Donald Trump announced that he would debate Vice President Kamala Harris in September, but Harris said she would not attend the event. Before President Biden withdrew from the Presidential race, ABC News scheduled a debate for September 10, which Vice President Harris said she was happy to proceed with. Trump withdrew, however, leaving the Harris campaign with the option of labeling him a “chicken” and claiming he is afraid to debate her.
In a recent sit-down interview, Trump confirmed that he would not debate on September 10, saying he doesn’t need to because he is “leading in the polls” and everybody already knows what he represents. Critics responded that Trump was behind in several polls, while the Kamala Harris campaign questioned his previous remarks that he would debate “anywhere, any time, any place.”
His latest announcement on his Truth Social media account confirms that the former President has arranged a debate on September 4, hosted by Fox News. Kamala Harris nevertheless continued to challenge Trump to attend on September 10 and said she would be there to answer questions alone. A spokesperson for the Vice President said Trump was “running scared” and wanted to debate at Fox News because it would “bail him out.”
Vice President Harris has confirmed that she will not participate in the Fox event. Communications director Michael Tyler said Trump “needs to stop playing games and attend the debate he already committed to.”
Mr. Trump’s reluctance to debate at ABC as planned may have been exacerbated by his recent interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago, where he faced questions from ABC reporter Rachel Scott. The journalist asked Trump whether he felt Kamala Harris was a “DEI hire,” as some Republicans suggest. The former President responded by questioning Harris’s racial identity and arguing that she had previously described herself as South Asian but recently began identifying as black for political reasons. “Is she Indian, or is she black?” he asked.
Harris’s mother is from India, and her father is Jamaican. Rachel Scott told Trump that the Vice President attended a black university and joined a black Congressional caucus when she was a US Senator.
