Former President Donald Trump said he would no longer take part in a planned debate between presidential candidates that had been slated for Sept. 10 on ABC, and instead pitched the concept of a new stand-off hosted by Fox News Channel on Sept. 4.
The ABC debate had been agreed to by both the Trump campaign and the campaign for President Joe Biden. Biden exited the 2024 presidential race in July, and Vice President Kamala Harris is now the Democratic nominee. She had committed to keep the ABC debate in place. The event was to have been moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis.
In comments posted to Truth Social late Friday, Trump said the September 10 debate had been “terminated,” noting it had been agreed to when Biden was still the nominee. He also raised the issues of legal conflicts he had with ABC; Trump has filed a defamation suit against the network for comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos around a decision that found the former president was liable for sexual abuse. Trump recently squared off with ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott at an event organized by the National Association of Black Journalists.
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ABC News and Fox News did not offer immediate comment Saturday.
“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,” the Harris campaign said in a statement Saturday. Harris intends to keep her commitment to appear on ABC News, the statement said and will “take the opportunity to speak to a national primetime audience.”
“We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to.”
Fox News has pitched both candidates for its own debate. Jay Wallace, president and executive editor of Fox News Media, recently sent a letter to both the Biden and Harris campaigns proposing a debate onFox News Channelfor Sept. 17 — one week after the ABC News event was slated to occur. Fox News proposed a debate to be held in Pennsylvania moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.
“We are open to discussion on the exact date, format and location — with or without an audience,” Wallace said. The letters to campaign officials contained statistics on Fox News’ reach among independent voters in swing states. Wallace and Baier recently told PvNew they were even open to the idea of muting each candidate’s microphone when it was not their turn to speak, a technique utilized by CNN that seemed to keep its event more focused and give less time for on-camera bickering.
Between 1988 and 2020, the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates organized the presidential debate process, lining up moderators on its own. Modern politics have churned so much with outrage, however, that both Republicans and Democrats have been eager to circumvent the organization their own parties set in motion in 1987, after several elections in which the debates were put together by the League of Women Voters.
The events are not to be taken lightly.CNN televised a debate in Junethat ultimately proved to be Biden’s downfall. The president appeared enervated and tired, even thought the debate took place without a live audience and with microphones that were muted when a candidate’s time to speak or respond had elapsed. CNN’s telecast was picked up by many of its competitors, and was broken up by commercial breaks — once seen as taboo. Approximately 51.27 million viewers watched the 90-minute spectacle, according to Nielsen, which was simulcast across 22 networks.
