Trash-talking Trump and Harris go another round on debates

It remains to be seen whether former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris end up debating, but their debate about the debates continues.

Trump has now indicated he would like to have three debates with Harris, all in September. Harris has so far only committed to the ABC News debate on Sept. 10.

“I think it’s very important to have debates, and we’ve agreed with Fox on a date of Sept. 4,” Trump told reporters during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday. “We’ve agreed with NBC, fairly full agreement, subject to them on Sept. 10, and we’ve agreed with ABC on Sept. 25. So, we have those three dates.”

The ABC debate would actually be Sept. 10 while the NBC News debate would occur on Sept. 25.

“Well, I’m glad that he’s finally agreed to a debate on Sept. 10,” Harris responded in a rare exchange with reporters. 

Asked whether she would be open to other debates, Harris said, “I am happy to have that conversation about an additional debate, or after Sept. 10, for sure.”

Note that the debate Trump is proposing before Sept. 10 would be on Fox News.

It’s possible that the debates don’t happen, since this remains a fluid situation, but at the moment this appears to be public haggling between the two candidates about debate terms, the kind of back-and-forth that did not occur when President Joe Biden challenged Trump to two debates.

“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020,” Biden said in a video in May. “Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal.”

There was a catch, or rather three catches: No Fox News, no live audiences, and no interruptions. But Trump quickly agreed.

Perhaps Trump was supposed to reject the offer, undercutting his vow to debate Biden “anytime, anyplace.” Or maybe Biden’s camp really did think he was up to debating Trump, though one debate would occur early enough to potentially recover from a bad performance and there would be one fewer encounter than the Commission on Presidential Debates had proposed.

Biden made it to the first debate on June 27. He never recovered. Scheduling a debate before the Democratic convention meant he was not yet his party’s official nominee. Democrats publicly revolted and Biden ended his candidacy less than a month later.

Trump has wanted to renegotiate the terms since Harris replaced Biden as the nominee. Harris has been mostly successful at framing this as a reluctance to debate her.

“Say it to my face,” Harris says on the stump in response to Trump criticism. “What happened to anytime, anyplace?” Harris posted on social media. “Mr. Anytime, anywhere, anyplace should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th,” her campaign said of a previous Trump attempt to get a debate on Fox.

Trump for his part said he would see Harris on Sept. 4 for a Fox debate or not at all.

“I am beyond trying to speculate about how he thinks,” Harris said Thursday about Trump’s apparent change of heart.

But Harris seems more hesitant to appear on Fox than Trump does to debate her. Trump and his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) have each done solo press conferences as a way to highlight how little she talks to the media.

Republicans increasingly believe Harris’s combination of tightly scripted events and favorable press coverage is contributing to her rise in the polls, potentially changing the political calculus of getting her on the debate stage.

Trump tried to turn the tables on Harris Thursday. “The other side has to agree to the terms,” he said of debates with his Democratic opponent. “They may or may not agree. I don’t know if they’re going to agree. They, she, hasn’t done an interview. She can’t do an interview. She’s barely competent.” 

“I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” Harris said on Thursday. The previous night, Politico quoted an unnamed Harris ally as saying she “could hold off on big interviews until after Labor Day.”

Trump has been strategic about debating in the past. He refused to debate his Republican primary opponents this year when they were far behind him in the polls. “Why would I allow people at 1 or 2% and 0% to be hitting me with questions all night?” he explained at the time. (He also then viewed Fox as a “hostile network.”) Trump built his 2015-16 primary lead by participating in most GOP debates during his first campaign. He debated both his previous general election opponents in 2016 and 2020, then Biden in June.

If Trump continues to trail, however narrowly, he will likely want to debate Harris. If he regains his lead, he may stick to his guns on there being a Fox debate, a likely dealbreaker with the incumbent vice president. 

“You have, really, an obligation to do that,” Trump said of general election debates in a radio interview last year.

Right now, the two sides are negotiating in public.