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The two U.S. presidential candidates - Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and her Republican challenger, former president Donald Trump - have never met or even spoken to each other, but they are quarreling over the terms of their first face-to-face encounter at their planned September 10 debate.
When the two campaigns agreed to the 90-minute, nationally televised debate on ABC News in the eastern city of Philadelphia, it was on the same terms that Trump debated President Joe Biden in late June, with microphones muted when the other candidate was speaking.
Now, Harris is looking to leave the microphones on throughout the debate. It's a move that could lead to livelier, direct exchanges between the two candidates - or so much crosstalk that the millions of viewers expected to watch might have trouble hearing the candidates' competing viewpoints.
Brian Fallon, a Harris campaign spokesman, contended that "Trump's handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don't think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own." He said that Harris "is ready to deal with Trump's constant lies and interruptions in real time. Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button."
Trump seemed to indicate that it didn't make much difference to him, telling reporters Monday, "We agreed to the same rules. I don't know, doesn't matter to me. ... The agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted."
"The truth is they're trying to get out of it," Trump claimed about the Harris campaign.
Trump himself suggested in a Sunday evening post on his Truth Social platform that he might not show up for the ABC debate. Trump voiced his discontent about the network's Sunday news talk show with a "so-called Panel of Trump Haters" and rhetorically asked, "Why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?" He urged followers to "Stay tuned!!"
The June 27 Trump-Biden debate played a pivotal role in the 2024 presidential campaign. The 81-year-old Biden stumbled so badly, losing his train of thought and failing to directly challenge Trump, that Democratic allies in Congress called for him to end his reelection campaign. He withdrew July 21 and endorsed Harris, with key Democratic officials quickly embracing her candidacy.
Harris and Trump have never met in person or spoken on the phone, even though they regularly lob political taunts at each other. When Trump was president, Harris attended his State of the Union addresses in the cavernous House of Representatives chamber but sat at a distance from the podium where Trump spoke.
Microphones have been unmuted for both major-party candidates in most of the previous televised presidential debates.
If Harris gets her way and mics are unmuted throughout the debate, the prospect for civilized exchanges between the two candidates is likely diminished.
In 2020, when Trump and Biden first debated, the mics were unmuted and the two candidates frequently interrupted each other and talked over each other's remarks. Political analysts called the encounter a disaster, one of the worst presidential debates ever.
The second 2020 debate with microphones muted was widely acclaimed as more substantive than the earlier matchup.