In an election in which neither party agrees on much, they agree on this: The first presidential debate of the year was catastrophic for President Joe Biden, who was ousted as the presumptive nominee of his party as a direct result.
So as the scheduled Sept. 10 debate on ABC approaches, it’s no surprise now that Team Trump would want to keep the conditions of June’s debate precisely intact — and that Vice President Kamala Harris’ team wouldn’t.
That leads to the most recent dustup — which has been drawing out for days — over microphones, a topic that has proved to be the stickiest of all.The issue is whether the candidates’ microphones should be muted when it isn’t their turn to speak.
Republicans want them muted; Democrats don't.
Each team has had the benefit of seeing what it was like with muted microphones. Democrats say Trump appeared more docile last month when he wasn’t allowed to pop off when he pleased, giving him a false veneer of discipline. Republicans accuse Harris of fearing the silence of Trump’s muted microphone.
Harris is a far different candidate from Biden — she is an experienced prosecutor whose interrogations of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in his Senate confirmation hearings were frequently highlighted at the Democratic National Convention. She has strategic reasons of her own for wanting to face the full, unleashed Trump, according to campaign sources and Democratic allies.
“She not only wants America to see Donald Trump unvarnished on a hot mic; she wants to show America she can stand up to him and take anything and everything he throws at her,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist. “Voters always want to see that. When you stand up to others, that means you’ll stand up for them. That is a critical test, especially as a woman candidate for president.”
Inside the Harris campaign, the thinking is that there shouldn’t be guardrails and that viewers should see a full, unbridled Trump. Officials there argue that Trump’s handlers don’t trust their own candidate and chargethat for all the talk of Biden’s showing cognitive decline, it's Trump who is struggling to stay on track with his arguments. Showing him unleashed would only benefit Harris.
They also point to Trump's apparent willingness to accept live microphones.
“We agreed to the same rules. I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me,” Trump said this week. “The agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted.”
Still, even Harris officials and allies agreed that, ultimately, the muted microphones hurt Biden in the debate. Without Trump’s interjections, there was only silence when it was Biden's turn to speak. That put him on the spot and showcased his inability to, at times, even complete a sentence.
There is some sense among Trump’s campaign advisers that the muted mics contributed to his having a good performance, since he didn't cut Biden off and ramble as he has done in the past.
The Trump campaign charges that the Harris team is using the microphone disagreement as a possible excuse to get out of the debate if needed, particularly if the CNN interview Thursday evening went poorly.
Trump senior adviser Danielle Alvarez pointed to what she said were other asks by the Harris campaign.
“It’s most alarming that she asked to bring notes — I guess she isn’t too sure of her own 'values.' And it’s equally as alarming that she asked to be seated — even Biden managed to hang on to the podium and remain standing for 90 minutes,” Alvarez said Thursday. “I guess it’s not surprising given that she needed Walz to babysit her during her sitdown with CNN. What’s clear is that she is weak and undeserving of the promotion she is seeking.”
A Harris campaign official said the suggestion that Harris wanted notes and asked to be seated was categorically false.
Scott Howell, a veteran GOP operative who has experience helping Republican Senate candidates with debate prep, said having hot mics may have actually helped Biden in 2020.
“It gave him an opportunity to have some opening for some pretty good zingers," Howell said.
He pointed to one of the worst moments for Biden last month, when he appeared to lose his train of thought talking about the patrolling the border.
Trump responded: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
The hot mic debate is one in which neither side exactly has clean hands. It was Trump’s team in 2020 who argued against muting his microphone, saying it was “completely unacceptable for anyone to wield such power.” And it was Democrats — albeit under the Biden regime — who just months ago wanted microphones muted in the first place.
At the time, Biden’s campaign argued that Trump’s repeated interruptions in 2020 proved distracting and that he was incapable of following the rules. That was true. By one count, Trump interrupted Biden 145 times.
However, at times, that seemed to save Biden, who in some answers struggled to keep his train of thought. But Biden’s pauses were overshadowed by Trump, who talked right over him. Add the moderator’s scolding of Trump for flouting the rules and the storyline turned sharply toward Trump and chaos.
Karen Finney, who helped with strategy for Hillary Clinton’s debate against Trump in 2016, predicted that an unmuted microphone could prove disastrous for Trump if he launches into a personal attack that could turn off women and people of color.
“I suspect that his team knows that Harris gets under his skin in ways that will make it more likely that he will reveal his true character,” Finney said. “Having been through this before, people should get to hear exactly what he’s saying. It’s about two leaders and evaluating their character.”
