Is Trump Trying to Weasel His Way Out of Debating Harris?

Donald Trump is threatening to pull out of the only debate he had agreed to with Kamala Harris, claiming Sunday that ABC News is full of “Trump Haters” who won’t give him a fair shake in the September 10 showdown. “Why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump posted on his social media site. “They’ve got a lot of questions to answer!!!”

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The rant ostensibly came in response to a This Week panel that he whined was “ridiculous and biased.” But, as Politico reported Monday, it may have more to do with the rules of next month’s debate: Where Trump’s former opponent, Joe Biden, had conditioned the debate on mics being muted when the other candidate is speaking, Harris would evidently prefer the mics to stay on—all the better, it seems, to goad the former president into a trademark meltdown. “She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” as a person familiar with the debate negotiations told Politico. “And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and…I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”

“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,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.

The Trump campaign, for its part, seems to be wavering: “Enough with the games,” Trump adviser Jason Miller told the outlet, claiming—incorrectly—that Harris had already agreed to the terms of the ABC debate. “We said no changes to the agreed upon rules.”

In 2020, Trump used his time on the debate stage to try to steamroll Biden—a strategy the Democrat turned against him: “Will you shut up, man?” Biden asked at one point. But this cycle, the Biden campaign called for the mics to be cut when the candidate was not talking—an arrangement that, in theory, could have allowed him to focus more on substance, but that only seemed to emphasize his own listnessness while a more subdued Trump won by default and expanded his lead in polls.

That lead has evaporated since Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, who outpaces Trump by seven points nationally in a new poll and has put the Republican on his heels. “The VP is ready to debate Trump live and uncensored,” Harris adviser Brian Fallon taunted Monday. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

The Harris campaign’s trolling represents both a strategic shift from the careful approach Biden had taken and a reversal in the dynamic of the race with just over two months to go until election day. Will this 70-day dash to the finish line find Harris and Trump sharing a stage together at any point? “Stay tuned!!!” Trump wrote Sunday.