When’s the next presidential debate?
The next presidential debate is slated to take place next Tuesday in Philadelphia.
The Sept. 10 debate, hosted by ABC News, will begin at 9 p.m. EDT and last 90 minutes, including two commercial breaks. It will be moderated by hosts Linsey Davis and David Muir.
The event marks the first time the nominees, Vice President Harris and former President Trump, will face off on the debate stage, as well as their first meeting in person.
The forum follows an extensive back-and-forth between the two campaigns over whether the debate terms — originally set when President Biden was still the likely candidate — are still valid now that Harris leads the Democratic ticket.
Questions have centered largely on whether one candidate’s microphone will be muted when the other is speaking. The rule was in place during the first debate between Trump and Biden, and some have attributed the former president’s relatively strong performance to the discipline that the mics provided him.
The vice president’s team has pushed to change the rule, but ABC indicated in a recent memo that the network has not made any changes. A campaign spokesperson said last week it has not yet agreed to those terms.
“The memo sent by ABC is a draft set of rules that both campaigns need to sign off on and indicate agreement,” Harris spokesperson Brian Fallon said on the social platform X. “We have not done so because we think both candidates have expressed a clear desire to have hot mics. Not clear why Trump staff is overruling their principal, who should be capable of making up his own mind.”
“We have been asked to accede to Trump’s handlers’ wishes on this point for the sake of preserving the debate,” he added. “We find the Trump’s team’s stance to be weak, and remain in discussions with ABC on the final rules,” Fallon wrote in a separate post on X.
Trump has attacked ABC News as “the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business” but said last week that he would participate in the Sept. 10 debate nonetheless, if the rules remained the same as the first debate.
The event comes as The Hill/Decision Desk HQ national polling index shows Harris ahead of Trump by 4 percentage points — 49.4 percent support to 45.4 percent. In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where the debate will take place, the vice president maintains a razor-sharp lead over the former president — 48.2 percent support to 47.5 percent.
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