“The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules.”
Kamala Harris wants to change the rules of the upcoming, Sept. 10 presidential debate to be held on ABC. Instead of a normal, standing debate, Harris wants the candidates to be seated, and instead of both candidates speaking contemporaneously, drawing on facts and figures they know, she wants to have notes, as though it's some kind of open-book test in a freshman lecture class.
The Trump campaign's Jason Miller spoke to Politico Playbook, saying "Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules."
"If Kamala Harris isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize, that’s their problem," Miller said. "This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump."
Harris has not held a press conference, done or committed to a long-form interview, barely takes reporters' questions, and has only agreed to one debate against Trump—one she apparently wants entirely on her terms.
Harris has also said she wants "hot mics," which her campaign said was, in essence, to catch Trump saying something off hand, something critical, that she could use against him. "Our understanding 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," said campaign senior comms adviser Brian Fallon. "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."
Trump has been amenable not only to the ABC debate, which he agreed to with President Joe Biden, who has since been pushed off of his party's ticket, but he agreed to all of Biden's terms for their CNN debate on June 27, which preceded the Democrat Party's replacing Biden with Harris. Fallon claimed that Miller's assertion about the requested rules change was false. "All three parties (Trump, Harris and ABC) have agreed to standing and no notes, and we never sought otherwise," he said.
However, as Politico notes, "At the time they accepted ABC’s invitation, the Harris campaign did so while making clear to the network that the rules themselves were up for debate. And if this current snag is any indication, that debate is far from settled."
"I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning," Trump said on Sunday, "both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s (K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network? Will panelist Donna Brazil give the questions to the Marxist Candidate like she did for Crooked Hillary Clinton? Will Kamala’s best friend, who heads up ABC, do likewise. Where is Liddle’ George Slopadopolus hanging out now? Will he be involved. They’ve got a lot of questions to answer!!! Why did Harris turn down Fox, NBC, CBS, and even CNN? Stay tuned!!!"
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