Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign said that ABC’s decision to keep the microphones muted during the upcoming presidential debate "handcuffed" its initial strategy, Politico reported Friday.
Harris’s plan, before ABC finalized the rules of the event this week, was to interrupt her opponent, former president Donald Trump, by fact-checking and directly questioning him while he was speaking during their debate. Now, with just four days until the nominees face-off, campaign aides told Politico Harris’s advisers are "scrambling to rewrite their playbook."
"She could get thrown off by [the muted mics], so putting [their frustration] about the mics out there, they’re preparing for that possibility," one Democratic strategist told the outlet.
The Trump campaign was keen on keeping the same rules the former president agreed to when he was slated to debate President Joe Biden. Harris's campaign admitted, in a campaign mailer, they wanted to leave microphones on so Harris could re-create her "I’m speaking" moment during the 2020 vice presidential debate against Mike Pence.
"Trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps," a 2020 Harris campaign aide said. "And they have neutered that."
Harris’s team expressed frustration with these rules, inherited from Biden’s campaign, saying the octogenarian president "never should’ve been on the debate stage."
"It was a bad set of rules for someone who needed to be protected, who never should’ve been on the debate stage," one Democratic strategist familiar with the Harris team’s thinking said. "And now they’re stuck with it."
Harris’s senior communications adviser told ABC on Wednesday that the vice president would reluctantly accept the original rules, including the muted microphones, which he believes "fundamentally disadvantaged" the nominee.