new york
CNN
—
ABC News is continuing to prepare for the next presidential debate, even as former President Donald Trump has said he won't consider participating in a debate until the Democratic Party has officially selected its nominee.
“It's full steam ahead,” an ABC network source told CNN on Friday.
ABC is gearing up for the debate, which is expected to be moderated by hosts David Muir and Lindsay Davis, but like so many other institutions and traditions this year, the network's plans could be upended.
“I haven't agreed to anything. I just agreed to debate Joe Biden,” the Republican nominee said at a press conference earlier this week. “But I want to debate her and she has the same policies, so it makes no difference. I think debates are important in a presidential election. I really do. I have an obligation to debate.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, later told reporters that she had agreed to the September 10 debate, and accused Trump of “taking a step back”.
“What happened to 'anytime, anywhere'?” Harris wrote in X's post.
Even before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, his campaign had scrapped the independent Commission on Presidential Debates, which had organized the debates for decades, and instead agreed to debates organized directly by television networks.
A person familiar with the matter said Friday that NBC is “in discussions with the campaigns,” but it was unclear whether that would include plans for debates or other events such as town hall meetings with the candidates.
The Biden and Trump campaigns had agreed to a CNN-hosted debate on June 27 and an ABC-hosted one on September 10. Harris had also agreed to a vice presidential debate hosted by CBS, but a date had not been set before Biden dropped out of the race.
The CNN debate will likely go down in history as one of the biggest (if not the most) consequential presidential debates of all time, with Biden's poor performance sparking calls for the 81-year-old president to drop out of the race.
After Biden withdrew and endorsed Harris, Trump suggested the ABC debate should be moved to the right-wing network Fox News. Fox sent a letter to both campaigns earlier this week proposing that they host their own presidential debate. Neither campaign has publicly responded to the proposal.
The location, rules and format of the ABC News debate have yet to be announced, but the network announced the candidates' eligibility requirements on Friday afternoon. An ABC spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
“There will be a debate. I don't know if it'll be ABC or not,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told Axios on Thursday.
“We believe we need some diversity in debate moderators,” he added, “but we think the public would be disappointed if we only had one debate with Kamala Harris in the general election.”
