In an election where neither party agrees on much, both agree on this: The first presidential debate of the year was a disaster for President Joe Biden, who was ousted as his party’s presumptive nominee as a direct result.
So as the Sept. 10 debate on ABC approaches, it’s no surprise that Trump’s team wants to keep the terms of the June debate exactly the same — and Vice President Kamala Harris’s team won’t.
This leads to the latest powder – now emerging for days — over microphones, a topic that has proven to be the stickiest. The question is, should the candidate’s microphone be muted when it is not his turn to speak?
Republicans want to silence them; No Democrats.
This comes after each team has benefited from seeing what it’s like in silent mic conditions. Democrats say Trump appeared more docile when he wasn’t allowed to get up at will, giving him a false veneer of discipline. Republicans accuse Harris of being afraid of Trump’s silent microphone.
Harris is a very different candidate than Biden, a veteran prosecutor whose questioning at the confirmation hearings of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was often highlighted at the Democratic National Convention. He has his own strategic reasons for wanting to face a full, unleashed Trump, according to campaign sources and Democratic allies.
“He doesn’t just want America to see Donald Trump unvarnished on a hot mic, he wants to show America that he can stand up to him and take anything and everything he throws at him,” said Democratic strategist Mary Ann Marsh. “Voters always want to see that. When you stand up to others, it means you will stand up for them. This is a critical test, especially as a female presidential candidate.”
The idea within the Harris campaign is that there should be no guardrails and that audiences should see the full, unbridled Trump. Officials there say Trump’s handlers don’t trust their nominees, and for all the talk of Biden’s cognitive decline, it’s Trump who struggles to stay on track with his arguments. Showing him off only benefits Harris.
They also point out that Trump seems acceptable to live microphones.
“We agreed on the same rules. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter to me” Trump said earlier this week. “The agreement was that it would be the same as last time. In such a case, his voice was cut off.”
Still, even Harris officials and allies agreed that the muted microphones ultimately hurt Biden in the debate. Trump went on without interruption, only to be silenced when it was Biden’s turn to speak. It put Biden on the spot and demonstrated that the president sometimes can’t even complete a sentence.
There is some sense among Trump’s campaign advisers that the muted microphones helped Trump perform well during the debate because he didn’t interrupt Biden and ramble as he has in the past.
The Trump campaign has accused Harris’ team of using the microphone debate as a possible excuse to walk out of the debate if necessary, especially if Thursday night’s CNN interview goes poorly.
Danielle Alvarez, Trump’s top adviser, pointed to other questions from the Harris campaign.
“The most disturbing thing is that he asked to bring notes – I don’t think he is very sure of his ‘values.’ It’s equally exciting that he wants to sit down — even Biden managed to stand for 90 minutes while hanging from the podium,” Alvarez said Thursday. “I think it’s not surprising given that he needs Waltz to babysit him while he’s sitting on CNN. What’s clear is that that he is weak and does not deserve the promotion he wants.”
A Harris campaign official said the suggestion that Harris asked for the records and wanted to sit down was categorically false.
Scott Howell, a veteran GOP operative with experience helping Republican Senate candidates prepare for debates, noted that having hot microphones could really help Biden in 2020.
“It gave him a little bit of an opening for some really good zingers,” Howell said.
He pointed to one of Biden’s worst moments of his presidency he seemed to have lost his train of thought we are talking about the border patrol.
Trump replied: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about either.”
The hot mic debate is a topic where neither side has exactly clean hands. This was Trump’s team in 2020 Opposed to muting Trump’s microphone“It’s totally unacceptable for anyone to have that kind of power,” he said. A few months ago, it was the Democrats who wanted the microphones to be silenced in the first place, albeit under the Biden regime.
At the time, Biden’s campaign argued that Trump’s repeated interruptions in the 2020 debates were a distraction and that he failed to follow the rules. It was true. In one count, Trump He interrupted Biden 145 times.
But at times it saved Biden, who struggled to maintain a train of thought in some of his responses. But Biden’s interruptions were overshadowed by Trump, who talked over him. Add in a moderator berating Trump for breaking the rules, and the storyline turned sharply toward Trump and chaos.
Karen Finney, who helped strategize the 2016 Hillary Clinton-Trump debate, predicted that the muted microphone could be disastrous for Trump if he launches into a personal attack that could silence women and people of color.
“I suspect that knowing his team is getting under Harris’ skin will make him more likely to reveal his true character,” Finney said. “People who have experienced this before should hear exactly what he said. It is about the two leaders and the assessment of their character.”