withdrew and Harris launched her campaign, Trump announced in early August that he would not participate in the ABC debate next month and proposed that both debates be aired on Fox News instead. Eventually, Trump said he wanted to face Harris in three separate debates in September. So far, only the ABC debate has been confirmed.

This is the first election cycle in which the Commission on Presidential Debates has not sponsored presidential debates since the nonpartisan organization was launched in 1987.

In 2022, the Republican National Committee withdrew from the committee's debates and said it would instead require Republican presidential candidates to pledge to participate only in debates sanctioned by the Republican Party.

Biden’s campaign has also avoided the commission’s debates. In May, Biden campaign co-chair Jen O’Malley Dillon challenged the fall debate schedule in a letter and also claimed the commission was “unable or unwilling to enforce the rules in the 2020 debates.”

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