Donald Trump and Joe Biden were set to face off head-to-head for their second presidential debate on September 10, and event that ABC News was set to host.
And even though Trump initially said he was eager to debate the Democrats’ new presumptive nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, his campaign is apparently not fully on board with that idea.
The New York Times reported this week that some of Trump’s advisers said they weren’t going to commit to another presidential debate, despite the fact that they already agreed to the one in September. The reasoning, of course, is that his opponent isn’t the same as it was when the former president first agreed to the schedule.
The first debate took place in late June at CNN’s studios in Atlanta. It was the horrific debate performance at that event by Biden that began his downfall and ultimately led to him announcing on Sunday that he was dropping out of the race.
On Thursday evening, Steven Cheung, the communications director for Trump’s campaign, said there was “continued political chaos surrounding” the Democratic Party, so “general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee.”
Cheung issued a statement saying there are many prominent Democrats that don’t think Harris can defeat Trump, and that “they are still holding out for someone ‘better.’”
As the statement continued:
“Therefore, it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”
Technically, Cheung is correct. Despite Biden endorsing Harris for the spot, and despite the talk that she’s secured enough delegates to win the nomination, she hasn’t officially been named the Democrats’ nominee just yet.
That is likely to happen in the next few weeks, though, as the liberal party will open voting from delegates on August 1, and could quickly close the process.
There was a possibility that other candidates could emerge, too, but most of Harris’ main potential challengers have publicly thrown their support behind her already.
The statement Cheung put out came not long after Harris committed to participating in the September 10 debate. While at Joint Base Andrews this week, Harris said to reporters:
“I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on the debate stage.”
She added that Trump was just “backpedaling” so he didn’t have to participate in that debate against her.
Now that Harris is apparently Trump’s challenger, the former president is changing his tune on his previous “any time, any place” mantra that he said about debating Biden. He first suggested earlier this week that the debate should now be hosted by Fox News and not ABC News.
Not long after, Fox News proposed to host a debate on September 17.
While on a call with reporters that the Republican National Committee hosted this week, Trump did say about a debate with Harris:
“Well, I haven’t agreed to anything. I agreed to debate with Joe Biden. But, I want to debate her, and she’ll be no different because they have the same policies.”