Executives at Fox News Media have renewed their offer to the campaigns of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris for their participation in a second presidential debate.
The invitation comes nearly two months after Fox News Media pledged to set aside time on September 17 for a debate between Harris and Trump. Representatives of the Harris campaign suggested their candidate was unlikely to accept the invitation, affirming their plan to participate only in the ABC News debate, which was held on Tuesday.
Immediately after the ABC News debate, Fox revealed two executives — Fox News Media’s President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace and Vice President of Politics Jessica Loker — had once again offered to host a debate between Harris and Trump. The renewed invitation, which was sent to campaign officials before the ABC News debate started, suggested three dates in early October for a similar program on Fox News:
- Wednesday, October 9 in Arizona
- Tuesday, October 15 in Georgia
- Wednesday, October 16 in North Carolina
All three are considered “battleground” or “swing” states, where voters have outsized influence over the outcome of a presidential election. It was not immediately clear from letters sent to the Harris and Trump campaigns this week how Fox News Media settled on the states; Fox News Media’s parent company, Fox Corporation, owns local Fox stations in Arizona (KSAZ, Channel 10, in Phoenix) and Georgia (WAGA, Channel 5, in Atlanta), but not in North Carolina.
A previous offer to host a presidential debate on September 17 “remains on the table,” Wallace and Loker said.
Fox News Media is proposing to produce the debate under a similar format as the ABC News debate on Tuesday and the CNN-produced debate in June.
According to a “debate rules and format sheet” seen by The Desk, any debate produced by Fox News Media would be an hour and a half long, with two commercial breaks, and no opening statements from the candidates. Props and pre-written notes would not be allowed on stage, Fox News Media, but the candidates will be allowed access to a bottle of water, a pad of paper and a pen.
Fox News Media promises that microphones “will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak, and muted when the time belongs to another candidate” — mirroring a rule that ABC News also said it would follow, but ultimately didn’t.
Didn’t they say mics would be muted. I’m confused… cut the mics #Debate2024
— Johnathon (@soapwikijohn) September 11, 2024
Outside of ABC News itself, Fox News Media had the highest television audience for the ABC News Presidential Debate on Tuesday, with 13.7 million people tuning in to watch some or all of the debate on the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, local Fox TV stations and streaming platform Fox Nation, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings. Fox News Media also had the highest overall audience for the CNN Presidential Debate in June, grabbing 13.35 million viewers across the same platforms.
