Kamala Harris’s Campaign Says She Will Be At ABC Debate With or Without Trump

AP Photo/Kayla Wolf

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign announced on Monday that their candidate would show up at the September 10th debate hosted by ABC News that GOP nominee Donald Trump and President Joe Biden agreed to whether or not Trump shows up.

As Trump’s campaign signals uncertainty about the debate, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler released a statement saying, “As Vice President Harris said last week, the American people deserve to hear from the two candidates running for the highest office in the land and she will do that at September’s ABC debate.”

“If Donald Trump and his team are saying anything other than ‘we’ll see you there,’ — and it appears that they are — it’s a convenient, but expected backtrack from Team Trump. Vice President Harris will be there on September 10th — we’ll see if Trump shows,” added Tyler in a statement first reported on by the Hill.

Trump has called into question why he should honor the debate as Biden has effectively been replaced by Harris on the ticket. Trump has publicly called for the debate to be hosted by other news organizations he sees as more friendly to him – namely Fox News.

“I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10th debate, he agreed to that previously,” Harris said on last Thursday. “Now it appears he’s backpedaling. But I’m ready. And I think that the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage and so, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller told MSNBC over the weekend that his campaign wasn’t committing to the debate until the Democrats officially nominate Harris.

“Hold on, we need to make sure the Democrats actually go through and lock in Kamala Harris. It was only a month ago, Chris, that many Democrats who wanted to throw Joe Biden overboard were saying, we need to go to this mini primary. We need to go with somebody else other than Kamal Harris. It’s only been this past week that they’ve had an effort to rally around Kamala Harris. The exact same people that were saying Joe Biden was okay are the same people saying now we have to get behind Harris,” Miller told anchor Chris Jansing when pressed.

Miller did say that Trump would debate whoever the Democrats nominate but was unclear about when and where.