With just 15 days left until the scheduled Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, negotiations between their two campaigns have hit an impasse over whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to four people familiar with the issue.
In June, President Joe Biden’s campaign came to an agreement with Trump’s: There would be two debates — CNN’s on June 27 and ABC’s on Sept. 10 — conducted by mutually negotiated rules. One of the Biden team’s demands — which the Trump team agreed to — was that microphones “will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” as CNN announced on June 15.
“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, tells POLITICO. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.”
Compromise: The off-screen mic should be at half volume and use a high-pitched chipmunk voice changer effect.
I am surprised its team Harris is the one who want unmuted microphones. The whole time I thought it woukd be Trump
If Donald drops a hard-R he will gain back some Repub voters who have been losing interest. Everyone else already knows he is racist.
I could have sworn Ds wanted muted mics because trump was just talking over everyone and trampling the debate structure?
Yeah but now they want to make him look bad. His team don’t think he can control himself when he’s not supposed to be talking, so they want him muted.
It’s ridiculous. Just stick with what was already agreed on.
I saw that statement too, and I agree. Yes it’s embarrassing for Trump’s team to admit that they need to mute him, but you can never underestimate how the guy can derail any discussion if you just allow him to talk over you, no matter how good a debater the person on the other side is.
Make him look bad? Everyone knows he’s bad, and and half the country loves that. I don’t see how this is going to help Kamala. Unless she can hold her own and push back when he talks over her (which will be incessant), this move seems largely in his favor. I do hope I’m proven wrong, though!
Perhaps someone with so little self control of their utterances should not in fact get to be elected to the highest office in the land. Just a thought.
That went in the opposite direction from what I expected. I figured it’d be team orange that wanted the orange man to be able to interrupt, not that they’d fear him doing so. I’m on the side for hot mics as of now.
I guess Kamala wins either way now. Either they get hot mics and she has the strength to use his bluster and rudeness against him, or they don’t, and she can calmly set out her points in complete sentences, with facts, without being interrupted. They’ve pre-cast his bullying interruptions as “lack of self-control” rather than “assertion of power.”
