What a day: Tragic Mic

IS THIS THING ON?

Donald Trump is threatening to withdraw his participation in the next presidential debate because of disputes within his campaign team over the rules. His own team seems nervous about what he might say if his microphone remains on.

• Disgraced former President Donald Trump warned that he could skip the debate on 10 September, the only one both campaigns have currently agreed to, in a post on Truth Social on Sunday night. “I ask why would I do the debate against Kamala Harris on this network?” he wrote, referring to ABC, which he accused of bias. On Monday, the true nature of the dispute between the two camps emerged – and it all revolves around hot mics. Vice President Kamala Harris wants the microphones to remain on throughout the debate so the two candidates can engage with each other on stage. Trump's team wants them turned off between answers, as was the case during Trump's debate with President Biden on CNN in July.

• “We have told ABC and other networks planning to air a potential debate in October that we believe both candidates' microphones should be on throughout the broadcast,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Harris campaign. “Our understanding is that Trump's advisers prefer the silent microphone because they don't believe their candidate can act presidentially for 90 minutes alone.”

• Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller countered: “ABC offered the exact same debate rules that CNN offered and we accepted them.” But then Trump (of course) went against his own team's message by publicly insisting that he would rather have the microphones on. “I don't care,” Trump said. “I probably would rather have them on. But the agreement was that it would be the same as last time.”

The implication here, of course, is that Trump’s own people think their best chance of defeating Harris in a debate is is to stop the guy from talking big and saying something regrettable.

• Trump's team is desperately trying to find a way to stop Harris' rising poll ratings. Trump's own campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio, warned at the weekend that Harris will likely extend her lead over Trump after the Democratic convention, which Trump has now described as an “extended honeymoon” for Harris. Trump is planning more appearances in swing states, although even some of his supporters are openly questioning whether these appearances will work as well as they once did.

• What this looming debate debacle shows is that Trump has no coherent plan to turn the campaign around at the moment. After all, limiting how much voters can hear from their candidate is a defensive strategy to limit fallout, not an offensive plan designed to overtake a rising opponent. A debate remains the defining moment of the final two months to change the narrative. Yet Trump's team seems more concerned about how voters will react to hearing more from their candidate in prime time than about seizing the opportunity.

If Biden's withdrawal in July taught us anything, it's that debates actually matter. Perhaps one can hardly blame Trump’s people for being worried about the next

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Fighting between Israel and Lebanon The militant Hezbollah group resumed operations on Monday after a massive exchange of blows over the weekend. The escalating conflict is raising fears of a possible all-out war on Israel's northern border.

The billionaire CEO of encryption technology Pavel Durov, 39, who works for messaging app Telegram, was arrested in France over the weekend in what French police described as a wide-ranging investigation into child pornography, drug trafficking, fraud and other criminal activity on the platform. Interesting how any kind of public accountability for tech gazillionaires always seems to take them by surprise.

Special investigator Jack Smith demanded an appeals court to reinstate the indictment against Donald Trump for secret documents that was dismissed by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon last month. Again, the fact that a judge can preside over a case against the person who appointed him remains insane.

Jill Stein, candidate of the Green Party, will be on the ballot in Wisconsin for the 2024 presidential election after the state Supreme Court rejected a Democratic lawsuit to bar her from the ballot. Hey, Jill, if you're serious about the issues in your platform and want to make real change, maybe you should do more than run a vanity campaign every four years. Just a thought!

Amazon is preparing to launch a new AI-powered Version of his personal voice assistant Alexawhich will also create personalized news briefings, just weeks before the November election. Hard to see how that could go wrong after AI bots previously told people to spread glue on their pizza and eat stones.

Heat-related deaths have increased by 117 percent in the last 25 yearsAccording to new data from the US government, climate change has claimed 21,500 lives since 1999 and is just another sign of the devastating damage climate change is already causing. But don't worry, Republicans think we just aren't ignoring it hard enough.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was recently hospitalized with a case of West Nile virus, the most common cause of mosquito-borne disease in the United States. The 83-year-old former government scientist is expected to make a full recovery

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