A debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump once seemed impossible to schedule, but the two presidential candidates eventually settled on a date to face off: Sept. 10.
“I look forward to the debates, because I think we have to set the record straight,” Trump said at a news conference on Thursday, Aug. 8, from his Mar-a-Lago home in South Florida. “I think it’s very important that we have them. I hope she agrees to them… I think they’ll be very revealing.”
Harris confirmed her participation in the Sept. 10 debate, to be hosted by ABC News, the same day, telling reporters before boarding Air Force Two in Detroit: “I’m glad that he’s finally agreed to a debate on September 10th. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope he shows up.”
Trump said that he would also like to take part in two other debates—one hosted by Fox News on Sept. 4 and another hosted by NBC News on Sept. 25.
But the Harris campaign shared a statement on Thursday, Aug. 15, saying “the debate about debates is over” and that it would participate in two presidential debates—the one on Sept. 10 and another in October—and one vice presidential debate.
“Voters deserve to see the candidates for the highest office in the land share their competing visions for our future,” Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in the statement. “The more they play games, the more insecure and unserious Trump and Vance reveal themselves to be to the American people. Those games end now.”
The agreement on at least one debate has come after a prolonged back and forth between the campaigns since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race after a disastrous debate performance on June 27.
The Trump campaign has insisted on setting the terms of future debates—calling for there to be live audiences and pushing for moderators it deems less tilted toward the Democratic Party. This election cycle’s debates are no longer handled by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, after the Republican National Committee in 2022 withdrew from participating in debates organized by the commission over alleged bias.
Doubts about whether Trump would debate Harris at all proliferated in late July, and in an interview on Fox News, the Republican candidate said he would “probably end up debating” Harris—though he added that he “can also make a case for not doing it.”
The Harris campaign painted Trump as running scared from a challenge he’d previously vowed to undertake when Biden was the Democratic candidate. “What happened to ‘any time, any place’?” Harris posted on X and campaign surrogates have repeated, referencing a Truth Social post from March, when Trump said he was prepared to debate Biden “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!”
Harris pledged to attend the Sept. 10 debate whether or not Trump would show up. “The Vice President will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience,” Harris campaign spokesperson Tyler told TIME in a statement on Aug. 3.
The Sept. 10 presidential debate is set to be moderated by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis. “More information on the debate, including the rules, location, staging and format, will be revealed closer to the date,” according to ABC. The New York Times reported that the 90-minute debate is expected to be held in Philadelphia, likely without a live audience.
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