A heated interview between MSNBC host Ari Melber and Corey Lewandowski ended with shouting and threats of a lawsuit after the Trump advisor read the liberal host’s own criticisms of the former president back to him.

Video of the exchange circulating online shows a flustered Melber demanding that Lewandowski immediately refrain from committing “defamation” by reading a quote from a prior appearance where the MSNBC host called the bandage from former President Donald Trump’s near-assassination a “spectacle.” Melber, an attorney who has been on-camera with the network since 2017, lost it after his Republican guest called him out for suggesting that President Trump was milking sympathy following the July 13th shooting. The interview was originally meant to allow Lewandowski to respond to criticisms about a recent “improper request” by Trump.

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Citing a new Fox News report, Melber claimed the network “ran a story falsely suggesting I said something that I didn’t say,” waving his hands for effect. “So I stand on that, I stand on the New York Times quote” which characterized his remark differently. Lewandowski was incredulous. “So you didn’t say ‘this bandage was a prop, a spectacle, from a candidate who is obsessed with spectacles,’” he asked. “I did not,” Melber repeated. Video shared by popular X influencer Collin Rugg showed otherwise.

During MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in July, Melber spoke about delegates on the floor who showed their solidarity with Trump by wearing their own ear bandages during the event. “A placard for delegates to fill in, an image for political mobilization, a spectacle for this candidate who we know is, by his own admission, obsessed with assorted spectacles,” Melber said at the time. The video cuts back to the host who then goes nuclear before ending the interview.

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“Mr. Lewandowski, I did not say that. That is a false quote. What you have is a false quote, and if you… I’m putting you on notice. If you continue to repeat falsely that I said that, you will be potentially in a defamation situation because I didn’t say that. I understand you’re working off the internet, which has a lot of false information,” he threatened. “This is what it says right here!” the Trump advisor continued before Melber cut him off. “Corey Lewandowski, we gave you time. Thank you for joining me.” Lewandowski took a parting shot. “You owe the president an apology for that.”

Just days after the former president narrowly avoided death in a brazen assassination attempt, Democratic voters and mainstream media voices criticized his use of a gauzy bandage to cover up the bloody wound on his ear. “We still don’t know what is the actual injury to Donald Trump’s ear that’s under that bandage,” said MSNBC host Joy Reid in a selfie video at the time where she suggested he was not struck by a bullet. An FBI investigation of the shooting confirmed unequivocally that Trump was hit by a round from an AR-15 assault rifle. One Democratic voter claimed the shooting “almost looked real” in a man-on-the-street interview while disgraced former news anchor Keith Olbermann went full tilt. “Trump’s dream comes true! He actually gets one of his cultists to try to kill without telling them to kill and thus making himself culpable,” he said in a social media video.

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Former First Lady Melania Trump has reached a certifiable career milestone, proving it is not just her husband and the Trump children who have burnished their own brands following their time in the White House.

The Daily Mail reported that Melania’s latest memoir, titled simply “Melania,” has smashed records and burned up the pre-order lists in advance of its October 1st release date. The tell-all tale includes the story of first meeting her husband, former President Donald Trump, but readers appear to be most interested in learning about the intimate moments of the Slovenia native’s life. “Melania” is currently sitting at the No. 1 position on Amazon’s books category for “Political Leader Biographies” and is No. 2 overall in the larger “Biographies” category. Among all books, “Melania” is positioned at No. 5, an impressive feat for a book that has not yet been released.

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During the promotion of “Melania,” the former first lady talked about how the process of looking back on her life well lived has been “filled with emotional highs and lows.” She told Fox News, “Writing my memoir has been an amazing journey. Each story shaped me into who I am today.” Blurbs previewing the book hints at an expansive review of growing up in Slovenia and chasing a career in modeling to travel the world and eventually attain her American citizenship. One chapter will include “pivotal moments that led her to the world of high fashion in Europe and New York, and the serendipitous meeting with Donald Trump, a chance encounter that forever changed the course of her life.”

