As Donald Trump and his campaign cast doubt on and complain about the conditions of his upcoming presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, strategists tell theGrio the Republican nominee is simply scared to go up against Harris, an experienced Black woman politician and former prosecutor.
“Donald Trump has 99 problems, but he doesn’t want debating Kamala Harris to be one,” said Antjuan Seawright, a longtime Democratic strategist.
In a post on Truth Social Sunday night, Trump appeared to leave open the possibility that he could pull out of his agreed-upon Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News against Harris, the newly coronated Democratic presidential nominee.
“Why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” wrote Trump, who described ABC as “biased” and “fake news.”
Seawright said Trump’s latest statements, which included conspiracy theories about the debate conditions being rigged in Harris’ favor, suggest he “fears” the former prosecutor.
“He not only fears a Black woman, but also his fear of Black women goes right along with his disrespect for the Black woman,” he told theGrio.
Speaking to Harris’ perceived strength as a former state attorney general and district attorney in California, Seawright said, “Every time he’s had to face a prosecutor, he’s lost.” He added, “It will not end well for him, and so he’s looking for an emergency exit ramp to use, and this is just one tactic to do that.”
Ameshia Cross, another Democratic strategist and political analyst, said Trump “does not know how to debate an educated, experienced Black woman.” She told theGrio Harris “represents everything that he hates in society: women in leadership and Black people specifically.”
Additionally, Politico reported on Monday that the Trump campaign rebuffed the Harris campaign’s request to keep the microphones on throughout the 90-minute ABC debate.
When President Joe Biden was still at the top of the Democratic ticket, his campaign negotiated that the mics would only be on for one candidate at a time. Team Biden’s strategy was to minimize opportunities for Trump to derail the debate with outbursts and lies. However, the Harris campaign is taking a different approach.
“Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own,” said Harris campaign senior adviser Brian Fallon.
On Monday, Trump appeared to break from his own campaign, telling reporters that while the campaigns “agreed to the same rules,” it “doesn’t matter” to him whether the mics remain on or not.
“I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time,” he said.
Seawright, a longtime senior adviser to presidential kingmaker U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said Harris’ decision to request that mics not be muted is a good strategy for the vice president.
“She’s a different candidate than Joe Biden. She’s a different candidate with different attributes that she brings to the table and a different style,” he explained. “I think that if that’s a negotiating point for her, that she should do it and she should stick to it.”
If Trump and his team were “secure” in his ability to perform well on the debate stage, said Seawright, then it “doesn’t matter” what the parameters are.
“But he is not built to have a policy conversation,” he added. “He has built his political career on having a theatrical and a personality conversation, and now this gives an opportunity for that to run its course and face it head on.”
Cross said that Trump has “zero” ability to “moderate himself” and that keeping the mics on through the entire debate would allow Harris to engage in “live fact-checking.”
“[That] was not an ability during the first debate against Joe Biden,” she said, adding, “I don’t think there’s an expectation that much fact-checking, or at least at the speed that it has to come at, will come from the moderators themselves.”
She also noted that given Trump’s penchant for saying “negative” and “derogatory” comments about women, particularly Black women, having a hot mic would expose his racism and sexism. Last month during an interview with Black reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Trump infamously suggested that Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, “turned” Black.
“It is going to go gutter very quickly because he can’t rise above that,” argued Cross, who pointed out that Trump’s polling among women continues to tank.
“He’s going to have a very hard time on that debate stage against someone who is a lot stronger at debating or someone who wants to talk about policy,” said Cross, noting Harris’ policy rollout that includes expanding the Child Tax Credit and housing policy to expand the middle class.
She said of Trump, “He doesn’t have anything that meets that moment.”
Ultimately, whatever the former president throws Harris’ way, Cross said it won’t “move” America’s first female vice president.
“She has heard it all. She’s seen it all. There isn’t a level of racism that a Black woman, a Southeast Asian woman, has not heard in her rise and ascension to where she is now,” said Cross.
“There is nothing he can do to knock her off of her square, and I think that he is aware of that.”
