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UPDATE: Donald Trump says he will do a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News, albeit at a different date than the network publicly proposed, while he’s declared ABC News’ plans for a Sept. 10 face off with Kamala Harris “terminated.”
The former president’s Truth Social post on Friday, though, appears to be yet another effort to gain the upper hand in debate negotiation brinksmanship.
Fox News and ABC News have yet to comment on Trump’s post, nor has Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
Harris has confirmed that she would participate in a Sept. 10 debate on ABC News, plans that Trump originally agreed to when Joe Biden was the nominee. But Trump has yet to recommit to that date, and Harris has hammered him on it.
“If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,” Harris said this week, shortly after Trump had questioned whether she was really Black.
In April, Trump called for Biden to debate “anytime, anyplace.” “We’ll do it anywhere you want, Joe,’ he said.
The next month, Biden took him up on the offer. Under terms that both campaigns agreed to, a debate was set on CNN for June 27 and on ABC for Sept. 10.
More recently, though, Trump has been insistent that the host network should change. He wrote that the ABC News debate was “terminated” because Biden was no longer the nominee. He also claimed that he had a “conflict of interest” with the network as they are in litigation. Trump sued ABC News over comments that George Stephanopoulos made on This Week. But Trump filed his lawsuit in March, so that conflict existed even when his campaign earlier agreed to the ABC debate back in May. The moderators of the ABC event are scheduled to be David Muir and Linsey Davis.
Fox News proposed a date of Sept. 17, with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as moderators. But the Biden campaign’s original proposal made clear that Fox News was not among the options for a host network — and nor was MSNBC. They had set guidelines that a host network could only be one that hosted a 2016 Republican primary debate and a 2020 Democratic primary debate.
This seeming stalemate over debates was a reason why, in the 1980s, a bipartisan commission was created to institutionalize the process. Since 1988, the Commission on Presidential Debates set debate dates, locations, formats and moderators, and had many plans in place for this cycle until the Trump and Biden campaigns bypassed the process.
PREVIOUSLY: Donald Trump has said he will agree to a debate with Kamala Harris, with the condition it happens on Fox News, and not ABC as originally planned.
The Republican candidate for the White House wrote on the Truth Social media platform late Friday night that there would be a conflict of interest to host for the debate to take place on ABC, due to ongoing defamation legislation between him and ABC host George Stephanopoulos.
Trump wrote: “The Rules will be similar to the Rules of my Debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his Party – BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!….”
And he stated that the debate would go ahead on September 4, with Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum to moderate.
“This date is convenient and appropriate in that it is just prior to the September 6th start of Early Voting in the 2024 Presidential Election,” he wrote.
Prior to Joe Biden stepping down from the race, he was scheduled to debate Trump on ABC on September 10.
The Sun newspaper reports that it reached out to Fox, ABC and Harris’s people for confirmation but had not received response by the time of going to press.
Only Friday morning, Trump had told Fox Business he saw no reason to debate Harris.
