August 6, 2024
A presidential debate between these two is starting to look less likely.
At this point both former President Trump and Vice President Harris are saying the other one is running scared. And each have agreed to a debate that doesn’t include the other one.
Last Friday former President Trump officially backed out of the original debate scheduled for September 10th on ABC against President Biden. He has instead agreed to a debate on Fox News on September 4th in front of an audience in Pennsylvania. Trump said he was backing out for two reasons – one because “Biden will no longer be a participant” and two because he is “in litigation against ABC network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest.” But the fact is – Trump filed that lawsuit against ABC back in March and it didn’t seem to be a problem when he agreed to the original September 10th date on ABC against Biden. He did not give any indication about why he sees it as a problem now.
But here’s the thing – at this point – Trump will be at the Fox News debate by himself because Vice President Harris has not agreed to it. Instead she’ll be by herself at the originally scheduled September 10th debate on ABC. She responded to Trump’s social media post by saying “it’s interesting how “any time, any place” becomes “one specific time, one specific safe space.” I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.” It’s unclear if that will happen.
But ABC has said that time slot is officially scheduled for a debate. And the network has released the qualifications for candidates to appear on their debate stage. To qualify a candidate must meet all the constitutional requirements. Plus, by September 3rd a candidate must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to attain 270 electoral votes and must reach at least 15% support in four separate national polls of registered of likely voters between August 1 and September 3rd. ABC said if only one qualified candidate shows up that candidate will get all the airtime.
Fox News has not released the qualifications to appear on their debate stage.
