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“Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, as candidate Donald Trump infamously dubbed the Texas senator, is pushing for the 2024 White House hopeful to debate Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris “whatever stupid rules they want.”
Cruz, a conservative Republican whose Cuban-born father Trump wrongfully accused of being involved in the JFK assassination, rejected Fox News host Sean Hannity’s entreaty on Monday night for the twice-impeached former president-turned-NFT-trading-card-salesman to not “give in” to the Harris campaign’s proposed groundrules for the face-off scheduled to air September 10 on ABC News.
Trump has been sending mixed signals about debating Harris, who seems to have thrown the former president for a loop ever since Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid in favor of his younger, more robust VP. On Sunday, Trump posted to his Twitter clone, Truth Social, “I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?”
Trump said recently at an appearance in Virginia, “I’d much rather do it on NBC. I’d much rather do it on CBS. Frankly, I think CBS is very unfair, but the best of the group, and certainly I do it on Fox, I’d even do it on CNN. I thought CNN treated us very fairly the last time.”
Finally, on Tuesday, Trump blasted out a post on Truth Social insisting the debate is most definitely on — though he bemoaned that “it will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business.”
“The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden,” he wrote. “The Debate will be ‘stand up,’ and Candidates cannot bring notes, or ‘cheat sheets.’”
On Monday, Cruz told Hannity, “Sean, I think Trump needs to do the debate. And frankly, I think he should agree to whatever stupid rules they want. It’s going to be hostile and rigged regardless.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, said in an appearance on MSNBC that she believes Trump will duck the Harris debate. However, she said, “If he does show up, he is about to get his butt handed to him, so I’m here for it either way.”
Crockett recently gained prominence after describing MAGA-fied Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as a “bleach blond bad built butch body.”
Trump and Harris have been at odds over debate rules around whether or not the candidates’ microphones should be muted when the other is speaking. Harris’ campaign says she wants the mics “hot” so that “the American people can see both candidates for who they are and hear everything that comes out of their mouths.”
Trump has complained that Biden wanted muted mics during their debates, but now Harris “all of a sudden… want[s] to make a change in the rules because she can’t answer questions… She can’t talk. We can’t have another dummy as a president.”
In his Monday interview, Cruz told Hannity that Trump needed to just get onstage with Harris, full stop.
“If you want her to wear a cheese head while she’s debating, you want the mics hot or not, you want her to have an encyclopedia of talking points in front of her, I don’t care,” he said before going on to stretch the truth about his and Trump’s records. “I want to stand up directly and contrast her record and mine, because on every front, Donald Trump’s record, we had success in this country.” (This is not true.)
