Former President Donald Trump has “met his match” running against Vice President Kamala Harris, according to one of his former White House aides.
Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday evening, Alyssa Farah Griffin weighed in on the clash between Trump and Harris’ campaigns over the rules being changed for the ABC News-hosted debate on September 10. The vice president’s team has repeatedly accused Trump of being afraid of facing Harris on the debate stage after he momentarily backed out of the previously agreed-upon event. Trump has since recommitted to the ABC debate but continues to bash the network, including suggesting to his Truth Social on Sunday that he may no longer want to participate.
Harris’ team continued their attacks against Trump on social media Monday, including posting a video to X, formerly Twitter, of a compilation of clips where the former president was asked about debating the vice president. The video included the sound of a chicken clucking in the background, and Harris’ campaign account, “Kamala HQ,” wrote along with the post, “You scared @realdonaldtrump?”
“Donald Trump’s never run against a campaign like this,” said Griffin, who served as the White House director of strategic communications under Trump’s administration in 2020. “In fact, his team was always the one that was a lot quicker on social media. They would kind of play into the meme wars and have fast responses. And he’s kind of met his match in this.”
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“To be fair to Trump…in 2016 he went against a very formidable foe with [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton, and he performed well in those debates and obviously won,” Griffin continued. “But this is different.”
Griffin highlighted that unlike as a first-time candidate in 2016, he now has a “record” to answer for—namely, his actions related to the riot on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and his plethora of legal challenges, including being found guilty on 34 felony counts related to hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
“There are things he’s going to have to answer for in this debate that are so fundamentally different than 2016 when he had no record, and he can kind of just give a vision and an idea of what he wanted,” Griffin said. “And I think he’s afraid of that.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaigns via email for additional comment.
Harris’ team is pushing for candidates’ mics to not be muted while their opponent is talking, a change from the CNN-hosted debate between Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27 when microphones were cut off while a candidate was not speaking, as requested by the president’s team to promote “orderly proceeding.”
“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,” Brian Fallon, a senior adviser to the Harris team, said in a statement to Newsweek Monday.
Trump told reporters at a press conference Monday morning that he and Harris’ campaigns had agreed to have the same debate rules in September as CNN’s debate, “but they’re trying to change it.”
“The truth is they’re trying to get out of it because she [Harris] doesn’t want to debate,” Trump said. “She’s not a good debater, she’s not a smart person. She doesn’t want to debate.”
Bryan Lanza, who served as deputy communications director on Trump’s 2016 campaign, said during the CNN appearance alongside Griffin on Monday that he believes the former president is “being like a businessman” by pushing back on Harris’ request for open mics.
“I think from his standpoint is like, listen, a deal is a deal,” Lanza told Cooper. “You made the deal you, wanted the CNN rules, we’re doing the CNN rules on ABC.”
“Now they’re coming back and wanting to change the rules, and Trump being like a businessman in his campaign, is looking to try to leverage a second debate,” he continued. “How important is it that you want these if you want them really muted or if you want them unmuted? Well, let’s get a second debate on NBC. I think this is all just a strategy to try to get more debates, and that’s a good thing.”
Trump has said he is up to having two other debates against Harris, one hosted by Fox News on September 4 and another hosted by NBC News on September 25. Harris’ team has said that they are “open to another debate” but that any additional agreements “would be subject to Trump actually showing up on September 10. We’re not playing his games.”