Elsewhere, Melania promises to open up about “the joy of motherhood” and share “behind-the-scenes stories from her time in the White House, shedding light on her advocacy work and the causes close to her heart.” Former President Trump, her husband since 2005, is a vocal proponent of his wife’s penmanship. “If you love our former First Lady as much as me, and are ready for the Truth, buy her new book now!” he wrote in a promotional post on Truth Social. Early buyers will have access to special editions of “Melania,” including a signed $150 copy for collectors that runs 256 pages in full color and a half-colored one that will also be signed. Her memoir will be released by Skyhorse Publishing.

Since the Trump family left the White House in January 2021, Melania has left an indelible mark on American culture. Polls from earlier this year show her topping the list of former first ladies in approval ratings, even surpassing First Lady Dr. Jill Biden during the same four-year period. Melania has taken a limited role in President Trump’s third bid for office, instead focusing on helping their son Barron Trump select his college for the fall. She has been a doting mother to the 18-year-old and encouraged him to put his school first while leaving the door open to his own future career in politics. She has taken her own moments off the campaign trail to celebrate other immigrants who achieved citizenship and welcomed heads of state looking forward to the possibility of her family returning for a second Trump administration.

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Six years after being shown the door by NBC News, Megyn Kelly is getting the last laugh.

Kelly made an illustrious career for herself at Fox News between 2004 and 2017, signing off as one of the network’s most popular evening anchors in history. Her departure came at the height of the #MeToo movement when allegations of sexual harassment led to the firing of Fox co-founder Roger Ailes, and she gained prominence for going public about Ailes’s attempts to forcibly kiss her and repeatedly demanding she send nude photos of herself to him. She transitioned to host and correspondent duties at NBC News but was dismissed in 2018 after comments about blackface Halloween costumes. Media reports at the time show she netted a $30 million settlement with the network as a result.

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Since then, Kelly has built her own brand on SiriusXM where “The Megyn Kelly Show” dominates satellite radio’s talk show charts. Semafor reported on the latest ratings which show the 53-year-old better positioned than ever to be one of the most influential voices in conservative news. “According to audience figures highlighted by Kelly’s team for Semafor, Kelly’s show is now not only one of the most listened-to programs on SiriusXM, but it’s also one of the top ten podcasts in the country and its viewership is eclipsing that of some mainstream news outlets on YouTube,” the outlet noted.

The decision to launch her own program came after a lengthy discussion with Ben Shapiro, a conservative kingmaker who launched his own company, The Daily Wire, in 2015. Kelly recounted that Shapiro convinced her that striking out on his own was the best career decision he ever made, and he’s been able to net outsized profits by streamlining his staff. “Kelly boasts that despite the fact that she only has six staffers, she has managed to get numbers that put her in the range of the accounts of legacy media outlets,” Semafor noted. “The Megyn Kelly Show’s YouTube channel, which has 2.3 million subscribers, had 116.8 million views in July — more views than the official channels for NBC News (78 million) CBS News (83 million), Sky News (87 million), the BBC News (72 million) and CNBC (17 million).”

Kelly still offers free partial programming on YouTube where she says her audience welcomes the familiar feel of seeing her on camera. “On-camera is how people are used to getting their news from me, so it likely feels familiar,” she told the outlet. She joked, “I am also half Italian, half Irish, so if you choose to watch the show, you will definitely glean something from the hand gestures and facial expressions that you might not always pick up on from listening alone. With the news what it is these days, sometimes an eye-roll, forehead slap, or pen-throw is absolutely required.”

Separations between superstar journalists and the legacy media have become more pronounced, most notably with the 2023 termination of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. His firing came shortly after a landmark nine-figure settlement with Dominion Voting Systems to settle a lawsuit that Carlson and others used their platforms at the network to defame the company’s voting machines used in the 2020 elections. Carlson rebranded on X, releasing free hour-long shows before launching his own subscription service. He has interviewed former President Donald Trump and leading voices in conservative politics and was even rumored to be on the former president’s shortlist for a vice presidential pick.

At the time, Kelly encouraged her former colleague to “breach the contract” binding him to Fox News, which the network attempted to enforce in a bid to sideline him through the 2024 election. “He should come out. He should talk. He should start a rival news network. He should quit. He should forfeit the money,” Kelly said. “He’ll make more money anyway.”

Media entrepreneurism is not confined to conservatives, either. Don Lemon, the longtime CNN host who was fired earlier this year for a number of crude remarks about Nikki Haley and other Republican women, has since begun to produce his own show on X until he had a falling out with owner Elon Musk following their interview. Mehdi Hasan was let go by MSNBC earlier this year and has launched his own venture as well.

