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Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign criticized ABC’s decision to keep the microphones muted during the upcoming presidential debate, claiming it “handcuffed” their original strategy, Politico reported Friday.
Harris had initially planned to interrupt her opponent, former President Donald Trump, by fact-checking and questioning him directly while he spoke during the debate. But with ABC finalizing the event rules just four days before the showdown, campaign aides told Politico that Harris’s team is “scrambling to rewrite their playbook.”
“She could get thrown off by [the muted mics], so putting [their frustration] about the mics out there, they’re preparing for that possibility,” a Democratic strategist told the outlet.
The Trump campaign favored keeping the same rules Trump agreed to when he was set to debate President Joe Biden. Harris’s campaign, in a mailer, acknowledged they wanted live microphones to recreate her viral “I’m speaking” moment from the 2020 vice presidential debate against Mike Pence.
“Trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps,” a 2020 Harris campaign aide said. “And they have neutered that.”
Harris’s team expressed frustration with these rules, carried over from Biden’s campaign, arguing the octogenarian president “never should’ve been on the debate stage.”
“It was a bad set of rules for someone who needed to be protected, who never should’ve been on the debate stage,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with the Harris team’s thinking. “And now they’re stuck with it.”
Despite the frustrations, Harris’s senior communications adviser told ABC on Wednesday that the vice president would reluctantly accept the original rules, including the muted microphones, which he believes “fundamentally disadvantaged” her.
