The Harris campaign relented to the muted-mic requirement for the presidential debate hosted by ABC News next week.
In a letter to the network, the campaign agreed to leave the mics muted when the candidate isn’t speaking during Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia.
“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the vice president. We suspect this is the primary reason for his campaign’s insistence on muted microphones,” said the letter, according to CBS News.
“We understand that Donald Trump is a risk to skip the debate altogether, as he has threatened to do previously, if we do not accede to his preferred format,” it said. “We do not want to jeopardize the debate. For this reason, we accepted the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones.”
The network laid out its rules last week, saying the mics would be muted when the candidate isn’t talking, just like the previous debate in June between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller told CBS that “we are thrilled that Kamala Harris and her team of Biden campaign leftovers … have finally accepted the already agreed upon rules of the debate that they wrote in the first place.”
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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