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Changes are coming to ballots in battleground states now that independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has ended his presidential campaign, and that spells bad news for Vice President Kamala Harris.

One such state is Nevada where pre-dropout polls showed the Democrat leading former President Donald Trump by less than one percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. Factor in that Kennedy was pulling 4% of voters polled in early August, and Harris is on track to lose the Sun Belt state in November. Left unmentioned is the frequent tendency by pollsters to underestimate Trump’s level of support by several percentage points, as evidenced in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

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KTNV Las Vegas reported on Wednesday that state election officials have removed RFK from the November ballot, narrowing the choices voters have for president. Kennedy, who endorsed Trump after dropping out last Friday, previously qualified for the ballot and publicly feuded with Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar over allegedly failing to follow state laws when submitting signatures on nomination petitions. A lawsuit filed by two voters, including Aguilar, sought to keep Kennedy off the ballot as well.

Still, Trump and Harris won’t have the race to themselves. Nevada voters will be given options for president by the Libertarian, Independent American and Green parties as well as an option for “None of these Candidates.” The latter has been frequently chosen by far-left activists upset at Harris and President Biden over the administration’s failure to recognize Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” against Palestinians. During last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protestors promised to continue blanking their ballots if Harris did not change course in U.S. support for Israel.

It remains to be seen whether Kennedy’s name will be removed from other battleground states where Harris held a slim lead earlier this month. He is unable to remove his name from ballots in Wisconsin and Michigan, Fox News reported, jeopardizing President Trump’s ability to win states that he narrowly carried in 2016 but lost four years later. Now a member of Trump’s transition team, Kennedy said he is actively reaching out to allies in swing states as he urges his legions of supporters to back Trump. “In about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name, and I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me,” Kennedy told the outlet. “Our polling consistently showed by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues.”

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A former high-level Justice Department official said on Tuesday that he believes Jack Smith unknowingly inserted a “land mine” into his J6 case against former President Donald Trump that could blow up in his face.

Jim Trusty, the former chief of the DOJ’s arm to combat organized crime and gangs, said the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity for “official acts” specifically refers to how the introduction of “immunized” evidence can play a role in tainting a jury’s perception of a defendant. This is especially important considering arguments by lawyers for Trump that Smith and Washington, D.C. federal Judge Tanya Chutkan have already outlined evidence against the former president that should have been inadmissible. Speaking about the high court, Trusty said, “The opinion says not just that immunized information is not proper before the court at trial, but that it contaminates the grand jury process if you include that information in pursuing an indictment.”

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In other words, the Biden prosecutor has already disclosed evidence against President Trump that will make a fair trial impossible. “That’s a huge landmine,” Trusty continued. “He’s trying to get in front of it before Judge Chutkan has to rule on all of these acts to decide which stuff is fair game or which stuff isn’t. But the problem is, if he guesses wrong in one instance – if he says ‘Oh, the president was consulting Mike Pence, the president of the Senate, not the vice president’ as part of this new indictment – then if he gets it wrong once, he’s got the same problem. He’s gotta go back to the grand jury, re-indict for the third time, based on this ruling from the Supreme Court.”

Pressed by the host about how complicated it now is to charge any current or former president with any action they may have taken as a candidate, Trusty said America’s founding document is rather clear on the matter. “The Constitution seems to suggest… that we don’t want to have our presidents hobbled with constant fear or prosecution by state and federal prosecutors,” he said.

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Smith on Tuesday filed a second, revised indictment against President Trump asserting he directed Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election. Specific changes included references to Pence as “President of the Senate” rather than vice president, one of the changes that observers believe Smith made in order to escape the umbrella granting presidents broad immunity for official acts. Any conversations between Trump and Pence while in office would almost certainly be considered so.

Even if Smith found greater success with the Obama-appointed judge a second time around, his changes may be for naught: the case had been effectively frozen since December as President Trump’s appeal for immunity snaked its way through federal courts before the Supreme Court’s ruling in June. The chance of a judgment before the November election is all but dead, and if Trump wins he is expected to order the DOJ to fire Smith and terminate the case.

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One of CNN’s top legal analysts is predicting that the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump is not long for this world.

Elie Honig, no wallflower when it comes to calling out problems with the former president’s many legal entanglements, said Tuesday that he believes the state case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is likely to be scrapped. He based the prediction on precedent handed down earlier this year by the Supreme Court granting presidents sweeping immunity for “official acts” performed while in office. Were that not enough, a slew of missteps by the Georgia prosecutor has already set the trial back by months. President Trump is accused of conspiring with 18 others to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

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President Trump’s attorneys are seeking dismissal of the case on the grounds of “racial animus” towards him by Willis, who is Black. “I think Trump has a decent chance on getting this case thrown out,” Honig predicted. He added it was specifically shrewd by defense lawyers to not target a “conflict of interest” between Willis and Nathan Wade, a former prosecutor in her office who was hired after they engaged in a romantic affair. “The focus here is on alleged prosecutorial misconduct by Fani Willis because, you’ll remember, she went in front of a church outside of court and made public statements blasting the defense lawyers, essentially accusing them of being racist. Donald Trump’s claim here is that tainted the jury pool.”

Willis, a Democrat first elected in 2020, is seeking her second term while managing a case that has drawn international attention, though not for the headlines she might have envisioned. After growing tired of conservative media making sophomoric jokes about her first name, Willis railed against President Trump and his conservative enablers. In June, she spoke at a church outside Atlanta, the Democratic prosecutor told a supportive crowd that “idiots” are targeting her for prosecuting former President Donald Trump and resorting to “schoolyard” tactics like comparing her name to “a woman’s rear.” During a rally in March, Trump mocked her name as “fanny, like your ass,” according to Politico.

“While they’re over there running they mouth, I’m over here paying them no mind. See I’m so tired of hearing these idiots call my name as ‘Fanny’ in a way to attempt to humiliate me. Because like silly school boys, the name reminds them of a woman’s rear,” she said in an assortment of clips obtained by Fox News. That clip was likely seen by jurors, Honig surmised, proving Trump has a case for dismissal. “That’s going to incline them against [Trump], and I think Trump’s got a real leg to stand on there. It wouldn’t at all shock me if the Georgia court of appeals agrees and says ‘prosecutorial misconduct, this case is out,’” he added.

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In response to Willis’s case, a Republican attorney is challenging her for reelection in November, though the far-left district will be an uphill battle. A state lawmaker who recently registered from Democrat to Republican accused Willis of failing to grant her a restraining order against an abusive stalker. Meanwhile, the state legislature and a newly appointed oversight board are contemplating the total removal of Willis from office on the grounds that she violated her oath as a prosecutor.

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Legal observers of former President Donald Trump’s hush money conviction believe there is ample evidence it will be overturned on appeal.

That’s the basis of an argument put forth by David W. Fischer, a Maryland and D.C.-based criminal defense attorney, who posited online that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling gives Trump’s attorneys all the ammo they need to overturn the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The Democratic prosecutor most recently declined to oppose a delay in a sentencing hearing, suggesting he too is aware that the high court’s decision could upend the case Trump has long called politically motivated. According to Fischer, the former president is on solid ground in arguing that his criminal actions were protected “official acts” while in office.

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Fischer explains, “The Supreme Court’s definition of what constitutes an ‘official act’ is broad. Even conduct in the ‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s duties is ‘presumptively immune’ and cannot be used in a trial ‘even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct.’” Bragg, predictably, has opposed that argument in Trump’s request to dismiss the conviction, saying the then-candidate directed his former attorney to make a six-figure payment to an adult film star to quell rumors of a possible extramarital affair. “Bragg’s prosecutors, however, introduced substantial evidence at trial that clearly falls under the rubric of ‘official acts.’ (The alleged crime took place when Donald Trump was president.),” Fischer continued in an op-ed on reporter Julie Kelly’s Substack page.

