Former President Donald Trump has confirmed he will participate in a one-on-one debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, scheduled for September 10 on ABC.
Trump announced his acceptance at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Thursday. Harris has also confirmed her participation, making this the first debate between the two candidates since President Joe Biden called it quits last month following a dismal debate performance of his own.
Initially, Trump eagerly anticipated his second debate with Biden on ABC, which he readily accepted in May. But he hinted he could opt to skip it in comments earlier this month after Biden essentially passed the torch to his vice president, though she got blown out of the Democratic primaries in 2020 and Biden received all the primary votes this year.
ABC News announced that David Muir and Linsey Davis will serve as moderators for the upcoming debate.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump said during his press conference. “We have spoken to the heads of the network, and it’s all been confirmed, other than some fairly minor details. Audience, some location, which city would we put it into, but all things that will be settled very easily, very, I think it will be very easy. The other side has to agree to the terms. They may or may not agree.”
Trump also took aim at Harris, especially her failed record as ‘border czar’: “I don’t know if they’re going to agree. She hasn’t done an interview. She can’t do an interview. She’s barely competent, and she can’t do an interview. But I look forward to the debates, because I think we have to set the record straight. Why is it that millions of people were allowed to come into our country from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions, insane asylums, even insane prisons.”
Harris took a few questions from reporters following a Michigan campaign event on Thursday. She said her team is working out a date for her to hold a full-blown press conference, which would be her first since Biden essentially anointed her the party’s nominee.
An insider with Harris’s team stated on Thursday night that the vice president is not against having more debates, according to ABC News senior White House correspondent Selina Wang. The insider claims that those discussions are “contingent on Trump showing up” on September 10.
The battle over debates comes as long-time Democratic strategist James Carville lashed out at Harris for repeatedly deferring to the far-left faction of the party, which he says will cost her dearly in November.
The former adviser to then-President Bill Clinton made his remarks just days before Harris’ on Tuesday selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz is an uber-left-wing ‘progressive’ who instantly came under assault by conservatives for his record in the state, beginning with his refusal to immediately and decisively deal with the George Floyd-inspired rioting that destroyed a significant portion of Minneapolis in the spring and summer of 2020.
During his “Politics War Room” podcast last week, Carville said the far-left wing of the party is consistently “dead-ass wrong” on all major issues, adding he wished Harris would tell all of them to “go f**k themselves.”
“Understand this, and I’m going to say this as clearly as I can: Anybody that has ever listened to anything that the progressive left has ever said has lived to profoundly regret it. Literally on every issue, they’re dead a– wrong,” he said, noting that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “blew” her 2020 presidential campaign touting one far-left proposal.
“Ask Elizabeth Warren and Medicare-for-All. She blew her campaign up with one speech, all right?”
“I’d love to read a good article on who really was the strategic idiot behind her 2020 presidential campaign, because they were real f—–’ idiots, alright?” he continued, blasting those who were advising Warren.
