Donald Trump has agreed to debate Kamala Harris in the friendly atmosphere of Fox News in September, but the vice president has not yet agreed to what would be a changing of the guard.
Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News for a second time this year and debate Joe Biden before the president ended his re-election campaign.
In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the debate would be held in Pennsylvania on Sept. 4. The former president said there was a conflict of interest after he filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC and network host George Stephanopoulos over the host’s claim that Trump “was found guilty of rape” in the E Jean Carroll case.
Trump was ordered earlier this year to pay $83 million for defamatory statements he made about the magazine columnist, after being found liable for libel and sexual assault in an earlier case.
“The debate was previously scheduled against … Biden on ABC, but has been terminated because Biden will no longer participate and I am involved in a lawsuit against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, creating a conflict of interest,” Trump wrote.
The former Republican president added that the location of the debate on Fox News — which is generally welcoming to the GOP — had not yet been determined. But he said the moderators would be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum of Fox News, and that the rules would be similar to his June 27 debate with Biden — except this time there would be a studio audience.
But on Saturday, Harris’ campaign made it clear that she did not agree to the terms of the proposed Fox News debate, citing Trump’s previous challenge to debate Biden anytime or anywhere. She specifically refused to use that debate as a substitute for the ABC debate.
“Donald Trump is scared and is trying to back out of a debate he has already agreed to and is running straight to Fox News to save him,” Harris campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement shared on X by NBC News political correspondent Yamiche Alcindor.
“He needs to stop playing games and come forward for the debate he has already committed to.” [10 September]The vice president will be there in some form or another to seize the opportunity to speak to a national audience in prime time. We are happy to discuss further debates after the debate that both campaigns have already agreed to.
“Mr. Always, Everywhere, Everywhere shouldn’t have a problem with that, unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th.”
She said in July that she was “ready” to debate Trump and accused him of backing out of his previous deal with ABC.
The Democratic Party was shocked by Biden’s performance during the June debate on CNN and decided to dramatically withdraw from the race. Polls indicated that he was likely headed for a huge election defeat.
Trump and Harris are now neck-and-neck in the polls.
The political dance over presidential debates will now escalate. Earlier this year, Biden and Trump agreed to bypass the usual three-debate format, which is typically held in the fall and organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
Democrats said reducing the number to two and moving it to June and September reflects changes in the “structure of our elections and the interests of voters.”
Biden said he won two debates with Trump in 2020 and challenged him to two this year. “I hear you have Wednesdays off,” Biden said, referring to a weekly day off during the criminal trial in New York in which Trump was convicted of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.
But that decision ultimately backfired for Biden.
The latest twist in the 2024 debate drama comes after Trump said he wouldn’t face Harris because she wasn’t the party’s official nominee. On Friday, Harris snagged enough Biden delegates to officially become her party’s nominee.
At a rally in Atlanta on Tuesday, Harris said she welcomed a debate with Trump, who days earlier had called her a “bum.”
“As the saying goes, if you have something to say, say it to my face,” Harris said.
