US election: Donald Trump hints he may drop out of TV debate against Kamala Harris | US News

Donald Trump has hinted that he may drop out of a planned debate with his rival and presidential candidate Kamala Harris because he believes the network that was scheduled to broadcast the debate is “hostile” to Republicans.

In a Vietnamese restaurant in Virginia, Trump said he watched ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday and did not like the way Republican Senator Tom Cotton was treated.

“When I saw the hostility, I said, ‘Why am I doing this? Let’s do it with another network,'” Trump told reporters.

He said he would “much rather do it at NBC” or another network, including CBS, CNN and “of course I would do it at Fox.”

Mr Trump said he was “still thinking” about whether he wanted to participate at all and suggested the Harris team wanted to “change the rules” around the debate.

Negotiations over the one-on-one meeting have reached an impasse because there are so-called “hot” microphones that would pick up all comments, regardless of whose turn it is to speak.

In order to prevent the candidates from interrupting, it had previously been agreed that they would be muted.

Harris’ campaign spokesman Brian Fallon claimed that Trump’s aides preferred to mute the candidates’ microphones “because they don’t believe their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes alone.”

“The vice president is prepared to confront Trump’s constant lies and interruptions in real time,” he added. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

But the Trump campaign team hit back with contradictory statements: The candidate himself said he wanted the masks, but his team said no.

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Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said both campaigns have already agreed to debate rules, which are the same as those used in the CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden in June, which used muted microphones at the request of the Biden campaign.

When asked if he would mute the microphones at the debate, Trump replied: “I don’t know. I don’t care. I probably would rather have it on, but the agreement was that it would be like last time. In this case, it was muted.”

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The disagreement over the rules also comes after a post by Trump on social media on Sunday evening in which he wrote: “[W]Why should I hold the debate against Kamala Harris on this network?”

NBC News spokesman Stephen Labaton said the network is in talks with Trump and Harris’ campaign teams and continues to hold discussions about the possibility of a debate.

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Trump had previously refused to debate Harris unless the debate was on Fox News before resigning from his post and declaring he would face her in three separate debates.

So far, only the ABC debate has been confirmed.