Harris and Trump Squabble Over Debate Rules as ABC Matchup Looms

At the weigh-in before a big bout, prizefighters often taunt their opponents in an effort to try to psych them out.

So it goes with the presidential pugilists set to meet next month in the city of Rocky Balboa.

The Harris and Trump campaigns squabbled on Monday over the ground rules of their coming ABC News debate in Philadelphia, with each side trying to score political points off the other. And within hours, the Trump campaign found its argument undermined by an unlikely foil: Mr. Trump himself.

The tussle began on Sunday when former President Donald J. Trump blasted ABC in a social media post, suggesting that the network’s anchors and executives were biased against him and threatening, not for the first time, to pull out of the event. “I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Mr. Trump wrote.

Then, on Monday, Ms. Harris’s campaign went public with an effort to change one of the agreed-upon conditions for the debate: that each candidate’s microphone be muted when it isn’t their turn to speak.

“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,” Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, told Politico.

He added a dig for good measure: “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.”