Trump says he’ll ‘absolutely’ debate Harris — but terms could be renegotiated

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump says he will “absolutely” debate Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Oh yes, absolutely I’d want to. I think it’s important,” Trump said, making a rare appearance on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

Trump’s presence on the call could be taken as a sign that his campaign is adjusting to running against Harris instead of President Joe Biden who was viewed by the GOP as a weak opponent. Nonetheless, Trump said debating her will not present a new challenge.

“I agreed to a debate with Joe Biden, but I want to debate her,” Trump said. “She’ll be no different because they have the same policies. I think debating is important for a presidential race. I really do. I think that you sort of have an obligation to debate if you’re the candidate of the Republican Party.”

Trump reiterated that he wants to negotiate new terms in order to debate Harris, a stance that some Democrats have taken to mean that he refused to debate her. Novelist Stephen King, for example, wrote Monday that “Trump has announced he won’t debate Kamala Harris.”

In response, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Newsweek that “Stephen King is a dumba**.”

Trump said Tuesday he’d be willing to debate Harris more than once, though he added that he’s not “thrilled” about hosting the debates on ABC, the original host network that Biden signed onto.

“They’re truly fake news,” he said of the broadcast network. “I watched last night. They’re actually trying to make a hero out of Joe Biden when he was the worst president in history, and they were doing things with Kamala like saying what a wonderful thing it is that she’s running. She is not the candidate that they should have. You know it, I know it, we all know it. So I’m not thrilled with ABC.”

Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio issued a memo Tuesday predicting a “Harris honeymoon” that could hurt Trump’s polling figures over the next two weeks. However, Fabrizio wrote that the fundamentals of the race have not changed and predicted that Harris will eventually be tied to Biden’s record in the public mind.

Later in the call Trump added that he hasn’t agreed to anything debate-wise because the terms he previously agreed to were for a debate with Biden rather than Harris. But he reiterated his support of debates generally.

“It’s just a two-party system [in the U.S.], plain and simple, and it was designed that way, and that’s the way it is,” Trump said. “I think if you’re the Democrat nominee or the Republican nominee, you really have an obligation to debate. So I think it’s very important.”