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Trump Says He Could Be ‘A Little Different’ In Debate With Harris

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Former President Donald Trump revealed during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday that if he believed the debate moderators at ABC were not being fair during his upcoming on-stage meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris next week, he could be “a little bit different” than he was in his contest with President Joe Biden.

During his June debate with the current commander-in-chief, Trump’s demeanor was calm, he did not try to interrupt or talk over Biden, and he abided by the debate rules of sticking to a time limit. Also, he agreed that the mics would be muted when it was not the other candidate’s turn to talk, and he tended to stay on-topic with his responses.

Harris’ campaign had attempted for weeks to change the rules that Trump and Biden had agreed upon previously when he was still running for the Sept. 10 debate — her team wanted the mics unmuted, believing that she could goad Trump into unhinged responses that would make him appear much worse to the audience.

In his Hannity interview, Trump was light on details but hinted that he could behave “a little bit different” if the moderators at ABC were too deferential to Harris and hostile to him, unlike at CNN in June when moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash appeared exceedingly fair to both candidates.

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“I want to ask you one final question. In five nights, you’ll be on the stage, not with me, but with Kamala Harris,” Hannity said as his interview was wrapping up. “Now, if I’m going to make a prediction, I think she’s going to try and annoy, agitate, irritate, frustrate, and piss you off, to use a phrase. And are you aware of how she debates and probably every name in the book she can call you without giving away your tactic?”

“Yeah, you don’t want to do that, but you know, when I had Biden, you and I had the same discussion. And I let him talk,” Trump responded as the audience applauded. “I’m going to let her talk because, you know, you’ve all seen it. There are those that say that Biden is smarter than she is, okay? And if that’s the case, we have a problem.”

“But, you know, debating is an interesting thing. I’ve been in many debates. I think I’ve probably won because of debating, maybe. You know, we had a lot of debates with the Republicans,” Trump continued. “Then we had Crooked Hillary. We had a lot of different people. We had a debate, and we had some great debates. You do remember the Rosie O’Donnell debate. Remember Rosie O’Donnell? That’s a real – she’s a real great one.”

“But debate is interesting. You really – you can go in with all the strategy you want, but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place. I’ve seen it. You go in there, and you have a strategy,” Trump continued, adding: “[Former heavyweight boxing champ] Mike Tyson made the statement, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Trump noted further:

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So I could tell Sean exactly what I’m going to do, but, you know, things change. It depends a lot on ABC. Will they be fair or not? If they’re not going to be fair, I’m going to be a little bit different than if they are.

I hope they’re going to be fair. We’re putting a lot of reliance on a network which is known for being extremely hostile to the people in this room and to, I think, 75, 80 percent of the country, if you want to really know the truth.

But, Sean, all I can say is this. You know, I’ve seen Mitt Romney go and lock himself into a log cabin for four or five weeks and then he came out and he was horrible in the debate.

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