Trump’s Team Overruled Him on Debate Rules Out of Sheer Desperation

Donald Trump’s campaign team apparently does not want his microphone on when it isn’t his turn to speak in the next presidential debate.

Brian Fallon, a senior adviser to the Kamala Harris campaign, posted on X Thursday afternoon that Trump’s staff asked ABC News, which will be hosting the first presidential debate on September 10, to ignore Trump’s comments and keep the microphones off when it’s not his turn to speak. If ABC doesn’t enforce muted mics as a debate rule, the Trump team will reportedly pull out of the debate, Fallon said.

“We find the Trump’s team’s stance to be weak, and remain in discussions with ABC on the final rules,” Fallon’s post said.

Trump said earlier this week that he was fine with debate microphones being on, but added that the rules he agreed to were the same as his first debate in June against President Biden, where the mics were muted. Earlier reporting also noted that Trump’s team was the one to push for muted mics again this time around. If true, Trump’s staff might be trying to save the Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon from himself.

Unlike his debate with Biden, Trump will be verbally sparring with a former prosecutor almost 20 years younger than him. At the last debate, Trump appeared sharper and more alert than Biden, raising concerns about the president’s ability to win reelection and ultimately resulting in his withdrawal from the race. Biden’s campaign pushed for muted microphones at the time, probably hoping to give Biden an advantage.

Harris’s campaign doesn’t see such a need, and on Wednesday her co–campaign manager Mitch Landrieu mocked Trump, saying that his team “wants to shut him up.” Whether microphones are on or off, the September 10 debate promises to be lively and much different from the one in June, with Trump desperate for a victory against Harris as his campaign struggles to land any attacks against her or her running mate Tim Walz. But, the more he talks, the weirder he may come across on national television.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, but he’s still going to be on the ballot in North Carolina, hurting Trump’s prospects in the state.

The state’s board of elections voted 3–2 on Thursday to keep Kennedy on the ballot, saying that it would be too difficult to remove his name, as many ballots have already been printed. The board’s executive director, Karen Brinson, said North Carolina has already printed close to 1.73 million ballots in over 60 counties, with special ballots being prepared for overseas military members and the disabled.

Kennedy had asked the state to remove him from the ballot, but the board’s Democratic majority thought otherwise, overruling the two Republican board members. Last week, Kennedy said he was seeking to withdraw his name from battleground state ballots while staying on in other states, hoping to divert votes away from Harris and boost Trump.

North Carolina is only the latest battleground state that won’t drop Kennedy from their ballots. Election officials in Michigan and Wisconsin announced Tuesday that their states won’t remove him. According to polling averages from The Hill, Kennedy’s presence on both Wisconsin and Michigan’s ballots gives a slight boost to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

The quixotic ex-candidate is already part of Trump’s presidential transition team, helping to craft policy and select staff members should the Republican presidential nominee win in November. The move has drawn the ire of at least one major GOP donor in Eric Levine, who described Kennedy as “an anti-vax kook who sees conspiracies behind every tree and under every bed.”

Trump supporters, including Kennedy, are not likely to welcome the news that he could still pull votes away from Trump. They also might not think highly of whatever deal Kennedy may have struck with Trump in exchange for his endorsement. Much like they are stuck with Trump and J.D. Vance, the GOP is now stuck with Kennedy to their possible peril.

Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita has decided to take the team on a death spiral against America’s military, calling the office of the Army secretary a bunch of “hacks.”

“Reposting this hoping to trigger the hacks at @SecArmy,” LaCivita wrote Thursday afternoon, resharing a campaign video of Donald Trump at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week.

Trump’s decision Tuesday to film at the military graveyard—and in Section 60, where recent military casualties are buried—violated federal law, which prohibits politically related activities in the cemetery such as taking photos and videos in support of a political campaign. The criminal behavior reportedly sparked a verbal and physical fight between Trump’s surrogates and an Arlington National Cemetery official who attempted to rein in the campaign’s videotaping.

In a rare statement, the Army sided with the cemetery official on Thursday morning, writing that the military organization believed the official had been “abruptly pushed aside” and “unfairly attacked” by Trump staffers.

“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” an Army spokesperson said.

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” they continued. “ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

The Trump campaign claimed that they had been given permission to videotape by the families of fallen service members, but unfortunately for Trump, that doesn’t change federal law.

