A good rule of thumb: the candidate perceived to be trailing wants to debate more urgently
The debate over debates tells us a great deal about the state of the presidential race.
If only we could figure out what it is.
Donald Trump, by slamming "ABC FAKE NEWS," suggested he may pull out of the Sept. 10 faceoff. He said yesterday at a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia that it was Kamala Harris who is trying to back out of the debate.
A top Harris campaign official, Michael Tyler, responded on MSNBC that the vice president is actually anxious to debate and he thought all the issues had been worked out.
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My best read is that the debate will happen and that this is the kind of last-minute negotiation for which Trump is renowned.
Remember, this debate was worked out with Joe Biden, whose first encounter with Trump, which the president demanded, was such a disaster that it knocked him out of the race. That led to Harris as the substitute nominee, which was not a "coup" – it’s clear that Trump misses Biden – because nobody ran against Kamala.
A good rule of thumb is that the candidate who is perceived to be behind, or to have lost momentum, wants the debate more urgently.
With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoning his longshot presidential bid to join team Trump, the state of the race is anybody's guess – and incredibly hard to gauge. (Left: Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Right: Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images; Inset: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
At the CNN debate, Biden insisted that the microphones be muted for the candidate who wasn’t recognized to speak. He was obviously trying to avoid a repeat of their first 2020 encounter, when Trump constantly talked over him.
But now Kamala is insisting that the mikes be kept live no matter who is speaking. Her campaign says this will demonstrate that Trump isn’t capable of acting "presidential" for 90 minutes.
Another way to look at it: If the former president does constantly interrupt her, it will remind people what they don’t like about him – and could seem more rude when up against a woman of color. Then she can complain that he trampled on her.
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In fairness, though, what Harris wants now is the way it’s been in virtually every presidential fall debate. It was the CNN debate, at the insistence of the 81-year-old Biden, that was the exception.
Is this dispute enough to derail the thing? Again, I doubt it.
Here’s what Trump had to say (and he’s back tweeting!):
"I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s (K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?...
Trump slammed ABC and other mainstream outlets in a Truth Social tirade suggesting he may not participate in his scheduled Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Harris. (Ian Maule/Getty Images)
Will panelist Donna Brazil[e] give the questions to the Marxist Candidate like she did for Crooked Hillary Clinton? Will Kamala’s best friend, who heads up ABC, do likewise." After making fun of the name of George Stephanopoulos – who will not be involved in the debate – Trump says: They’ve got a lot of questions to answer!!! Why did Harris turn down Fox, NBC, CBS, and even CNN? Stay tuned!!!"
The ABC panel that drew Trump’s ire was Karl, Politico’s Jonanthan Martin and Rachael Bade, and contributor Donna Brazile.
The 45th president, who is facing an overwhelmingly hostile press corps, may also be trying to grab some attention after a month of pro-Kamala coverage. The Democratic convention was successful by almost any measure, including Harris’ speech, but when Rachel Maddow said that she and others at the MSNBC mothership "stood up and cheered" over Tim Walz’s appearance, that was rather striking.
What’s equally fascinating is how many pundits defended Biden’s mental acuity, but now, with Trump running against a 59-year-old woman, are trying to portray him as having lost a few steps.
Most journalists and commentators have displayed little interest in Harris’ refusal to do interviews, with some even saying she shouldn’t because things are going so well. Her deputy campaign manager told me on "Media Buzz" that the first one would be by Aug. 31, and we’ll see if it’s with a sympathetic liberal.
Trump, meanwhile, did two lengthy news conferences in about a week – and MSNBC refused to take the second one live, with their pundits saying he lies all the time anyway.
RFK Jr. stepped on Harris’ post-convention vibe fest by dropping out and endorsing Trump, which certainly could help him at least marginally in such a close race. MSNBC, again, refused to take Kennedy’s presser live. Now does anyone seriously believe that if RFK had endorsed Kamala Harris, the network wouldn’t have aired it live – and immediately invited him on?
Kennedy fans are welcome to vote for him, although his siblings called his Trump endorsement the ultimate betrayal. His response was to scapegoat the media:
"ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN combined gave only two live interviews. Those networks instead ran a continuous deluge of hit pieces with inaccurate, often vile audios and defamatory smears …
"Your institutions have made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power."
RFK Jr.'s withdrawal from the race effectively neutered the post-convention morale bump anticipated for Harris. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Many interviews are pretaped, but the reason the networks gave RFK little airtime is he was a fringe candidate with no plausible hope of winning a single state. He was certainly a colorful candidate – saying he had a brain worm, covering up how he put a dead bear carcass in his car that he planned to eat for dinner – but that’s something entirely different.
And consider this: RFK ran as a Democrat, then an independent. He tried to make a deal with both Kamala and Trump to trade his endorsement for the promise of a top health care job if either won. That didn’t work out.
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So he endorsed Trump anyway without a job promise, unless there was a wink and a nod.
Doesn’t that raise questions about what Kennedy actually stands for?
Now, as such speakers as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama warned, Harris faces a tough two months where Republicans will relentlessly attack her record and particularly the left-wing positions from 2020 that she changed without explanation.
Some analysts say she calls herself the underdog as a way of positioning herself as the change candidate, but she is in fact the underdog.
Howard Kurtz is the host of FOX News Channel's MediaBuzz (Sundays 11 a.m.-12 p.m. ET). Based in Washington, D.C., he joined the network in July 2013 and regularly appears on Special Report with Bret Baier and other programs.
