Former President Donald Trump declared late Friday that he was dropping out of an ABC News debate scheduled for Sept. 10 and presented a counterproposal to Vice President Kamala Harris, his presumptive opponent, to face off on Fox News six days earlier.
The change, which Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social, raised objections from the Harris campaign and appeared to throw a potential showdown between the rivals into question.
A campaign official for Harris on Saturday accused Trump of scheming up the Fox News debate to distract from reneging on his commitment to the ABC debate. Trump had agreed to that debate in May, before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and before Biden’s calamitous performance in a CNN debate on June 27.
“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,” Michael Tyler, communications director for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept. 10.”
Tyler said that the Harris campaign was open to discussing further debates if Trump honored his commitment to the ABC debate.
“Mr. Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th,” he said.
A spokesperson for ABC News would not say whether the network would go ahead with its debate and give time only to Harris. In a post on the social platform X on Saturday, Harris said: “I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. Representatives for Fox News did not respond to questions.
Trump has repeatedly railed against ABC News, which he is suing for defamation, a case that a federal judge in Florida recently allowed to move forward. He has attacked George Stephanopoulos, host of “This Week” on ABC, who did the first television interview with Biden after his debate performance.
He also turned combative toward Rachel Scott of ABC News during a question-and-answer session Wednesday at a convention of Black journalists in Chicago.
Trump has appeared to be struggling to find his footing since Biden left the race, despite the fact that Democrats had been increasingly calling for such a change since the June debate.
He has tested out a series of nicknames against Harris and has made clear he would rather attack her personally and focus the public discussion on her race — Harris’ father was born in Jamaica and her mother in India — than attempt to tie her to the Biden administration’s record or her own record as a prosecutor in California.
Trump, who spent nearly 16 months getting nonstop attention since he was first criminally indicted in March 2023, has also struggled to try to inject himself back into the headlines at a moment when Harris is enjoying a political honeymoon.
By canceling the ABC debate, Trump has put himself back in the news cycle.
According to Trump’s post on his social media site, the Fox News debate would take place on Sept. 4 at a to-be-determined location in Pennsylvania, one of the most consequential battleground states. The network’s anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum would moderate.
Trump said on social media that the Fox News debate would have a live audience; the previous debate between him and Biden was hosted by CNN in an empty venue. Although both campaigns agreed to the format of the first debate, Trump had bemoaned the lack of a crowd.
He added that the rules would be similar to the CNN debate, though he did not specify which rules. The candidates’ microphones in the June debate were muted when it was not their turn to speak to prevent interruptions.
Trump also said that he was “totally prepared to accept” Harris as the Democrats’ new candidate.
Since her campaign suddenly took shape after Biden dropped out of the race about two weeks ago, Trump has characterized her ascendancy as a “coup” within the Democratic Party. In his debate announcement, the former president complained about the shake-up.
“I spent Hundreds of Millions of Dollars, Time, and Effort fighting Joe, and when I won the Debate, they threw a new Candidate into the ring,” Trump said on his social media site Friday, adding that he hoped to tie Harris to Biden’s policies.
The Sept. 4 date is close to the start of some states’ early voting windows and long after Harris clinched the nomination from her party. (The Democratic National Committee said Friday that she had won enough delegates in a virtual roll call vote to secure the party’s nomination.)
The first presidential debate between Biden and Trump had a seismic impact on the race. Biden gave a halting performance, in contrast to Trump, who spoke comparatively vigorously while repeatedly advancing falsehoods.
Biden’s garbled responses supercharged concerns among his Democratic colleagues about his age and health, as well as his ability to beat Trump in the general election.
After several weeks of declining poll numbers and mounting pressure from key allies, Biden announced July 21 that he would withdraw from the race.
Since then, Harris has challenged Trump to debate her and criticized his reluctance to commit to a date. As recently as Friday morning, in an interview with Fox Business, he was refusing to say whether he would debate Harris.
After the president dropped out, Harris said she would be willing to debate in Biden’s place, but Trump was noncommittal.
“Well Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage,” Harris said at her rally in Atlanta on Tuesday. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.’”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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