Anika Begay
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is seeking to renegotiate the terms of a debate he previously agreed to, and Vice President Kamala Harris will soon announce her running mate.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Republican nominee Donald Trump is trying to change the terms of a presidential debate that had been scheduled for next month. In the spring, Trump and President Biden agreed to hold their second televised debate on ABC News on Sept. 10. But after Biden dropped out of the race last month, Trump did not commit to debating with Vice President Kamala Harris. Then on Friday night, he said he would debate Harris but on Fox News, and that it would be about a week early. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now to explain. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So what is Trump’s explanation for this change?
LIASSON: Trump says this is not a change. The previous agreement was that Joe Biden was the nominee. Now that Harris is the nominee, she doesn’t have to honor her previous commitment. But this has given the Harris campaign an opportunity to paint Trump as scared and weak. Harris’ new strategist, David Plouffe, an Obama veteran, says Trump is a coward. He said maybe Trump just wants to argue with someone his own age.
RASCOE: OK, so from the moment Trump announced this debate on Fox News, he made it seem like it was a done deal, right? Like, people thought maybe it was going to happen. But then it turns out that Vice President Harris had not agreed to it at all.
LIASSON: Not only did she not accept, but it was a complete surprise to the Harris campaign. Trump doubled down, saying, I’ll see her on September 4th, or I won’t see her at all, which is a far cry from, I’ll debate the Democratic opponent anywhere, anytime. Now, the Harris campaign says she’s happy to debate more, but she’s still planning to honor her original commitment to appear on ABC on September 10th, and maybe have the stage all to herself.
RASCOE: Well, it looks like Trump could be overshadowed again very soon. Harris is expected to announce her pick for vice president any day now, certainly before Tuesday because that’s when she says she’ll start campaigning with him. And it’s going to be a him, right, Mara?
LIASSON: It’s going to be a he. He only has a few choices. They’re all men. They’re all white. They’re all politically moderate. You know, there are a lot of strategies for picking a vice president. Some are picked to help win key states or maybe to carry a particular constituency like Mike — Mike Pence did for Donald Trump in 2016 when he carried a lot of evangelical voters.
Sometimes it’s to reinforce a message, as Al Gore did for Bill Clinton, two young moderates from border states, or as J.D. Vance was supposed to do for Donald Trump, doubling down on the MAGA movement. But Harris’s advisers say one of her most important criteria is that she wants to pick someone to govern with.
RASCOE: Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is making a lot of noise. Tell us a little bit about him, because most people might not know much about him.
LIASSON: Right, he’s extremely popular in Pennsylvania. He won the statewide vote there by a wide margin. Pennsylvania is an extremely important and hotly contested state. Democrats need to win it. Josh Shapiro is Jewish, as is Harris’ husband. Some Democrats worry about that. He even wrote an op-ed in his college newspaper 30 years ago. And, of course, everything he said and did is now under scrutiny. But he said in that op-ed that the Palestinians were too militant to establish a peaceful homeland. He now says he wrote that when he was 20, and he now firmly believes in a two-state solution.
RASCOE: And what about the other four vice presidential candidates, can you examine them in the time we have left?
LIASSON: Yeah. Well, the other two – the two main contenders are Mark Kelly and Tim Walz. Kelly is the senator from Arizona, another major swing state. He’s a former astronaut and naval aviator. His wife is former U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head in an assassination attempt in 2011 and suffered a serious brain injury. Kelly is a gun owner. He’s also pro-gun control. He represents a border state. He’s very knowledgeable about immigration, which is one of Harris’ biggest vulnerabilities.
And then there’s Tim Walz. He’s the governor of Minnesota, not a swing state. But he’s a Midwestern guy who Democrats think could help them protect the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And he recently captured Democrats’ hearts and minds when he started this meme of calling Trump and Republicans weird. As one Democrat told me about Walz, they said he looked like Archie Bunker, and they meant it as a political asset.
RASCOE: Thank you so much for coming, NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
LIASSON: You’re welcome.
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