USA Trump and Harris argue about rules for TV duel

The two US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are publicly arguing about the rules for their first TV duel in September. At the center of the dispute are the microphones - and the question of whether they should be muted when the political opponent is speaking.

A spokesperson for the Democrat Harris' campaign team said that they would prefer both candidates' microphones to remain switched on throughout the broadcast. "We assume that Trump's advisors prefer the muted microphone because they don't believe their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes," it said in a statement released to US media.

Trump criticizes Harris and broadcaster ABC

Republican Trump had already railed at the weekend against ABC, which will host the debate on September 10 (local time/September 11 CEST). He questioned why he should take part at all - he had previously agreed to the debate. Now he wrote on his Truth Social platform that Harris is refusing to give interviews and now she wants to change the rules of the debate on "ABC Fake News". A spokesperson for Trump said: "ABC offered the exact same debate rules as CNN, and we accepted them - as did the Harris camp."

The spokesperson was referring to the TV duel between Trump and the then Democratic presidential candidate, US President Joe Biden. During the duel, the microphones of the person who was not speaking were muted.

The two competed against each other in a debate hosted by CNN in June. Biden's disastrous performance led to his withdrawal from the campaign; US Vice President Harris is now running against Trump for the Democrats in the presidential election on November 5.

Lessons from Biden's TV debacle

The mute in the Biden-Trump duel is reportedly down to Biden's team. The Democrats wanted to prevent Trump from constantly interrupting the 81-year-old Democrat. Biden later complained that Trump had interrupted him and thus thrown him off course. However, as the microphones had been muted, nobody had noticed. After the debate, observers came to the conclusion that - contrary to what had been planned - the muted microphones had actually helped Trump because they had made the 78-year-old appear more in control.