Harris aims to win debate by getting 'unfettered Donald Trump' to embarrass himself: report

27 August 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris is requesting one notable change to debate rules previously negotiated between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump's campaigns.

According to CNN, the vice president is hoping to goad Trump into saying something damaging to his campaign on a hot mic when the two meet on September 10 for a scheduled debate on ABC News. Her team has officially requested that both candidates' microphones be kept on at all times during their debate. This has prompted the Trump campaign to push back and call for only the speaker's mic to be hot, as was the case during the Biden/Trump debate on CNN in June.

"It’s obvious that the Harris campaign hopes to give Trump the chance to sabotage himself with an insulting interruption or his overbearing personality," wrote CNN's Stephen Collinson.

Initially, Biden requested that candidates be prohibited from interrupting each other in the three debates they negotiated, hoping to avoid a repeat of his 2020 debate in which Trump constantly talked over him. But Harris believes that Trump's interjections will work in her favor on the debate stage.

“The Vice President wants the American people to see an unfettered Donald Trump because that’s what we are going to get if he becomes president again,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams told CNN. “I think it is important that in this election and in this moment that the American people get to see the choice between the two candidates on stage.”

During the June debate, Trump used his allotted speaking time to repeatedly lie onstage. CNN fact checker Daniel Dale needed nearly three minutes to refute 28 lies the former president told while debating Biden — most notably his claim that Democrats supported the execution of babies after birth (which is obviously illegal in every state).

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade tweeted that Trump's nonstop lying is actually a disinformation technique known as a "gish gallop," which she defined as "a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate."

Trump's campaign wants the same rules for microphones for the September 10 debate that were in place during the CNN debate. But during a campaign rally in Virginia, Trump undermined that position, saying "it doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on but the agreement was everyone be the same as it was last time."

CNN contributor Maria Cardona argued that Harris would see the biggest benefit from Trump's interruptions if both mics were on during the debate.

"By having the mics unmuted, it is going to give her the ability to control both what she says … as well as fact checking him on the spot," she said.

Click here to read CNN's report in its entirety.

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