ABC says both former U.S. president Donald Trump and U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris have agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate, setting up the first face-off between the Republican and Democratic nominees.
The announcement Thursday came shortly after Trump told a news conference that he had proposed three presidential debates with three television networks, saying he agreed on certain dates in September.
Trump is rejoining the ABC debate days after posting on his social media network that he would not appear on the network, citing a lawsuit he has filed. This sets up a highly anticipated moment in an election where the first debate led to a massive change in the race when Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed Harris.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump said Thursday. “I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight.”
The Harris campaign had no immediate comment.
At an impromptu news conference, Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said he’s agreed to three debates in September with his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, who he called a ‘radical left person.’
Trump had said he would prefer that Fox News sponsor the debate, but by Wednesday, he was showing willingness to reconsider ABC.
Trump also echoed criticism from his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, that Harris has not held a news conference or sat down for interviews since she entered the race.
Harris has a travelling media pool with her on Air Force Two for all trips. Trump does not have such a pool accompanying him on his plane when he campaigns.
Vance has journalists flying with him, and he campaigned this week in states where Harris and running mate Tim Walz had their own events scheduled. That included on Wednesday, when Vance’s plane and Air Force Two ended up on the same tarmac in Wisconsin.
Vance started walking toward the Democrat’s plane but did not reach it before a motorcade carrying Harris, Walz and the travelling media pool pulled away.
Insults, falsehoods
Separate from the news about the ABC debate, Trump held an hour-long news conference Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Fla.
Trump taunted his Democratic opponent while also repeating old falsehoods and lashing out at questions about the enthusiasm her campaign is receiving.
He also took aim at Walz, in what was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris announced her running mate.
Trump called Walz, the governor of Minnesota, a “radical left man.”
“Between her and him, there’s never been anything like this,” Trump said. “There’s certainly never been anybody so liberal like these two.”
He repeatedly suggested Harris was not intelligent enough to debate him. Harris, for her part, has tried to goad Trump into debating and told an audience in Atlanta recently that if he had anything to say about her, he should “say it to my face.”
Trump grew visibly perturbed when pressed on Harris’s crowds and newfound Democratic enthusiasm, dismissing a question about his lighter campaign schedule as stupid.
Trump says he has not “recalibrated” his campaign despite facing a new opponent, a dynamic some Republican strategists have quietly complained about.
When asked what assets Harris possessed, Trump said: “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”
Trump has repeatedly — and falsely — accused Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of previously downplaying that she is Black.
False claims about Jan. 6
Trump falsely claimed during the news conference that “nobody was killed on Jan. 6” — the 2021 riot when Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol amid Congress’s effort to certify Biden’s 2020 election victory after Trump refused to concede.
Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old U.S. air force veteran from San Diego was shot and killed by a police officer as she climbed through a broken part of a Capitol door during the violence. And at least four police officers died by suicide in the weeks and months following the Jan. 6 events.
Trump has often cited Babbitt’s death while lamenting the treatment of those who attended a rally outside the White House earlier that day, then marched to the Capitol, many of whom fought with police and entered the building.
On Thursday, Trump also falsely claimed more people attended his rally before the riot than the famous March on Washington in 1963, the iconic event at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
