Joe Scarborough Defends Kamala Harris Not Doing a Fox News Debate: ‘They All Deliberately Mispronounce Her Name!’

Former President Donald Trump tried to change the presidential debate narrative on Saturday when he backed out of the ABC News debate against Vice President Kamala Harris scheduled for September 10th. Instead, he demanded a Fox News debate on his terms on September 4th. But on MSNBC’s Morning Joe , the co-hosts called such a debate “rigged,” and asked why Harris should have to appear on a network where various personalities “deliberately mispronounce her name.”

For context , both Trump and President Joe Biden agreed to two presidential debates back in May— one on CNN on June 27th and one on ABC News on September 10th. After Biden withdrew from the race and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Fox News invited Trump and Harris to a debate on September 17th; neither candidate responded to that invitation. Harris’s campaign said she would be at the September 10th debate whether or not Trump shows up.

Now, Trump claimed that he did not agree to a debate with Harris on ABC — only Biden. However, ABC News debate stipulations do not mention any candidate by name, only that participants will be nominees for president. So now he wants to debate Harris on Fox News “with a full arena.” Morning Joe ‘s Joe Scarborough , Mika Brzezinski , and Jonathan Lemire did not think Harris was obligated to agree to such a debate on Fox News:

Scarborough: [Trump] obviously is now proposing something that is no more likely for Kamala Harris to attend than than him attending something on MSNBC in prime time. It’s just not going to happen, which means he’s trying to figure out a way to get out of this debate gracefully and just not going to be able to do it.

Lemire: No. And let’s recall here that Trump is arguing the reason why that September date shouldn’t be valid anymore is that the plan was for him to debate Joe Biden. But if you actually read the contract, the negotiation, the settlement, the agreement about this debate, Joe Biden’s name is not in there. It’s simply the Republican nominee versus Democratic nominee. So that is what the Trump camp is trying to do. He’s also alleged bias against some of the ABC anchors, which is nonsense. And we’ve now heard from the Vice President’s campaign saying, look, we’re not going to change the plan. We’ll be there on September 10th. And there’ve been some Democrats who are saying, let’s be clear that she shouldn’t debate on Fox. Fox, which had to pay $787 million as part of a 2020, Big Lie-related settlement that still pushes on truths–

Scarborough: And Jonathan, not only that, again, and this is serious — they all deliberately mispronounce her name. Ka-MA-la. Repeatedly. All the hosts. KA-mala, KA-mala, KA-mala. I mean–

Brzezinski: Some of them don’t do it on purpose, but there’s definitely like a kind of thing they’re doing there to make even her name seem different.

Scarborough: And it’d be like if MSNBC hosts said “JD VEENCE,” and would JD VEENCE want to go on a network that deliberately mispronounced–

Brzezinski: Shady JD.

Scarborough: JD VEENCE’s name.

Lemire then called the idea of a Fox News debate under Trump’s terms “rigged” against Harris, but posited that Trump would eventually agree to debate Harris because he’d have to:

The setting would be rigged. To your point, why would she go to Fox, which is still putting forth these bad-faith arguments? I’ve talked to people in both campaigns who believe eventually a deal will be reached, probably on that ABC date. Maybe Trump will negotiate some changes. Well, maybe this time we will have a crowd as opposed to last time. Because recall, the Biden team did kind of get what they wanted in terms of format. It ended up not working out for the President. So there’s some room here for negotiation. But I do think, especially if you’re Trump, my guess would be he will do this debate eventually for two reasons. One, I don’t think he could stand being called a coward if he actually does duck the debate with the Vice President. But secondly, if momentum continues this direction and Harris gets a boost from her running mate pick, gets a boost from a strong convention a couple of weeks from now. And we’ve heard from Karl Rove at the very top of the show, if she’s got momentum and got a lead, well, Trump’s going to need, he’s the one who’s going to need the debate in an effort to try to change the narrative of the race.

Watch the video above via MSNBC.