At a “town hall” meeting moderated by a devoted fan, on a television station that admitted to airing straight-up election lies on his behalf, and featuring pre-screened questions from members of his own political party, Donald Trump insisted that next week’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was going to air on a “dishonest” network that would feed his opponent “questions in advance.”
“Who the hell in New Hampshire would vote for this guy?” Trump went on to ask Sean Hannity and his Fox News audience on Wednesday, per The New York Times, the 78-year-old Republican either momentarily forgetting who his opponent will be in November or simply pining for the days before Harris entered the race and turned polls in the Granite State from purple to blue.
Trump’s rambling projection came the same day as his Democratic rival — that would be Kamala Harris — formally agreed to the rules for the Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News, including one that her campaign insisted would leave the former prosecutor “fundamentally disadvantaged.” That rule is one that Trump and President Joe Biden had agreed to: that microphones should be muted when it is not their turn to speak.
In May, the Biden campaign viewed muted mics as an advantage that would prevent Trump from simply dominating the debate with an endless rant. In September, the Harris campaign sees it as a way for Trump’s campaign to prevent viewers from seeing just how old and incoherent the Republican nominee has become.
In a letter agreeing to the ABC News debate, obtained by CNN, the Harris campaign said the policy “will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President,” which it said was likely “the primary reason for his campaign’s insistence on muted microphones.” Trump himself had told reporters he would be okay with the microphones being turned on at all times, but his campaign — his “handlers,” in the taunting words of Harris’ staff — insisted that the format not be changed.
The debate over the actual format of the debate epitomizes how much has changed since June, when Trump’s debate opponent was an 80-year-old with a declining ability to communicate his policies and values, much less challenge his rival’s steady stream of out-and-out and often incoherent lies, like that Democrats support “after birth” abortions.
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Harris, 59, is seemingly not afraid that Trump will steamroll her nor concerned that, if he tries, it will go all that well for him. According to her campaign, the only real concern is that Trump would not show up after already trying to wiggle out of the debate.
“[W]e understand that Donald Trump is a risk to skip the debate altogether, as he has threatened to do previously, if we do not accede to his preferred format,” the Harris campaign said in its letter.
Trump, for his part, is claiming he will behave himself, asserting that it’s to his benefit to allow his opponent to speak uninterrupted, even as he tries to lower expectations with his usual rhetoric about the world being “rigged” against him.
“You know when I had Biden, you and I had the same discussion, and I let him talk,” Trump told Hannity on Wednesday. “I’m going to let her talk.”
Given how Trump himself has been speaking as of late — this week, he falsely claimed that transgender youth are going to school and coming home “a few days later with an operation” — that looks to be the Harris strategy too: Let the guy talk and let voters see for themselves which party is running a candidate who is unfit for office.
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