ABC releases Trump, Harris debate rules

Former President Trump and Vice President Harris have agreed to the rules set by ABC News for their first debate next week, the network announced Wednesday.

ABC News will be hosting the debate between Trump and Harris on Sept. 10, and it will mark the first debate since President Biden dropped out of the race in July. Each candidate agreeing to the rules comes after both campaigns clashed over whether the microphones should be muted when the other candidate is speaking.

The vice president’s team pushed to change the rule to keep microphones unmuted, but ABC said Wednesday that microphones will only be live during a candidate’s turn to speak and will be muted when it’s their opponent’s turn to speak. This is the same set of microphone rules that President Biden and Trump adhered to during the CNN debate in June.

Next week’s debate will be moderated by ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis and will take place in the the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, without an audience. The debate will be 90 minutes long and include two commercial breaks.

Trump won a virtual coin flip Tuesday to determine the order of the closing statements and the podium placement. He opted to select the order of the closing statements and chose to deliver the last closing statement of the debate, while Harris selected the right podium position on the screen, according to ABC’s announcement.

There will be no opening statements for the debate, and the closing statements will be two minutes long for each candidate.

Each candidate will have two minutes to answer the questions, two minutes for rebuttals and one additional minute “for follow-ups, clarifications, or responses.” Candidates are not allowed to ask questions of each other, according to the rules.

They will each have a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water but will not be allowed any prewritten notes or props, according to the announcement. Campaign staff will also not be allowed to interact with their candidates during commercial breaks.

Many polls show a close race between Harris and Trump, heightening the stakes of the debate. The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s national polling average shows Harris leading the former president by 4 percentage points, based on an aggregate of 155 polls.

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