Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that former President Trump is scared to debate Vice President Harris.
“He’s afraid to even debate Kamala Harris. He already said he wouldn’t debate, you know?” Schumer said in an interview with NBC News. “She’s a strong Black woman, Donald Trump may not wanna say that, but it’s true and everyone knows it’s true. He’s afraid to debate her.”
Schumer joined a number of Democrats who have made similar comments about Trump, a pattern that suggests Democrats hope to convince the former president not to walk away from the debate scheduled for September.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg one week ago said Trump was showing weakness in giving signs he wanted to get out of the planned debate.
Trump said Monday he most likely will end up debating the vice president, who is now her party’s likely presidential nominee, before the general election. However, his campaign said last week it wouldn’t come to an agreement on a general election debate featuring Harris “until Democrats formally decide on their nominee.”
Trump has also suggested the network for the Sept. 10 debate should be changed from ABC to Fox.
Schumer’s comments follow Trump questioning Harris’ ethnic and racial identity earlier this week in an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention.
“She was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said.
In his interview with NBC News, Schumer said Democrats “have to make it clear to the American people how ludicrous, how unhinged this … Trump-Vance ticket is, how [there will] be total chaos in America if they get elected.”
Harris became the likely Democratic presidential nominee following weeks of turmoil in her party over whether President Biden should be replaced at the top of the ticket. That chaos mostly began following a rough presidential debate performance by Biden against Trump in late June.
According to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s average of national polls, Trump is leading Harris by 1.1 points, with the vice president garnering 46.5 percent to the former president’s 47.6 percent.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign.