When will the next presidential debate of 2024 take place and who will moderate it?
Before President Biden decided to drop out of the race for reelection, he and former President Donald Trump had agreed to one more showdown on the debate stage before the 2024 presidential election.
After Mr. Biden ended his campaign, it was initially unclear whether a debate between Trump and the new Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, would take place, but both campaigns have confirmed they will participate in the debate scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 10 — just a few weeks after Harris formally accepted the nomination. It will be the first time she and Trump meet in person.
When is the second presidential debate?
ABC News is hosting the second presidential debate on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. The debate will be simulcast on other networks, including CBS, and can be streamed live. (Find full details on how to watch here.)
The debate will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
The first presidential debate, on June 27, in which Trump faced President Biden in Atlanta, came unusually early in the election season given that neither candidate had formally received their party's nomination yet. Trump accepted the GOP nomination on July 18 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mr. Biden withdrew from the race on July 21 and Harris accepted the Democratic nomination during the party's convention in Chicago on Aug. 22.
Plans for the ABC debate had been in question after Trump said on Aug. 3 that he was "terminating" it and would do a debate hosted by Fox News on Sept. 4 instead. Harris responded that she would be at the ABC News debate on Sept. 10 and hoped "to see him there."
Then, at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Thursday, Aug. 8, Trump recommitted to the ABC News debate.
He also proposed two others, with Fox News on Sept. 4 and NBC News on Sept. 25. A Harris campaign spokesperson said Harris is "open to and eager to discuss more debates, but Trump has to show up to the September 10th debate first." The Harris campaign said it would be willing to debate at an unspecified date in October.
Fighting over muted mics
The Harris campaign agreed on Sept. 4, six days before the debate, to allow microphones to be muted when a candidate isn't speaking, ending a protracted fight that was the final sticking point in negotiations on the rules of the debate.
In a letter to ABC News, the campaign wrote that Harris would be "fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President."
"Notwithstanding our concerns, we understand that Donald Trump is a risk to skip the debate altogether, as he has threatened to do previously, if we do not accede to his preferred format," the Harris campaign continued. "We do not want to jeopardize the debate."
Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller said in a statement, "We are thrilled that Kamala Harris and her team of Biden campaign leftovers...have finally accepted the already agreed upon rules of the debate that they wrote in the first place."
Earlier, on Aug. 26, Trump seemed to indicate that he would not participate in the ABC News debate, saying that his campaign had agreed to the same rules regarding microphones that were in place for the first presidential debate, which included muting the mics.
Harris' team confirmed it did not want to mute the mics while the other candidate was talking and said, "[O]ur understanding is that Trump's handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don't think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own."
Trump said later that day, "We agreed to the same rules. I don't know, doesn't matter to me."
Who will moderate the next debate?
"World News Tonight" anchor David Muir and ABC News Live "Prime" anchor Linsey Davis will moderate the debate, ABC News said.
Which candidates qualify for the debate?
Only Trump and Harris will take part in the debate. The qualifications are similar to the first debate, and no non-major party candidates met he ballot access and polling requirements to earn a spot on stage. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running as an independent, suspended his campaign on Aug. 23 and threw his support behind Trump.
Candidates need to earn at least 15% support in four approved national polls and be on the ballot in enough states to be able to win 270 votes in the Electoral College — the threshold to win the presidency — in order to qualify.
How many more debates will there be for 2024?
There are no other presidential debates scheduled before the election at this point. The campaigns previously agreed to only two debates — the one hosted by CNN on June 27 and the other by ABC News on Sept. 10. Trump has proposed two more, but the Harris campaign has not agreed, instead saying it would evaluate a second debate in October after the first meeting.
CBS News has also invited the campaigns to participate in a vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, and both the Democrat, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and the Republican, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have accepted.
The candidates have bypassed the tradition of three debates organized by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which had overseen presidential debates since 1988. The commission's three debates were scheduled to take place in September and October at universities in Texas, Virginia and Utah. Instead, this year's debates were agreed upon without any involvement by the commission.
The commission was met with sharp criticism by both Trump — who has accused the commission of being biased against Republicans — and by close advisers to Mr. Biden, who view commission procedures as outmoded and fussy. The co-chair of the commission, Frank Fahrenkopf, told CBS News' podcast "The Takeout" that top White House communications adviser Anita Dunn "doesn't like us," and he said on a Politico podcast that this was the reason Mr. Biden's team went around the commission to negotiate directly with Trump's campaign.
