Former president donald trumpThe Trump campaign said Wednesday that it will not agree to proposed dates for a vice presidential debate until at least the Democratic National Convention, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 19.
Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, signaled that it would make no sense to solidify yet a debate date for the vice presidential candidates because of the still-growing group of Democrats appealing to the president. Joe Biden give up the race. He suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris could be named the party’s presidential candidate.
“We don’t know who the Democratic nominee for vice president will be, so we can’t set a date before the convention. Doing so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer or whoever Kamala Harris chooses as her running mate,” Hughes said in a statement, citing the Democratic governors of California, Illinois and Michigan.
In mid-May, Harris accepted an invitation from CBS News to debate on July 23 or August 13. A Biden campaign official said Wednesday that CBS has since offered, and Harris has accepted, another potential date of Aug. 12. the campaign did not agree to the CBS debate, but agreed to a vice presidential debate hosted by Fox News.
Trump nominated Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his running mate on Monday. Vance is set to accept the Republican nomination for vice president Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Harris’ team attacked Trump’s campaign on Wednesday, with her communications director, Brian Fallon, saying Trump was the one whose campaign said he would debate “anytime, anywhere.”
“Now, suddenly, on the heels of a new leak showing his support for a national abortion ban, Vance is backpedaling in the debate against Vice President Harris, who has spent the last two years prosecuting the case in the name of reproductive freedom,” Fallon said. .
“This debate has been discussed for two months,” he added. “If JD Vance isn’t willing to defend the Trump-Vance record on the debate stage, he should just say so.”
Biden has emphatically said he is not dropping out of the presidential race, despite his poor debate performance in June and growing fears among Democratic members of Congress that he would lose to Trump in November.
As a growing number of Democratic lawmakers called for Biden to step down, Harris emerged as his likely successor as she would be first in line to potentially inherit his considerable campaign war chest.
Representative Adam Schiff, a prominent Democrat running for Senate in California, asked Biden on Wednesday to drop out of the race. Earlier this month, Schiff told NBC NewIt is‘ “Meet the press” that Harris “could very well win in a landslide” if Biden drops out and would be a “phenomenal president.”
While other lawmakers made similar calls for Biden to pass the torch, Trump and his allies in turn intensified their attacks on Harris and also framed the election as a referendum on her.
Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley took aim at Harris in her speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.
“For over a year, I have said that voting for Joe Biden is voting for President Kamala Harris,” she said. “After seeing the debate, everyone knows it’s true. If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, the situation in our country will be much worse.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
