Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign finally agreed to ABC News’s rules for her upcoming debate against former president Donald Trump, ending a dispute over having the candidates’ microphones muted when it is not their turn to speak.
Harris campaign adviser Brian Fallon wrote a letter to the network criticizing the muted-microphone rule for supposedly putting her at a disadvantage because it “will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President,” Fallon wrote, according to Politico.
“We 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. We do not want to jeopardize the debate. For this reason, we accept the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones,” Fallon added.
The Harris campaign also received verbal commitments from ABC to allow moderators to reprimand candidates who interrupt and keep microphones on during heated back-and-forth moments. Unlike the setup at the CNN debate between President Biden and Trump in June, the pool of traveling journalists will be permitted to be close enough to the debate to hear what might be missed by the television audience.
Before agreeing to the debate rules, the Harris campaign taunted Trump for supposedly being controlled by his advisers, who argued for the muted-microphone rule despite his apparent indifference to it. Muted microphones will likely make it more difficult for the candidates to deliver signature soundbites meant to drive news coverage.
Trump said last week that he agreed to the ABC debate with the same rules as the CNN debate, which featured muted microphones for Trump and Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race a few weeks after his horrendous showing at the debate. Trump’s announcement came shortly after he threatened to skip the ABC debate because of the network’s apparent bias against him.
After Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket, she experienced a surge in polling and enthusiasm, in part because of overwhelmingly positive media coverage. Since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has done only one primetime interview, which aired on CNN last week, and she has rarely exposed herself to unscripted moments. The CNN appearance was not a solo venture but a joint interview with her running mate, Tim Walz; it does not seem to have meaningfully altered the presidential race and has failed to put to bed questions about her ever-shifting policy positions.
The ABC debate is scheduled to take place in Philadelphia on September 10 and remains the only agreed-upon matchup between the two candidates. Harris has declined to participate in proposed debates on Fox News and NBC News on September 4 and September 25 respectively.
Early voting is set to begin in some states only days after the ABC debate takes place.