The News
Donald Trump ended Joe Biden’s campaign with a debate. But it’s not clear yet if there will be another one as Trump and his campaign are sending mixed messages about whether they’ll stick to their planned Sep. 10 debate with a new nominee.
“Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Biden announced he would no longer seek re-election.
That could be a convenient way to get out of another debate, which so far looks likely to feature Vice President Kamala Harris, the early frontrunner to succeed Biden for the nomination. Democrats would be less likely to agree to terms that are contingent on having a conservative network play host.
Some Republicans have argued that with a new Democratic candidate, the old agreements for the presidential debates have flown out the window. The Trump campaign, however, maintains there will be a debate: Trump advisor Jason Miller, when asked if they’re committed to another debate, told Semafor “yes” — but added that “the debate host *could* change.”
Trump seemed to indicate shortly before Biden announced his departure from the race that he still planned to debate as well. “I don’t know who I’m going to debate,” he told CBS News. “So far, we haven’t determined who is going to be on that side. But I think whoever it is, I’d like to debate. Yeah, sure.”
RNC chairman Michael Whatley later told ABC News that they welcomed a debate “anywhere, any time” with “Kamala Harris or anybody else” so that Trump could make the case against their combined administration.
Multiple spokespeople for ABC News did not respond to requests for comment about whether the network had been in contact with the Trump campaign about the debate.
This isn’t the first time Biden’s debate debacle has come up in discussions of future campaign meetups. After Harris agreed to a vice presidential debate date earlier this month, Trump campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes pushed back, pointing out that they did not yet know who would be the vice presidential nominee for the opposing party.
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Shelby’s view
One way to view the sudden uncertainty around the debate: Trump might think he has the upper hand against a to-be-determined nominee and is loath to give it up just yet.
That would certainly fit a pattern of in-or-out games he’s played with prior debates in which he’s either tried to either leverage concessions or bail if it suited him. He didn’t participate in a single debate during the 2024 Republican primaries in order to deny his rivals oxygen, skipped a debate in 2020 over health rules around his COVID diagnosis, and dropped out of a debate before the Iowa caucuses in his 2016 run to protest Fox News’ moderators.
Notable
- Trump declined to take part in all of the primary debates, and the overwhelming consensus was that it helped him, Semafor’s Dave Weigel reported last year.
- When Trump was set to square off with Biden, his team seemed inclined to agree to as many debates as possible — approving a third debate that caught team Biden by surprise.
Max Tani contributed to this story.