August 26, 2024
Is former President Trump now backing out of the debate against Vice President Harris on ABC? With just 15 days left you thought the debate about the debates was over – not so fast.
Let me straighten out what we know.
First – the fact is – Trump never said he’s *not* going to show up to the debate.
What he said was this –after watching ABC on Sunday he decided he didn’t like the interview done with a Republican senator saying it was ‘hateful” and “unfair”. Trump posted to his social media “why would I do the debate against Kamala Harris on that network?”
That’s something he says a lot. That’s not uncommon. He has said those exact same words or a version of them ahead of almost every debate he’s participated in — including the CNN debate against president Biden just a few weeks ago.
But – fairness isn’t the only issue. There’s also a dispute over debate microphones. Apparently the Trump and Harris campaigns have been going back and forth recently about the rules of the September 10th debate on ABC. Originally when the debate was scheduled between Trump and President Biden, the campaigns agreed to have muted mics – like what we saw at the CNN debate. Well now that Harris is at the top of the ticket – her campaign wants the debate mics to be left on the entire time.
Trump’s campaign released a statement accusing Harris of trying to use this issue to get out of the debate and said the Trump campaign already agreed to the terms and now it’s unfair to try and change the rules. Even though just a few weeks ago Trump wanted to change the debate date and network all together.
Regardless – less than 24 hours after this microphone dispute started. Trump basically shut it down. He was on the campaign trail at a restaurant in Virginia this morning and seemed to not care at all about whether the microphones were muted or not.
You heard him — he said he’d probably like to have it “un” as in un muted.
Almost immediately after trump said that – the senior advisor to the Harris campaign posted this…
“Trump said unmuting the mics “doesn’t matter to me.” Always suspected it was something his staff wanted, not him personally. With this resolved, everything is now set for Sept 10th.”
So what’s the bottom line? Mics muted, or unmuted. Does that matter to your life? I mean, it might. But for most people it doesn’t. Look — there may be several changes but in the end Trump and Harris are going to debate.
All this noise you’re hearing is politicking 101. We are in the middle of a heated election and each campaign is trying to grab headlines in whatever way they can. So don’t put a lot of stock in this kind of stuff. Don’t get so invested in it. It’s not policy. It’s just noise.
