Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is continuing to needle former President Donald Trump’s campaign on the topic of muted vs unmuted microphones at the upcoming presidential debate hosted by ABC News.
“I think it’s comical because we thought that this issue was closed, but unfortunately Donald Trump’s handlers are telling him that his mic has to be muted. So we hope that he shows up. He said himself that he didn’t care. He wanted the mics to be unmuted and then his team backtracked that so we really don’t know what the problem is,” Harris campaign deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told CNN’s Alex Marquardt.
Remember: CNN has previously reported that ABC intends to mute Trump and Kamala’s microphones while their opponent speaks during the debate, according to a copy of the formal rules obtained by CNN.
Fulks’ comments mirror those made earlier by the Harris campaign’s senior adviser Brian Fallon, who posted on X that Trump’s “handlers don’t trust him to spar live with VP Harris.”
During an event in Virginia on Monday, Trump said of the microphones, “We agreed to the same rules, I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time.”
But in a post on his Truth Social platform the next day, Trump added, “The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden.”
ABC’s rules, which were first shared with the campaigns last week, largely mirror the format of CNN’s presidential debate in June between Trump and President Joe Biden, during which the candidates’ microphones were muted as their opponent spoke, a rule the Biden campaign had insisted on but something the Harris campaign had sought to change in recent days.
