Trump appears to undercut his campaign’s efforts over microphone rules at debate

By Kristen Holmes, Priscilla Alvarez, Kate Sullivan and Shania Shelton, CNN

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump appeared to undercut his campaign’s efforts to keep the same rules in place for his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris next month.

Trump’s team, according to a source familiar with the matter, would like for the microphones to be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak, as was the case during the first debate with President Joe Biden.

But while Trump took aim at what he called the “biased” network Sunday evening – complaining about reporter Jonathan Karl and a panel of “Trump Haters” on his Truth Social platform – he said Monday that he would prefer the mics to stay on.

“We agreed to the same rules, I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time,” Trump said when asked by a reporter if he wanted the microphones muted during the debate when the candidate is not speaking.

Trump also again casted doubt on whether he would participate in the debate.

“When I looked at the hostility of that, I said, ‘Why am I doing it? Let’s do it with another network.’ I want to do it,” Trump said

The Harris campaign, for its part, is requesting that ABC and other networks seeking to host a potential October debate keep microphones on, according to a senior campaign official, marking a change from the June debate when the then-Biden campaign wanted microphones muted except when it was a candidate’s turn to speak.

“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, said in a statement.

“Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button,” he said.

Trump’s campaign has argued that when they agreed to the ABC debate with Harris at the top of the ticket, they were agreeing to the same guidelines of the previous debate.

“Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement. “The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules.”

Miller added, “Interesting that this is only coming up now that the Harris campaign has started their debate prep. Even their own campaign spokesman said the debate about debates was over. Clearly they’re seeing something they don’t like.”

The Harris campaign pushed back on Miller’s claim that it was seeking for the candidates to be seated with access to notes.

The microphone rules dispute was first reported by Politico.

The ABC debate was officially agreed upon earlier this month, though Trump has repeatedly called for a revised setting, including a “full arena audience” debate hosted by Fox News.

Still, both candidates have been engaged in practice debate sessions. Harris is set to visit Georgia this week, aides said, along with a limited number of campaign stops as she focuses on debate preparations.

Trump, for his part, has enlisted one of Harris’ former 2020 Democratic primary rivals, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. Harris and Gabbard had several notable exchanges during the Democratic primary debates, where Harris criticized Gabbard for her foreign policy views while Gabbard challenged Harris’ record on criminal justice.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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