Morning Report — Trump, Harris debate a debate (and more)

The debate former President Trump prefers is with sympathetic voters, not necessarily a televised faceoff with Vice President Harris, which is scheduledin two weeks.

“We’ll see,” he said Sunday while suggesting he may pull out of a presidential debate Sept. 10, hosted by ABC News.

As he has in the past, the former president publicly flirted with boycotting the moderated practice, a feature of televised presidential contests for more than 60 years. Harris is not the 2024 contender Trump originally envisioned when he agreed to next month’s format, and he’s still adjusting to the fact that President Biden’s decision to leave the race followed their July debate. 

Harris has a psychological strategy.

“She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” an anonymous source told Playbook. 

The two candidates this week are in and out of swing states, searching for the Electoral College math they need in order to win Nov. 5. They spar over big things (policy, global leadership, the Constitution) and tactics, such as debate logistics.

Democrats are eager to cast Trump as rattled by Harris’s mini surge in some polls. They insist Trump is hesitant to take her on. Nevertheless, the former president and his surrogates have begun to ask voters a question about Harris, who has been in her role since 2021: What has she delivered for you lately?

The vice president and her team are trying to craft a debate in which the candidates’ microphones are open from start to finish. The ground rules set with ABC when Biden was the Democratic candidate called for a muted mic when it was not a candidate’s turn to speak.

The Hill’s Niall Stanage, writing with 10 weeks left in the race, boils Harris’s challenges down to a handful. No. 1 on his list? A debate with Trump.  

On Monday, the former president sought to tether Harris to the chaotic and deadly U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, ordered by Biden in August 2021. 

“When I take office, we’ll ask for the resignations of every single official … who touched the Afghanistan calamity to be on my desk at noon on Inauguration Day,” Trump told an applauding National Guard Association audience. 

“You know, you have to fire people. You’ve got to fire them, like on ‘The Apprentice,’ he added, his voice swelling to a growl (The Associated Press video).

Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery to pay his respects with a wreath and to showcase his condemnations of the administration’s decision making. Biden, from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., issued a statement about the Kabul suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members. Harris issued a written statement from Washington. 

The U.S. exit from Afghanistan began Biden’s political slide, according to polling. The president, however, continues to defend his decision to end America’s “forever war.”

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LEADING THE DAY

CAMPAIGNS & POLITICS

HARRIS’S ASCENSION to the top of the Democratic ticket has tilted the races for the White House and Congress in the direction of Democrats, though all three fights will be close, according to Decision Desk HQ/The Hill’s updated election forecast. Harris has a 55 percent chance of defeating Trump and winning the White House, a sharp turn up from Biden’s 44 percent chance of winning when he left the race and endorsed Harris on July 21. Democrats also have better chances of winning the House and Senate with Harris as their standard-bearer, though they are the underdogs in both cases.

Still, “neither campaign can go to sleep easy tonight thinking they’re ahead or they’ve got the advantage,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ.

A new House majority in 2025? Democrats say they’re increasingly bullish about their chances.

DUELING MONDAY EVENTS focused on the assassination attempt against Trump highlighted challenges facing the official House task force in keeping the effort bipartisan and apolitical. In its first in-person and public official action, members of the task force toured the Butler, Pa., Farm Show site where Trump’s July 13 rally and shooting took place, stressing the importance of carefully assessing the facts from a neutral perspective.

“There’s not one person on this conference that’s identifying as just a Republican or a Democrat. We’re identifying as members of Congress on a task force with a task to restore the faith and trust and confidence the American people have to have in our system,” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), the chair of the task force who represents Butler, said after the tour. But back in Washington, D.C., a group of vocal House Republicans — including some who were disappointed to not be included in the official task force — held a forum at the Heritage Foundation on the assassination attempt that raised questions about whether political motivations led to security failures surrounding the July 13 rally.

In Texas, a federal judge on Monday paused a Biden administration program that eased legalization for undocumented spouses of Americans who have been living in the country for more than a decade. “The claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date,” wrote Judge J. Campbell Barker, who was appointed by Trump, siding with 16 Republican states who sued (The New York Times).

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ZOOM IN

BUSINESS

Why did France arrest the CEO of messaging app Telegram? President Emmanuel Macron said the arrest of Pavel Durov is not political, but judicial — and part of an investigation into crimes related to child pornography, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on the platform. Nevertheless, Russia is unhappy (Reuters).  

“The arrest of the Telegram president on French territory took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation,” Macron wrote. “This is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to decide.”

Canada will impose new tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, aluminum and steel, lining up behind Western allies to take steps to protect domestic manufacturers. The announcement comes after national security adviser Jake Sullivan stopped in Canada en route to China, where he spoke with officials about NATO funding and EV tariffs. Asked if Canada should follow the U.S. instituting tariffs, Sullivan said he’d like to see the countries aligned on the issue (Bloomberg News and CBC).

“Canada will make its own determination, but the U.S. does believe that a united front — a coordinated approach on these issues — benefits all of us,” he told reporters.

Axios: IBM is the latest U.S. tech giant to pull out of China as it reportedly plans to move its R&D operations to other overseas facilities.

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ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

IN THE MIDDLE EAST, Israel and the whole region braced for Hezbollah to strike back after an Israeli missile killed the group’s top commander in Beirut. After a dramatic but short-lived exchange of missiles and rockets early Sunday across the border with Lebanon, many have dared to ask if that’s the extent of the attacks. The Washington Post reports that officials and analysts mostly believe that the potentially disastrous attacks were, instead, a face-saving moment — allowing each side to step back from the edge of a wider conflict. 

Tensions are still high between Israel and Iran, which said Monday that Hezbollah’s attacks showed Israel had lost its power to deter and that the region’s strategic balance had shifted against it. Washington, meanwhile, expressed continued hope for efforts to secure a cease-fire in Gaza.

“The exchange of fire alongside the Israeli-Lebanese border … and the poststrike messages from both Israel and Hezbollah seemingly indicate neither is interested in an all-out war,” Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and negotiator, told NBC News.

CEASE-FIRE TALKS in Cairo made progress over the weekend, CNN reports, as mediators discussed “final details” of a potential agreement. The progress does not guarantee a final agreement anytime soon, but negotiators in Egypt are now discussing the “nuts and bolts” of a deal, according to a U.S. official. 

MEXICAN JUDGES are raising alarms in the United States over President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed judicial reform, which opponents see as a death knell for Mexican democracy. The Hill’s Rafael Bernal reports the judges are mounting a last-ditch effort to shine an international spotlight on the reform package, counting on U.S. economic interests to attract attention to a concern they fear will be overshadowed by a litany of domestic and international issues.

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THE CLOSER

And finally … 🪂 “Just keep going.” In the United Kingdom, Manette Baillie celebrated her 102nd birthday in style — by becoming the oldest person in Britain to skydive. 

It’s not the first feat she’s accomplished on a birthday; when Baillie turned 100, she drove around Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix, in a Ferrari at 130 mph. Prior to her jump from an airplane, she told the BBC she had “no idea” where she got her thrill-seeking attitude.

“I’ve been so lucky to be fit and well that I’ve got to do something with it, that’s really the back of it,” she said. “I can’t just waste it, other people are crippled with arthritis and I’m not.”

Baillie, who organizes her birthday adventures so she can raise money for charity, said Sunday’s sky-high excursion would likely be her final fundraising challenge.

“I shall be taking up knitting,” she joked.

Watch video of Baillie’s historic jump HERE.

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