Kamala Harris-Donald Trump Debate Will Feature Muted Mics And No Audience, ABC News Says

ABC News unveiled the rules for Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, with microphones muted on a candidate when it is not their turn to speak.

The network’s announcement signals a resolution to a long standoff between the Harris and Trump campaigns, with the former wanting mics to remain on and the latter wanting them muted.

The 90-minute debate, to be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and air live at 9pm ET, also will feature no audience. The event will have two commercial breaks, and will be available for simulcast to other networks.

David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the event, which will also stream live on Hulu, Disney+ and ABC News Live.

Other rules: There will be no opening statements, and candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water. Candidates will have two minutes to answer questions, two minutes for rebuttals and one minute for follow ups. There will be no opening statements. Campaign staff will not be allowed to interact with candidates during commercial breaks.

A coin toss was held to determine the podium placement and the order of closing statements. Trump won the coin toss and chose to offer the closing statement, the network said, and Harris chose stage left for her podium placement.

In addition to the live network broadcast, the debate also will be streamed on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. But a chunk of the audience may not be able to access the debate if they subscribe to DirecTV. Disney-owned channels have been blacked out from the satellite operator due to a carriage dispute which started over the weekend.

In recent weeks, the Harris campaign had insisted on open mics throughout the debate, on the idea that Trump’s interruptions would prove damaging to his overall performance. The Trump campaign insisted on the muted mics, citing rules agreed to last spring when Joe Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump himself had told reporters that he’d rather have the mics on, diverging from his staff.

There was widespread expectation that the standoff between the campaigns would be resolved. Trump has been bashing the network as biased in recent weeks, though, repeating a pattern of attacking debate hosts and laying the groundwork for blame should he not have a good night.

It’s unclear if this will be the first and only debate between Trump and Harris, who have not actually met each other in person. The Harris campaign had said that it was open to another debate some time in October, with NBC News said to be the host network.

A vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) is scheduled for Oct. 1. CBS News will host that event, to be held in New York.

This is the first cycle since 1984 where the debates have not been hosted by a special bipartisan commission set up to establish format and rules for the general election events. The Trump and Biden campaigns each were critical of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and instead moved to work directly with individual networks. CNN hosted the first debate of the cycle on June 27, an event that ended disastrously for Biden, who stepped aside three weeks later.