US Presidential Election of 2024: A heated discussion between the two contenders
In a statement posted on the social network Truth Social, former President Trump said he had reached an agreement with Ms. Harris to participate in the debate, and confirmed that the debate would take place in Philadelphia and be hosted by ABC News on September 10.
This is the first debate between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s candidate in the 2024
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Ms. Kamala Harris and Mr. Donald Trump – two candidates in the 2024 US presidential election |
Former President Trump said ABC News had assured him that the upcoming debate would be fair and equal, with neither candidate being given questions in advance and not allowed to bring notes.
The statement came just two days after Mr Trump said he might miss the debate because ABC News was “biased” towards Ms Harris.
Notably, according to The Politico, former President Trump said the September 10 debate would follow the same rules as the June debate between him and President Biden on CNN, meaning each candidate’s microphone would be muted while their opponent was speaking and there would be no audience in the studio. However, Vice President Harris’s campaign has denied this claim. A Harris campaign official said that the issue of “to mute or not to mute” the September 10 debate is still under discussion.
Debate rules, specifically whether to mute microphones, have become a hotly contested issue between the two candidates’ campaigns. While Harris’s campaign wants the microphones to remain on throughout the debate to allow for “substantive conversation” between the two candidates, Trump’s campaign wants the same rule as his June debate with President Biden, which would have one candidate’s microphone muted if the other candidate was speaking.
To date, ABC News has not provided any response regarding this issue.
The American and international media have recently analyzed the microphones in the upcoming debate between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris. Some say that Ms. Harris’s team wants the microphones of the two candidates to be open during the debate so that former President Trump can speak whenever he wants, hoping that he will show himself as a “lack of restraint”. However, some also predict that opening the microphone could pose a risk to Ms. Harris.
The evidence is that in the debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked and interrupted his opponent’s questions. Afterwards, many people thought that Mr. Trump showed a strong image, even overwhelming Mrs. Clinton. More importantly, he eventually won the presidential election that year.
To date, the ABC News debate is the only one agreed upon between the two candidates, although Mr. Trump has proposed holding additional debates on NBC News and Fox News.
