Washington – Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team failed to convince ABC News, the moderator of next week’s presidential debate, not to mute the microphones during the 90-minute debate against former President Donald Trump.
Her campaign team agreed to mute microphones when a candidate is not speaking, according to a letter to ABC News that ended the back and forth about the rules for the debate on 10 September.
“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, is fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which is designed to protect Donald Trump from direct interaction with the Vice President. We suspect this is the primary reason his campaign team insists on muting microphones,” the letter, which CBS News has seen, says.
The Harris campaign also told CBS News that it had been given assurances about how any overlap would be handled. Microphones could be removed if there was significant overlap between the candidates. A candidate who continually interrupted his opponent would be warned by the moderator and his comments could be relayed to the audience. And if the microphones are not picking up the conversations, a group of reporters who will be in the room would report anything of note.
“Notwithstanding our concerns, we understand that Donald Trump poses a risk if he cancels the debate altogether, as he has previously threatened to do if we do not agree to his preferred format,” the letter said. “We do not want to jeopardize the debate. For this reason, we have accepted all of ABC’s proposed rules, including muting microphones.”
The Biden team had asked that the candidates’ microphones be muted when their opponents spoke. during the match between President Biden and Trump in June, moderated by CNN.
Trump’s campaign team opposed changing the rules for the debate in September.
“We agreed to the same rules. I don’t know, I don’t care,” Trump said on August 26 during his campaign appearance in Virginia. “I probably would have preferred to have it on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as last time. In this case, it was muted. I didn’t like it last time, but it worked out well.”
In a statement to CBS News Tuesday evening, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said: “We are thrilled that Kamala Harris and her team of remaining members of the Biden campaign … have finally accepted the already agreed-upon rules of the debate that they originally wrote themselves.”
At a town hall meeting with Fox News’ Sean Hannity recorded Tuesday night, Trump said he let Biden speak during the June debate and he will “let her talk.”
“You have to kind of feel it as you go through it,” Trump said.
