US election: Donald Trump suggests he may back out of TV debate against Kamala Harris

Donald Trump has suggested he might back out of a scheduled debate with rival presidential hopeful Kamala Harris – as he says the network it is scheduled to be on is “hostile” to Republicans.

Speaking inside a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia, Trump said he watched ABC’s This Week on Sunday and did not like how how Republican senator Tom Cotton was treated.

“When I looked at the hostility of that, I said, ‘Why am I doing it? Let’s do it with another network’,” Mr Trump told reporters.

He said he would “much rather do it on NBC” or another network, including CBS, CNN and “certainly I’d do it on Fox”.

Mr Trump said he was “still thinking” about whether he wanted to take part at all, saying the Harris campaign wanted to “change the rules” around the debate.

Negotiations over the head-to-head have hit an impasse over the issue of “hot” microphones, which would pick up any comments, regardless of whose turn it was to speak.

It had been previously agreed they would be muted, to prevent the candidates talking over one another.

Harris campaign spokesman Brian Fallon alleged that Trump’s aides prefer that the candidates’ microphones are muted “because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own”.

“The vice president is ready to deal with Trump’s constant lies and interruptions in real time,” he added. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

But the Trump campaign has hit back with conflicting statements – with the candidate himself saying he wanted them on, while his team said they did not.

Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said that both campaigns had already agreed to the debate rules, which he said mirrored the same ones used during the June CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden. That debate used muted microphones, at the request of the Biden campaign.

But asked if he wants the microphones muted at the debate, Mr Trump said: “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted.”

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The disagreement over the rules also comes after a Trump post on social media on Sunday night, where he wrote: “[W]hy would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?”

NBC News spokesman Stephen Labaton said the network has been and is engaged with both the Trump and Harris campaigns about the possibility of hosting a debate.

Mr Trump had previously refused to debate Ms Harris unless it was on Fox News, before climbing down from his position and saying he would face her in three separate debates.

So far, only the ABC debate has been confirmed.

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