Doubts were raised Monday about the upcoming September 10 debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, after the Republican candidate questioned her participation.
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“Why am I debating Kamala Harris on this channel?” the former president wrote in a message on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, accusing the scheduled debate channel, ABC, of bias against him.
The campaign team for the vice president, the Democratic nominee for president in November, confirmed in a press release Monday that the dispute with the Republican nominee's advisers actually concerns an organizational issue: microphone management.
“We believe that both candidates’ microphones should remain on throughout the debate,” says Brian Fallon, an adviser to the candidate. “Our analysis is that the Trump team would prefer to have the microphones cut off because they don’t believe their candidate is capable of remaining president for 90 minutes.”
According to Politico, the two camps have reached an impasse on this issue.
During the June 27 debate on CNN between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who was still the Democratic nominee, the microphone of the candidate who did not speak was muted, at the request of the 81-year-old president.
But according to Politico, Kamala Harris, who replaced him in the race for the White House, would prefer to return to the permanent open microphones that were the norm in presidential debates, in the face of a rival known for his penchant for invective and interruptions at the wrong time.
Joe Biden's disastrous performance, already poor in the polls before the debate, was the death knell for his candidacy.
The challenge facing Kamala Harris, who on the other hand has a slight lead in the polls, is to maintain her momentum, or even widen the gap with Donald Trump.
