It appears that Donald Trump may have bitten off more than he can chew when he agreed to a debate on September 10 little knowing at the time that it would be a new candidate he would be debating and not Joe Biden as he first thought.
With Vice President Kamala Harris now running for president in the November elections, Trump seems to be getting a little nervous. At a rally on August 3rd in Georgia he said, “I’ll see her on September 4th, or I won’t see her at all.”
What he was saying was if Harris did not agree to attend the Fox News debate, he would not debate her at all.
“We’re doing one with Fox, if she shows up. I don’t think she’s going to show up,” he said. He also added that Harris could only speak off the teleprompter and could not speak off the cuff.
On Aug 2, Trump backed out of a September 10 debate by ABC News which he had earlier thought would be with Biden. He had written on his social media platform Truth Social that the debate had been “terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant” and because he himself was in litigation with ABC.
He had said earlier that he was ready to debate with him “at any time, any place.”
Harris spoke about how that really wasn’t true now. “It’s interesting how ‘any time, any place’ becomes one specific time, one specific safe space. I’ll be there on September 10th like he agreed to. I hope to see him there,” she wrote on social media.
This back and forth has been going on for some time with Trump insisting on a debate on his terms. On Truth Social he has said that Harris doesn’t have the “mental capacity” to debate him.
After Trump’s speech in Georgia, the Harris campaign released a statement by Geoff Duncan, the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia from 2019 to 2023. Duncan has been a vocal critic of Trump.
“If you were able to see through Donald Trump’s incoherence and vindictiveness tonight, you saw a Donald Trump who does not care about uniting this country or speaking to the voters who will decide this election,” said Duncan.
Neither ABC nor Fox News has made any comment on the debate/s.