Former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee for president in the 2024 election, indicated in an interview on Monday that he may back out of a planned debate with presumed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
When asked by Fox News’s Laura Ingraham whether he would debate Harris, Trump gave a vague answer. He is currently scheduled to square off against the likely Democratic nominee on September 10, with the debate airing on ABC.
“The answer is yes, I’ll probably end up debating. … But I can also make a case for not doing it,” Trump said.
The former president then suggested that his reluctance to appear on the debate stage was due to the venue.
“I don’t like rewarding fake news … They’re going to make tens of millions of dollars with this debate,” Trump said, falsely insinuating that ABC News is biased against him.
“I don’t like ABC,” he added.
Trump also claimed he didn’t have to debate Harris because voters “already know everything” about her views. When pressed by Ingraham to respond to speculation that he is simply afraid to debate her, Trump said people made similar assertions about him when it came to President Joe Biden, who was the Democratic nominee until he dropped out of the race earlier this month.
Trump then falsely stated that he had “many debates” with Biden, even though the two have only debated once this election year.
It’s been widely reported that Trump preferred that Biden remain in the race, viewing him as an easier candidate to win against than Harris or another Democratic nominee.
“I’m leading in all of the polls, I’m leading big in all of the swing states,” Trump also said in his Fox News interview, despite several polls — including a recent set of surveys by Fox News — showing he is statistically tied with Harris in several swing states, and a newly published Morning Consult poll showing he’s virtually tied with her nationally as well.
Harris’s campaign social media accounts have teased Trump over his wishy-washy answers regarding whether he will participate in a debate.
“What happened to ‘any time, any place’?” the campaign’s account on X posted last week.
In response to Trump’s comments on Monday, a Harris spokesperson said she would be at the debate in September, even if Trump decides to opt out.
“If Donald Trump and his team are saying anything other than ‘we’ll see you there’ — and it appears that they are — it’s a convenient, but expected backtrack from Team Trump,” said Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler. “Vice President Harris will be there on September 10th — we’ll see if Trump shows.”
Notably, Trump had no issue with debating on ABC network television when the current president was still in the race, but changed his tune after Biden dropped out and Harris became the heir apparent to the Democratic nomination, prompting several observers to speculate that Trump was scared of debating Harris in front of a national audience.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy