In a standoff preceding convicted felon former President Trump’s suddenly renewed threats to bitch out of the September 10th debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC News, Politico Playbook reports the two campaigns are at an impasse in negotiations over the rules of the debate, specifically the muting of the candidate’s microphone during the other’s turn to speak as had been agreed to earlier this year when Joe Biden was still running and the dates were set.

Surprisingly, it’s not Trump’s team that want that rule tossed, but Harris’s. “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,” Harris campaign comms adviser Brian Fallon told Playbook. “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.”

The whole point is to try to create a situation in which Trump melts down like he did during the first debate against Biden in 2020. “She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her. 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,” said a Harris campaign source.

Milkshake abortion guy Jason Miller said Trump’s campaign are being firm on sticking to the same setup as the CNN debate (if Trump actually shows up). “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 told Playbook, whom noted Trump had been attempting to change the rules himself and pushing Harris into a Fox News face-off with a live audience.

And that Miller is almost certainly full of shit when claiming that Harris wanted to make this a seated debate with notes. “All three parties (Trump, Harris and ABC) have agreed to standing and no notes, and we never sought otherwise,” said Fallon. Another sourced laughed about the seating.

Certainly can’t rule out that this is the fat fuck’s real reason for trying to back out again as the Jon Carl interview with Tom Cotton seems to be pretty thin gruel, even for the Orange Diva, and Sunday night’s threat seems like him trying to get out in front of this reporting on Harris boxing him in.

Then again Trump also bitched about ABC’s “so-called Panel of Trump Haters,” and further down in their newsletter Playbook cites Politico columnist Jonathan Martin’s bit on Sunday’s edition of This Week where he said “Let’s be brutally honest: If you took a survey of the Republican [Conference] on Capitol Hill and said, ‘Would you prefer Trump to play golf for the rest of the campaign and let his campaign drive the message, or have Donald Trump do events?’ We all know which they’d prefer.”

We all know Trump prefers to not have to hear that kind of brutal honesty about his lowly underlings.