LaCivita’s words are unlikely to help Trump’s efforts to attract more veterans to his side. The Republican presidential nominee’s anti-military rhetoric has been a point of contention with current and former service members in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the reputed Vietnam-era draft dodger came under fire for arguing that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. That comment struck a nerve with veterans, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

Elon Musk’s “free speech” project is once again under fire—this time for flagging an article critical of Donald Trump.

On Thursday, X users and NPR editors noticed that a link to an NPR story about Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery mishap was being marked as spam on the platform.

When users clicked on the article link, they received an alert reading: “Warning: this link may be unsafe,” followed by the URL to the webpage. This type of warning is typically displayed when the URL leads the user to spam or another kind of malicious link, not a factual news report.

The issue now appears to be resolved, but there doesn’t seem to be any official explanation from X for the warning.

Steve Inskeep, host of Morning Edition and Up First on NPR, flagged the issue, writing: “As of 12:45 p.m. ET, X has blocked this NPR story. Other NPR stories are not blocked, so I’m assuming a good faith mistake.” 

That assumption may be a bit too generous. Recently, X has come under fire for limiting access to several political accounts such as KamalaHQ, the official rapid response page for Harris’s campaign, the Uncommitted movement, and the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

This also is not the first feud between Elon Musk and NPR. In 2023, Musk labeled the new organization “state-affiliated media,” a label usually reserved for true propaganda outlets in countries like Russia and China. In response, the outlet formally left the platform. 

Meanwhile, Musk continues to back Trump every way he can, including using X to get him greater attention. Perhaps that support may include more overt censorship going forward.

J.D. Vance was greeted by loud boos during an address to the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston on Thursday—and that was only the beginning of an incredibly rough speech for Donald Trump’s running mate.

“Thank you guys—” Vance said as he grabbed the mic to speak, only to be interrupted by loud booing from the audience.

“Semper fi, guys,” Vance said, seeming to signpost his background as a Marine to get the hecklers to stop. “Sounds like we’ve got some fans and some haters, that’s OK,” he joked.

“Listen to what I have to say here, and I’ll make my pitch,” he said.

Vance asked his audience, which had voted to endorse Joe Biden in 2019, to “ignore the campaign rhetoric and look at the record,” before predictably diving into campaign rhetoric blaming undocumented immigrants for unsupported claims about increased crime and drug use.

Vance touted projections of how much undocumented immigrants were costing different cities around the country, referring to New York, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C., but didn’t conjure a single number about Boston, where the speech was actually taking place.

“We shouldn’t be forced to spend billions of dollars on people who aren’t even supposed to be here. We should be spending that money on schools, police and fire departments, and our citizens, and under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, we will,” Vance said. The Ohio senator’s imagining of a world where by funding public institutions, you can somehow police the citizenship of those who receive their benefits, was met by a mix of claps and boos.

If Vance thought his earlier plea would be enough to settle the disruptions, he had another think coming.

“Now, President Trump and I are proud to be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history, and I want to talk about why we’re fighting for working people,” Vance said, once again interrupted by loud booing from actual working people.

As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz pointed out to the IAFF the day before, during a much friendlier reception, Trump had blocked overtime benefits, opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage, and proposed slashing federal fire service budgets. Walz warned that under Project 2025, Trump would continue to weaken unions.

On stage, Vance’s declaration that he was a “populist, and proud of it,” was again met by some claps and boos. Vance’s cold reception didn’t prevent him from attempting jokes, although he brutally fumbled their delivery in the face of an indifferent crowd.

Vance explained that Donald Trump is a “different kind of Republican, and under his leadership, the Republican Party is the party of the American worker,” and asked his audience to take the Republican National Convention as an example.

“It says a lot who each party chose to put up on that stage. At the Republican convention we were featuring everyday American workers—and of course, we had Hulk Hogan. And while it’s tempting, and I’m sure it would make some big headlines, don’t worry any-ev-everybody, I’m not going to try to take off my shirt here—” he said, stumbling slightly, to zero crowd response.

His rough way into a complaint that the Democrats had only invited celebrities fell flat, highlighting his awkward public speaking style and inability to depart from a prepared speech.

As Vance left the stage, he was met once again by deafening jeers mixed into some applause.

Vance’s team is already attempting to spin his dismal reception, lauding his bravery for stepping into hostile territory. Vance’s communications director William Martin posted his own video of the event, showing the “massive round of applause” for Vance as he walked on the stage, but stopped short of showing the booing that would begin once he opened his mouth.