Among the evidence cited by Bragg is testimony from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and spokeswoman Hope Hicks that he claims shows the former president was “motivated” by a purely “private purpose” in directing the payment. That claim has been rejected by the Supreme Court, Fischer wrote. “Bragg’s main problem is that his prosecutors heavily emphasized official-acts evidence to the jury in the closing argument. In particular, prosecutors used immunized conversations from Hicks and others to bolster Cohen’s credibility, and even had Cohen testify about Trump allegedly offering pardons for nefarious purposes. These conversations are immunized because, as Chief Justice Roberts wrote in Trump v. United States, to allow them to be used against a former President would ‘pose [a danger] of intrusion on the authority and functions of the executive branch.’ To paraphrase the Chief Justice, an ‘official act’ is not a ‘private act’ just because a prosecutor characterizes it as such.”

Another point of contention asserted by Trump’s attorneys is that Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan allowed Bragg to introduce “immunized testimony” by Hicks and Cohen, both of whom had been promised immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against their former boss. It is widely believed that Bragg could not have proved his case without their admissions, but especially that of Cohen, an ex-con who was previously convicted of lying to Congress. “By failing to rule on the admissibility of arguably official-acts evidence before trial, Judge Merchan likely committed reversible error,” Fischer opines.

In the end, President Trump will nonetheless benefit from extensive delays in his trial, he concludes. Others have speculated that Bragg, in declining to oppose a delay in sentencing for President Trump, is acting at the wishes of national Democrats including Vice President Kamala Harris who some argue would rather avoid the spectacle of seeing the Republican sentenced to jail time. The change in timeline means any outcome will almost certainly be delayed until after the November election. “Assuming Trump is re-elected, the New York case will evaporate, either through the appellate or political process,” Fischer concluded.

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Former Secret Service agent turned conservative commentator Dan Bongino tore into his former agency during a recent congressional hearing where he faulted leadership for failing to heed previous warnings that a lack of technology and institutional fortitude was putting the lives of presidents and presidential candidates at risk.

The hearing, convened by a bipartisan committee of U.S. House members probing the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, hopes to shed light on how a deranged 20-year-old gunman was able to position himself on a roof just hundreds of yards away from where Trump was speaking at a July 13th rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Investigations by lawmakers and the FBI have determined a number of shortcomings, some of which involve the Secret Service’s obstinance to adopt modern techniques to combat threatening individuals. “The joke in the Secret Service, which is sadly no longer funny when I was there, and it wasn’t funny then either, is they rely on yesterday’s technology tomorrow,” Bongino stated during a five-minute testimony.

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“Everything from computer systems that waste agents’ times filling out time and attendance records they were doing” and “implementing slings – a technology as old as the wheel – about… five or six years into my time in the Secret Service,” he continued, a delay he called “embarrassing.” In addition, “the weaponry was old. Everything was old. These are things I would’ve talked about sooner if they didn’t create a security crisis.” Another lapse was the lack of a drone at the rally to monitor crowd interactions and scan for suspicious individuals. “Now you’re seeing what happens when you don’t have a drone up at a site you could’ve bought for $39.99 on Amazon,” he quipped.

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Robert Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director who assumed office after the resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, has told the committee that he oversees an agency that is expected to do “more with less.” That isn’t a realistic expectation, Bongino explained. “There isn’t more with less, there is less with less. The Secret Service more-with-less approach only works if you produce more.” Comparing his former agency to a television producer that now sells yesterday’s products for a fraction of the price today, Bongino said the Service “was given more money, and produced less.” Over the past 10 years, the agency’s budget has ballooned from $2.34 billion in 2014 to $3.62 billion in 2024, according to small government advocate Downsizing Government. “A 20-year-old criminal outsmarted them on a drone technology piece of device. You’re telling me that’s more with less? That’s disgusting,” Bongino seethed at lawmakers. “That’s less with more.”

Bongino said a third and final area of agency shortcomings is the prioritization of agents’ missions on the job. “Their agents are talented, smart people. They can figure out how to do protection without running down cheap $20 counterfeit notes at 7-Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

Bongino, a former New York police officer, served in the Secret Service from 1999 to 2011 before running three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress. Since then, he has elevated himself through an online platform where he tackles some of the federal government’s most pressing security issues as well as news of the day from a conservative point of view. After additional footage of the Butler rally emerged online, Bongino asked his audience how Secret Service counter-snipers might have been able to miss an obvious threat to the president’s right. “This is a cell phone camera! This is not a zoom, high, telephoto, freaking lens used to film a Marvel movie! It’s a cellphone! You can see the guy clear as day! How did they miss this?!” Bongino said two weeks after the shooting. He claimed that the agency is asking Americans to “believe the implausible” about just how impossible it was to try and stop Crooks from firing the first round.

