Who’s Backing Out? Partisan Media Outlets Weigh in on the Debate Over the Debate

The presidential campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump are engaged in a very public fight over the rules of their first debate, scheduled for Sept. 10. The wrangling — and Mr. Trump’s complaints about fairness — have elicited a strong reaction across the spectrum of political media. In recent days, Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked the credibility of ABC, the network hosting the debate, and has wavered in his commitment to debating Ms. Harris. At the same time, Ms. Harris’s campaign has lobbied the network to return to leaving the microphones unmuted throughout. Conservative commentators on TV and online have denounced the request from Ms. Harris’s campaign as flip-flopping, maintaining that Ms. Harris is “scared” of debating Mr. Trump and suggesting that she is seeking a convenient excuse to back out. They have also parroted Mr. Trump’s complaints about ABC, which they have claimed without evidence is biased in favor of Ms. Harris. Liberal commentators have claimed that Mr. Trump, not Ms. Harris, was inventing excuses in order to exit the debate, and have referred to him as “weak.” Here’s how a selection of outlets has covered the debate over the debate: FROM THE RIGHT Fox News Before the June debate, President Biden’s team pushed to mute the microphone of the candidate who wasn’t speaking so that Mr. Trump would not interrupt Mr. Biden. But this week, Ms. Harris’s team asked that the network keep the microphones live throughout the debate. A spokesman for Ms. Harris’s campaign suggested that Mr. Trump’s team had objected to the request out of concern he could not “handle himself” with a live microphone. Commentators on Fox News strongly criticized Ms. Harris for the request, accusing her of trying to alter the rules. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, rebuked Ms. Harris on his show Monday evening and suggested, without evidence, that ABC’s moderators would give preferential treatment to Ms. Harris. “Even with moderators on her side, Harris still can’t answer questions or answer policy questions. So, just relying on Trump to make a mistake,” Mr. Hannity said. “Last minute now, they want a rule change.” Jesse Watters, the host of “Jesse Watters Primetime,” claimed without evidence that Ms. Harris wanted to use a “cheat sheet” for the debate, something Ms. Harris’s campaign has denied. “Two weeks ago, Harris said the debate over the debate was over, and it was time for Trump to ‘man up.’ Now, she’s throwing last-second curveballs and ripping up the rules. Is she trying to weasel her way out of this?” Mr. Watters said. FROM THE RIGHT The Washington Examiner Tiana Lowe Doescher, a columnist for The Washington Examiner, a conservative news and opinion site, wrote that Ms. Harris was “terrified” of debating Mr. Trump and that her campaign was “shifting the goalposts again,” in an opinion essay titled “Kamala Harris is scared of debating Trump, as she should be.” Repeating a frequent criticism that Ms. Harris has dodged public media appearances, Ms. Lowe Doescher said that Ms. Harris was “running away from the only forum that will ever hold her feet to the fire before Election Day.” Ms. Harris sat for an interview alongside her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday, her first extended interview with a major media outlet as the Democratic presidential nominee. “Harris is not acting like a winning candidate ready to take on her competitor, just as she’s not acting like a candidate ready to field softballs from the press,” Ms. Lowe Doescher wrote. FROM THE LEFT MSNBC Liberal commentators have argued that Mr. Trump is more fearful of debating Ms. Harris than he was Mr. Biden, and that he and his team are coming up with reasons to back out of a debate he’d agreed to months in advance. (Mr. Trump agreed to the Sept. 10 debate in May, when Mr. Biden was the presumptive nominee.) “Right now, he looks weak,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist, in an interview with Nicole Wallace, the host of the MSNBC show “Deadline.” “It looks really weak on his part for him to be running away from the debate.” In an opinion essay for MSNBC, Steve Benen, a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” argued that Mr. Trump had agreed to the Sept. 10 debate thinking he would be going against Mr. Biden, but he was worried about debating Ms. Harris. “The former president was desperate to share a stage with Biden, and he appears genuinely afraid of Harris,” Mr. Benen wrote. FROM THE LEFT Salon Salon, a liberal news and commentary site, has frequently depicted Mr. Trump as flailing against Ms. Harris since she entered the race, including in his preparation for the debate. The headline of a July 22 article said Mr. Trump was “already trying to back out of a debate with Kamala Harris,” while another from Aug. 16 said he brought on Tulsi Gabbard to prepare him “in hopes of having a fighting chance” in the debate. Ms. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, joined the Trump team earlier this month. The headline of an article this week from Charles Davis, Salon’s deputy news editor, read: Mr. Trump’s “debate flip-flop is a sign Harris has him figured out.” In the article, Mr. Davis wrote that a series of Truth Social posts from Mr. Trump on Sunday, in which he expressed doubt over debating Ms. Harris on ABC, indicated that Mr. Trump was worried he was losing the election. “What his evening anger suggests, however, is that the 78-year-old knows he’s not the favorite — not in the race, and not even on TV, the platform that made him a reality star,” Mr. Davis wrote. 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump