Days after accepting her party's nomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Kamala Harris is trying to back out of the Sept. 10 presidential debate against Donald Trump. The Harris campaign previously accused Trump of cowardice for suggesting a new debate schedule after President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy. Now, Harris wants to change the rules at the last minute.
Politico reports that Harris has insisted that the microphones at the upcoming debate, hosted by ABC News, remain on at all times. "The American people deserve a back-and-forth debate where the two candidates can have real exchanges," wrote Harris spokesman Ian Sams, the upward-failing architect of her failed 2020 primary campaign.
The Biden and Trump campaigns already agreed that the opposing candidate's mic would be muted during the debate when the other is speaking. Earlier this month, when Trump signaled he might bail on the ABC News debate because it was negotiated with a candidate no longer on the ballot, a Harris campaign spokesman said Trump was "running scared."
In yet another reversal, the Harris campaign is complaining she shouldn't be held to the rules negotiated by Biden, who was forced to end his reelection campaign after delivering the worst debate performance in the history of American politics on June 27. It was the Biden campaign that insisted the microphones be muted to prevent Trump from interrupting.
Harris wants to be interrupted. That's why she is insisting the microphones be live at all times during the debate. She is desperate to engineer another viral moment that sends a thrill up the legs of journalists and other liberal activists—a repeat of her sassy "I'm speaking" interjection during the 2020 vice presidential debate against Mike Pence.
The Trump campaign rejected Harris's call for a last-minute rule change. "If Kamala Harris isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize, that’s their problem," Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told Politico. "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."
Trump on Sunday expressed his own concerns with the ABC News debate after the network's chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, humiliated himself while defending Harris's record of policy flip-flops during an exchange with Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.). "[W]hy would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
It has been more than a month since Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Harris, and the Democratic nominee still hasn't held a press conference or sat for an interview to answer questions in the absence of a teleprompter. History suggests the results could be disastrous, which is why her campaign would prefer to avoid putting Harris in that situation, and why America's esteemed journalists are unlikely to complain.