Kamala Harris is hardly renowned for her fondness or scrutiny or challenging debate.
The Vice President has only agreed to one debate so far on ABC, where she will face Republican challenger Donald Trump in the first debate between the two political rivals.
Reportedly, the ABC debate on Tuesday, September 10, will follow a similar format to that of the CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden earlier this year. Microphones will be muted when it is not one candidate’s turn to speak, with no audience, pre-written notes or props permitted.
Harris, however, has been reportedly trying to amend the debate rules ahead of her first one-on-one with the former president. The muting of microphones is a particular sticking point for the Harris campaign despite Trump’s public non-preference over the issue. In fact, the muting was requested by Biden’s campaign team ahead of the CNN debate back in June following the chaos of the 2020 presidential debates, as presumably they thought it would be to the benefit of Biden. Clearly, they’re having second thoughts.
Many conservative commentators have alluded to Harris’ poor performance against the now-independent Tulsi Gabbard in the race for the Democratic nomination in 2019.
In that debate, Gabbard tore Harris’ track record as Attorney General for California to shreds, effectively killing off any momentum the then-Sen.’s campaign had.
Trump has pulled in Gabbard to help with his debate prep against Harris.
Social media users offered their own insight as to why Harris was seeking to amend the rules for her first debate in four years.
Another commentor expressed surprised that ABC was standing its ground over the debate rules.
