Donald Trump has said he is pulling out of a scheduled September debate with vice-president Kamala Harris on ABC and wants them to face off on Fox News, making it increasingly unlikely the candidates will confront each other on stage before the November election.
In a series of Truth Social posts, the Republican nominee and former president said his agreement to a September 10th debate on ABC “has been terminated” because he will no longer face Democratic president Joe Biden, who ended his campaign last month after a disastrous performance in their first debate.
Mr Trump now says he will appear on Fox News on September 4th in Pennsylvania with rules that he called “similar” to his debate with Mr Biden, but with a full audience instead of a mostly empty studio.
Mr Trump said if Ms Harris did not agree to the new network and date, he would do a “major town hall” with Fox News.
Michael Tyler, a spokesman for Ms Harris, said Mr Trump was “running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out”.
It was not immediately clear whether ABC would turn its September 10th event into a Harris town hall in Mr Trump’s absence.
Mr Tyler said Ms Harris was committed to the time slot and would appear “one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience”.
Mr Trump has gone back and forth on debating with Ms Harris since she entered the presidential race.
He had told reporters he felt an obligation to debate but also said in a recent Fox News interview that he thought Americans “already know everything” about both candidates.
Ms Harris has pressed Mr Trump to keep the commitment he made when Mr Biden was in the race. Noting Mr Trump’s criticisms of her, Ms Harris dared him recently to “say it to my face”.
In his Truth Social posts, Mr Trump also cited his litigation against ABC News as “a conflict of interest” in his participation in the network’s debate.
Mr Trump sued the network in March following an assertion by anchor George Stephanopoulos that Mr Trump had been found “liable for rape”. A New York jury found Mr Trump liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E Jean Carroll but rejected her claim that she was raped.
But Mr Trump agreed, two months after filing his lawsuit, to the September 10th debate on ABC, as well as the June 27th debate on CNN that helped knock Mr Biden out of the race. David Muir and Linsey Davis, not Mr Stephanopoulos, are set to be ABC’s debate moderators.
Mr Trump has skipped debates before, including all the 2024 Republican presidential primary debates. - AP