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Why Team Harris Is Suddenly Trying to Change the Debate Rules

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  August 27, 2024 2:15 PM

The word 'shameless' keeps coming up with the Harris-Walz campaign, and deservedly so.  The latest example of shamelessness comes in the context of the scheduled debate on September 10th.  Recall that when Trump suggested he wanted to renegotiate the debates -- after all, the opponent with whom he'd forged those agreements was forced out of the race after an implosion in their first meeting -- Harris and her army of media allies framed it as a cowardly Trump trying to get out of debating a powerful woman, or whatever. Trump ended up acceding to keeping the ABC News debate as scheduled, while also green-lighting two additional debates, on Fox News and NBC, respectively.  Harris has reportedly rejected the Fox forum, but is open to a second meeting in October.  What they were really adamant about, however, was that Trump's deal with former Democratic nominee Joe Biden was sacrosanct.  

But now, that's changing.  They've suddenly decided that the conditions must be altered after all:


It's not subtle what's going on here, in my view.  The Harris campaign is making a three-pronged calculation.  First, they want to keep demonstrating that they can do, and get away with, anything.  They will answer precious few questions, and the press will like it.  They will conduct no interviews for 37 days (and counting), and the press will like it.  They will insist that a debate agreement with a defunct candidate must also apply to them, no changes, then insist upon changes once they've already gotten their way. Second, they realize that as a matter of strategy, Trump's mic being 'open' or live the whole time likely benefits their preferred dynamic.  Trump inflicted a lot of damage upon himself in the first debate of 2020 with his incessant, manic interruptions.  He looked unhinged to many viewers, turning them off.  The Biden campaign surely remembered this, but they likely demanded the new microphone rules anyway because they feared too much chaos and noise could disorient a cognitively and physically declining Biden -- a net negative, in their minds.  The Harris camp now wants Trump's mic switched back on so that his anticipated lack of discipline can once again harm him and redound to their benefit.  

Third, and relatedly, they want Trump to interrupt Kamala Harris in front of a huge national audience so she can have an even more viral version of the "I'm speaking" clapback she employed against Mike Pence four years ago: 


Her campaign is about "vibes," identity, hype, and Trump opposition.  A woman of color 'shutting down' Donald Trump to his face, upon his interruptions, represents precisely the sort of optics the Harris campaign covets.  They are likely correct that the microphones rule is a guardrail that ultimately helps save Trump from his own worst impulses.  They want it gone, and it's transparently obvious why.  I'm not the only person drawing this inescapable conclusion:

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Harris allies are going to publicly taunt Trump over this, hoping to goad him into dropping a rule from the package they'd previously portrayed as sacrosanct.  He's surrendered leverage at every turn on the debates front, which allowed the Democrats to schedule a pre-conventions meeting, which set them on a course to dump their losing candidate before it was too late. Make no mistake: They're doing all of this in pursuit of their own interests.