Kamala harris

On Thursday, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris agreed to debate September 10 on ABC. That’s good news for voters. They deserve to see and hear the two candidates contest the issues and explain their differences, unfiltered. The differences are dramatic. They need to be fleshed out, and they need pushback from the other side. In fact, voters deserve more than a single debate. They deserve two or three so the issues can be explored in depth, away from scripted speeches, advertising spin, and biased media coverage. The debates will be more valuable if they follow the model set by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who moderated the face-off in Atlanta between Trump and Joe Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“I think it’s very important to have debates,” former president Donald Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference Thursday afternoon, confirming his agreement to three debates against Kamala Harris throughout September on Fox, ABC and NBC. The Harris campaign has only confirmed the ABC debate on September 10, which will be moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis. Until now, Trump would not commit to a date to debate Harris, saying he could consider skipping it after Biden's disastrous performance in their previous face-off. The Harris campaign accused Trump of refusing to debate out of fear. Harris “wants to say I don’t want to debate, but I do want to debate,” he added at the presser, his first public appearance since Tim Walz was selected as the Democratic VP candidate.

OK, it’s August 6, the anniversary of the detonation of Little Boy over the city of Hiroshima in 1945. That marked the end of World War Two. (I know, it took one more bomb and a little more time, but August 6 was the gang plank to the signing of the act of surrender aboard the Missouri.)  Fast forward to August 6, 2024. As of 9:25 ante meridiem there have been no huge detonations. True, the market has yet to open. If we have a repeat of yesterday cautious folk will lock windows on the upper stories in the buildings where the financial experts congregate. But we do have a little whimper of news, a tiny pssst of a political crepitation. Kamala Harris has just chosen Tim Walz, tapioca progressive and governor of Minnesota as her running mate.

Former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are at odds over where and when the pair will debate, with Trump rejecting a debate he had previously scheduled with President Joe Biden on September 10, hosted by ABC News. Instead, Trump says he will only debate Harris on September 4 in a debate hosted by Fox News: “I’ll see her on September 4th or, I won’t see her at all,” he wrote on Truth Social. Harris has accused Trump of “playing games” and is keen to stick with the ABC debate. Trump has given two reasons as to why the ABC debate is no longer on the table for him. First, he agreed to that debate with Biden, not Harris. Second, he is in active litigation against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos (or, as Trump calls him, “Slopadopoulos”).

While Donald Trump’s outlandish behavior usually garners free publicity for him in the news, this time, there is a lot on the line. Trump’s Wednesday comments at the National Association for Black Journalists convention have been branded “audacious lie[s],” “outrageous insults,” “overtly racist,” “repulsive” and “insulting.” “She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said, in one of the more widely circulated quotes. “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago until she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black.” Race is the last thing GOP political strategists want Trump to mention when it comes to Kamala’s campaign.