Trump hints he may drop out of ABC debate on September 10

Former President Donald Trump hinted on Monday that he might withdraw from the scheduled ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10 because he believed the network was hostile to Republicans.

Speaking at a Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia, Trump said he watched ABC News' “This Week” on Sunday and did not like the way Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was treated.

“When I saw the hostility, I said, 'Why am I doing this? Let's do it with another network.' I want to do it,” Trump told reporters.

Asked if he still plans to participate in the debate, Trump said: “We're thinking about it. We're thinking about it. They want to change the rules too. You know, the agreement was that we'd keep the same rules. And now all of a sudden they want to change the rules because she can't answer questions. … Why doesn't she do something like I'm doing right now? She can't talk. We can't have another fool as president.”

Trump said he wanted a “fair debate” and welcomed “tough questions.”

ABC “really should be ruled out,” he continued. “I'd much rather do it at NBC. I'd much rather do it at CBS. Frankly, I think CBS is very unfair, but the best of the bunch, and I'll do it at Fox for sure, I'd even do it at CNN. I thought CNN treated us very fairly last time.”

Asked if he wanted the microphones muted at the debate, Trump said: “We agreed on the same rules. I don't know. I don't care. I probably would have preferred it on, but the agreement was that it would be like last time. In this case, it was muted.”

Michael Tyler, communications director for the Harris campaign, said on MSNBC on Monday that the campaign prefers live microphones “so that the American people can see both candidates as they are and hear everything that comes out of their mouths.” He also said that Trump seems to prefer that scenario as well.

“I think their position is the same as Donald Trump's, because he said in that same conversation that he doesn't care. He doesn't care if the microphones are hot or not, and frankly he would rather they were hot,” Tyler said. “So I think that problem is solved.”

Negotiations over the rules for the September 10 debate reached an impasse overnight, partly due to a disagreement over whether the candidates would have live microphones.

Harris' campaign said it had asked ABC to have “hot” microphones on both candidates throughout the debate so they could capture all comments, regardless of whose turn it was to speak.

Harris' campaign spokesman Brian Fallon claimed that Trump's aides preferred to mute candidates' microphones when their opponents spoke “because they don't believe their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes alone.”

“The vice president is prepared to confront Trump's constant lies and interruptions in real time,” he added. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

However, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said both campaigns had already agreed to debate rules, which are the same as those used in the CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden in June. That debate used muted microphones, which the Biden campaign had requested. Miller also claimed the Harris campaign had requested that the candidates be allowed to sit and take notes during the debate.

“We've said there will be no changes to the agreed-upon rules,” Miller said. “If Kamala Harris isn't smart enough to repeat the messages her advisers want her to inculcate, that's her problem. This seems to be a pattern for Harris' campaign. They're not allowing Harris to do interviews, they're not allowing her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat sheet for the debate.”

Fallon, the spokesman for Harris' campaign, denied that the Harris team had requested a seated debate where note-taking would be allowed.

The disagreement over the rules, first reported by Politico, also comes after Trump posted on social media Sunday night suggesting he might withdraw from the debate over what he viewed as a “biased” interview on ABC's “This Week.”

'[W]Why should I broadcast the debate against Kamala Harris on this network?” Trump wrote.

NBC News spokesman Stephen Labaton said the network was in talks with Trump and Harris' campaign teams and was continuing to discuss the possibility of a debate.

Representatives for ABC, CNN and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The September 10 debate was originally planned months ago – before Biden dropped out of the race.

After Biden withdrew his candidacy and Harris launched her campaign, Trump said in early August that he would not participate in the ABC debate next month and suggested the two debates would be held on Fox News instead. Finally, Trump said he wanted to face Harris in three separate debates in September. So far, only the ABC debate has been confirmed.

This is the first election cycle since the nonpartisan organization was founded in 1987 in which the Commission on Presidential Debates has not sponsored the presidential debates.

The Republican National Committee withdrew from debates hosted by the commission in 2022, saying it would instead require Republican presidential candidates to commit to participating only in debates sanctioned by the Republican Party.

The Biden campaign also avoided the debates sponsored by the commission. In May, Biden campaign co-chair Jen O'Malley Dillon criticized the schedule of the fall debates in a letter and also claimed that the commission was “unable or unwilling to enforce the rules at the 2020 debates.”