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The father of Trump shooter Thomas Crooks is lawyering up as the FBI probe expands into what his family knew and when following the July 13th assassination attempt.

The Daily Mail reports that Matthew Crooks, 53, and his wife have hired powerhouse Pittsburgh law firm Quinn Logue as it prepares to answer pointed questions from the Bureau about how the 20-year-old gunman was able to evade online dragnets searching for individuals suspected of taking future violent action against former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and former presidents and presidential candidates. Matthew and his wife Mary, 53, will benefit from attorneys specializing in criminal defense and civil suits including wrongful death and personal injury. A family member told the outlet, “The FBI still very much has questions about how much they knew and how he [Thomas] slipped through the net.”

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Ongoing investigations into Thomas Crooks took on new urgency last week when Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL) suggested that Thomas Crooks may not have acted alone. The Florida Republican hazarded a guess based on classified briefings he was privy to as part of a bipartisan U.S. House committee aiding the FBI in its investigation. “I don’t understand, and I don’t have any answers yet to help me understand how the [Secret] Service and DHS came out so quickly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I’ll have to check that – and said, he operated alone,” Waltz said last week “How do you know that mere days into your investigation? You can’t tell us his motive, but you could tell us he operated alone? You can’t get into these encrypted overseas accounts, but you can tell us he acted alone? So, I don’t buy that yet.”

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The Harris and Trump campaigns are at loggerheads over the terms of a looming first presidential debate, with a last-minute demand by Vice President Kamala Harris threatening to derail one of the few opportunities Americans will have to judge both candidates side-by-side.

According to Politico, the Democrat’s team is demanding that microphones at both podiums be left on throughout the duration of the two-hour debate, scheduled for September 10th on ABC News. The request amounts to a reversal from the Biden campaign’s insistence that former President Donald Trump’s microphone be muted when the two met on June 27th, a change that Harris spokesman Brian Fallon said Trump’s team should have no problem agreeing to if they trust their candidate.

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“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Fallon, the Harris campaign’s senior adviser for communications, told Politico Playbook in a text message Sunday night. “Our 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. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.”

Anonymous sources close to Harris said she is more than happy to let President Trump try to interrupt her on stage, suggesting she is giddy about the possibility that the former president might lose his cool. “She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” one Harris confidant added. “And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and … I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”

Trump’s senior advisor Jason Miller poured cold water on the notion that the Republican would agree to Harris’s bait-and-switch tactics, saying Trump will arrive ready to debate whether she is there or not. “Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules,” Miller responded. “If Kamala Harris isn’t smart enough to repeat the messaging points her handlers want her to memorize, that’s their problem. This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump.”

The Harris campaign has been coy about the debate, saying the ground rules were agreed to by the campaign of President Joe Biden, not hers. They also cite Trump’s attempt shift the debate from ABC, where he is suing George Stephanopoulos, to friendlier grounds at Fox News on September 4th with a “full arena audience.” Further, they add, Trump insisted that microphones be left on during the 2020 debate, with then-campaign manager Bill Stepien writing to the Presidential Debates Commission, “It is completely unacceptable for anyone to wield such power. … This is reminiscent of the first debate in 2016, when the President’s microphone was oscillated, and it is not acceptable.”

Fallon, the Harris spokesman, pushed back against the accusation that Harris was attempting to shift the debate to a seated format with notes. “All three parties (Trump, Harris and ABC) have agreed to standing and no notes, and we never sought otherwise,” he said. Other sources told the outlet that Harris’s team only accepted the ABC debate with the understanding that the rules themselves would remain under negotiation.

A second debate offer from NBC News, which would take place September 25th, has already been agreed to by Trump but not Harris. The vice president’s campaign said she would consider a second presidential debate in October. Meanwhile, vice presidential candidates Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will face off on October 1st on CBS News. “Voters deserve to see the candidates for the highest office in the land share their competing visions for our future,” Harris’ communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement to Fox News. “The more they play games, the more insecure and unserious Trump and Vance reveal themselves to be to the American people. Those games end now.”

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