The first debate between presidential candidates in June ended up precipitating the withdrawal of President Joe Biden’s re-election, after a disastrous televised show. A month and a half later, and with a new candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, at the head of the Democrats, the second debate of those agreed between the campaigns has just been put on hold. The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, has declared the one scheduled for September 10 on the ABC television network “finished” and has proposed another one on September 4 on his favorite channel, Fox News.
Harris’s campaign has accused Trump of cowering and trying to avoid the prospect of a duel with a rival who, as a former California attorney general, is adept at making her case to an audience. Both sides have shown a tendency to stand their ground and not give in, accusing each other of being too fearful of their opponents.
The former president declared his refusal to participate in the ABC debate in a message on Friday night on his social network, Truth. His main argument is that when he gave the go-ahead he had agreed to face Biden, not Harris. He also claims that he is involved in a defamation lawsuit with that network, which he considers aligned with the Democrats, although he had already filed that lawsuit when he originally said “yes” to participating, in May.
The debate he is now proposing on Fox would follow rules similar to those agreed upon for the June 21 debate with Biden. Those rules limited the length of responses and prohibited one candidate from interrupting the other, among other things. But Trump is proposing some modifications: this time, unlike then, the confrontation would take place in an audience. Instead of Georgia, it would be held in Pennsylvania, the state that both campaigns consider key to electoral victory. The event would be moderated by Fox presenters Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum.
The vice president said on Saturday, in a message on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, that she plans to participate in the originally agreed debate. “It is interesting how ‘any time, any place’ becomes ‘a specific time, a specific refuge’. I will be there on the 10th, as he agreed. I hope to see him there.”
“Donald Trump is freaking out and trying to avoid the debate he had already agreed to. Instead, he is running to Fox to come to his aid,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement. “He needs to stop playing games and show up for the debate he agreed to on September 10.”
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On Saturday, Trump reiterated that he would only participate in the debate he had proposed and that he would see Harris on September 4 in Pennsylvania “or I won’t see her at all.” According to his social network, with an argument identical to that of the Democrats, if Harris does not accept his terms, it will mean that she is “afraid to participate.”
Following the June debate, in which a hesitant and tired Biden offered answers that were difficult to understand or illogical, left sentences unfinished and seemed to draw a blank at times, the Republican candidate had seen his lead in the polls increase. That gap grew again after the attack he suffered on July 13 at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, there was growing clamor within the Democratic ranks for the veteran president, 81, to drop out of the race and make way for someone younger. Since Biden agreed to forgo re-election two weeks ago, polls suggest Harris, 59, has managed to close the gap with Trump, who at 78 is now the oldest presidential candidate in US history. The two are now in a technical tie, according to polls.
The change in the Democratic list seems to have caught Trump on the wrong foot. If the former president seemed to have found the right formula to beat his successor, he does not seem so comfortable facing Harris, the first black woman presidential candidate in the United States. He has described the change of leadership as a “coup” within the Democratic Party. He has resorted to personal insults and derogatory nicknames against her – a tactic he has already used in the past – rather than criticizing her policies or her management in the past. Earlier this week, on a panel at the annual convention of the Association of Black Journalists in Chicago, he suggested that the vice president, whose father is Jamaican and whose mother is Indian, had “turned black” for political convenience.
That same day, at a rally in Atlanta, Harris publicly challenged him to face her in the debate. “As they say, ‘if you have something to say, say it to my face,’” she challenged him.
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