Donald Trump said he would be willing to do three debates against Kamala Harris after previously backtracking on his commitment to the Sept. 10 debate he’d previously agreed to when Joe Biden was the presumptive nominee.
“We’ve agreed with Fox on a day of Sept. 4,” the Republican nominee told reporters in a Mar-a-Lago news conference on Thursday, reiterating the Sept. 4 Fox News debate he’d floated on social media — Vice President Harris has yet to agree to that date. Trump when on to note that he’d agreed to debates on ABC and NBC, though he mixed up the dates in his remarks — ABC later confirmed that Trump and Harris have both agreed to debate on the network on Sept. 10.
The other debate floated by Trump would be on NBC on Sept. 25, though it’s unclear if the Harris campaign will agree to that one either. “I look forward to these debates. I think it’s really important that we have them.” He noted that Harris’s team would have to agree to the terms he’s agreed on with the networks hosting these events.
Trump’s remarks to members of the press come after Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate on Tuesday. The former president said that, with these agreements with various networks, the vice presidential debate between Walz and Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance would be aired on CBS.
During his press conference, Trump bragged about the sizes of his crowds and complained that the crowd at Harris’ rallies haven’t been as large, which he wanted the media to point out. However, she has thrown some massive rallies recently with around 10,000 in attendance at one of her appearances this week alongside Walz.
The former president also sparred with the press, telling one of the reporters they were asking a “stupid question,” as well as spending time during his appearance praising nations led by autocrats. Trump defended people convicted of rioting on Jan. 6 as well, calling his own remarks on that day peaceful and patriotic, as well as bragging that it was the biggest crowd he’d ever spoken in front of. He’s previously said that he would pardon people convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The GOP nominee slammed Harris’ intelligence, claiming that she is worse than Biden, while also insulting the president and saying, “I’m not a big fan of his brain.” He surprisingly praised Hillary Clinton’s intelligence, stating that she’d done bad things but that he thought it was terrible that the government was considering putting the wife of a former president in jail. Trump’s own rallies were often filled with chants of “lock her up.”
Trump began Thursday’s news conference by turning to his talking points on immigration and the southern United States border, where the number of people illegally crossing the border has recently dropped. “I think that our country is, right now, in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint — both gangs on the street and, frankly, gangs outside of our country, in the form of other countries that are, frankly, very powerful.”
“We have leadership who has no clue how to handle them, or how to handle any other situation,” he claimed, before arguing that the country was on the verge of a depression or even facing a world war. “You could end up in a depression of the 1920-variety … we’re very close to that and we’re very close to a world war.”
“I think I’m going to do well with everybody, especially when the facts are out,” Trump asserted on Thursday. “The fact that you can get no votes, lose the primary system … and that you can then be picked to run for president seems to me actually unconstitutional, perhaps it’s not.”
Despite the trio of new dates, the question of how many of these will actually take place remains to be seen.
Trump told “Fox & Friends” anchors on Wednesday that it is “important for the country” that he and Democratic nominee Harris debate. He previously proposed a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News, complaining that ABC and anchor George Stephanopoulos represented “conflicts of interest” for him and stating that he was in litigation with them. Trump has mockingly called the respected ABC anchor “George Slopadopolus” multiple times.
It’s interesting how “any time, any place” becomes “one specific time, one specific safe space.”
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 3, 2024
I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there. https://t.co/zqng89X8QD
Mike Roe also contributed to this report.
