Trump agrees to debate as Harris confirms first interview since Biden withdrawal

Donald Trump has confirmed he will debate Kamala Harris on 10 September, while the vice president has agreed to her first joint interview since Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 election.

The former president has been flip-flopping on whether he will debate the Democrat nominee after initially confirming he would, asking “why am I doing it?” at a campaign stop on Monday.

In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, however, Mr Trump said he had reached an “agreement with the Radical Left Democrats” for a debate with “Comrade Kamala Harris” on ABC News.

“The rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden,” he added, seemingly confirming the candidate’s microphones will be muted.

However, the former president claimed Ms Harris would not agree to a third debate on Fox News, “but that date will be held open in case she changes her mind”, and added another possible debate on Sky’s partner network NBC News “has not been agreed to by the Radical Left”.

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.

Meanwhile, CNN said Ms Harris and her vice presidential nominee Tim Walz will take part in their first joint interview on Thursday.

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The network said the interview will air at 9pm (2am in the UK) as the Democrats travel through Georgia, and marks Ms Harris’s first sit-down interview since President Joe Biden announced he would not seek a second term in the White House.

CNN anchor Dana Bash will conduct the interview, the network added in a statement.

The vice president has come under fire for not speaking to the media since Mr Biden made his announcement on 21 July, which came off the back of an “unmitigated disaster” of a debate with the Republican nominee.

Mr Trump’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance said earlier this month: “I think it’s really disgraceful, both for Kamala Harris but also for a lot of the American media that participates in this stuff, to have a person who has been the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for 17 days and refuses to take a single question from the American media.”

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It comes after Ms Harris accepted her party’s nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, and set out her plan to defeat Mr Trump on Thursday.

Her speech was littered with policy announcements: “a middle-class tax cut” for more than 100 million Americans, a bill to restore reproductive freedoms and reforms to the immigration system.

It also follows Mr Trump promising to release thousands of documents linked to the assassination of John F Kennedy if he wins the election, after his presidential campaign was endorsed by former third party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.

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The former president praised JFK’s nephew for running “an extraordinary campaign” but also alluded to their differences: “We’ve been a little bit on the opposite side of the equation.”

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