CHAPIN, SC — CHAPIN, SC (AP) — donald trump says he is withdrawing from a debate scheduled for September with the vice president Kamala Harris on ABC and wants them to face off on Fox News, making it increasingly unlikely that the candidates will face off on stage before the November election.
In a series of Truth Social posts on Friday, the Republican candidate and former president said his deal for a Sept. 10 debate on ABC “is off” because he will no longer face the Democratic president. Joe Bidenwho ended her campaign last month after a disastrous performance in her first debate.
Trump now says he will appear on Fox News on Sept. 4 in Pennsylvania with rules he called “similar” to his debate with Biden, but with a packed audience instead of a nearly empty studio. Trump said that if Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, does not agree to the new network and date, he will hold a “big town hall” with Fox News.
Michael Tyler, a spokesman for Harris, said Trump “is scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to rescue him.”
It was not immediately clear whether ABC would turn its Sept. 10 event into a Harris town hall in Trump’s absence. Tyler said Harris is committed to the time slot and would appear “one way or another to embrace the opportunity to speak to a national audience in prime time.”
In a subsequent Truth Social post on Saturday afternoon, Trump said of Harris: “I will see her on September 4th or I won’t see her at all.”
Trump has been arguing with Harris since she entered the presidential race. He told reporters that he felt obligated to debate, but also said in a recent Fox News interview that he thought Americans “already know everything” about the two candidates. Harris pressed Trump to keep the commitment he made when Biden was in the race. Noting Trump’s criticism of her, Harris challenged him recently to “say it to my face”.
In his posts on Truth Social, Trump also cited his litigation against ABC News as “a conflict of interest” in his participation in the network’s debate. Trump sued the network in March following a claim by anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been found “responsible for rape.” New York jury held Trump responsible for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll, but rejected her claim that she was raped.
But Trump awake, two months after filing suit, to the September 10th debate on ABC, as well as the June 27th debate on CNN that helped knock Biden out of the race. David Muir and Linsey Davis, not Stephanopoulos, will moderate the ABC debate.
Trump has skipped debates before, including all 2024 Republican presidential primary debates.
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Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
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Kinnard can be contacted at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.
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