Once it became clear last week that CNN and ABC had nabbed the first two—and perhaps, only—presidential debates of the 2024 cycle, CBS pivoted to the next best option: a vice presidential debate. CBS News invited Vice President Kamala Harris to participate in a debate, in studio, on either July 23 or August 13, an offer the Biden campaign accepted. “We look forward to the Trump campaign accepting one of these dates so that the full debate calendar for this campaign can be set,” Brian Fallon, campaign communications director for Harris, told reporters. A day later, though, Donald Trump said his campaign had also accepted a debate invitation for his yet-to-be-chosen running mate—on Fox News.
With each campaign committed to a different debate, it’s unclear how the event will shake out. In his announcement accepting Fox’s invitation, Trump suggested that the event be held at a historically Black university, tossing out Virginia State University, a venue where the Commission on Presidential Debates had planned to host a presidential debate in October. But that was before the CPD, already a target of Republicans, was shoved aside by both campaigns. Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon sent a letter to the CPD last week pulling out of the organization’s planned debates—citing, among other things, complaints about the CPD’s ability to enforce the rules in 2020—and in doing so opened the floodgates for individual news networks to make their own pitches to the campaigns in hopes of securing a potentially historic TV booking.
CNN and ABC both moved fast: In less than two hours, CNN announced that both campaigns had accepted the network’s debate on June 27, and about an hour later, the candidates said they had both agreed to a second debate, moderated by ABC News, on September 10. CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will steer the first debate, with ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis tapped as moderators for the second. Having their talent front and center is a coup for the two networks, both of which said they will make their debates available for simulcast by others.
Last week’s whirlwind series of events—and the lingering uncertainty around the vice presidential face-off—speaks to the free-for-all nature of this year’s debate process, the first in nearly four decades without the nonpartisan CPD as the independent governing entity. In conversations with network insiders in recent months, there’d been skepticism about whether the public would see any debates in the general election. Last month, the five major broadcast and cable news networks—CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News—underscored that anxiety in a letter urging Joe Biden and Trump to publicly commit to participating in general election debates before November’s election.
The speed at which the two presidential debates came together last week had some TV insiders wondering whether CNN and ABC had prebooked the debates with the Biden campaign. I’m told that there were no formal planning discussions between the Biden campaign and ABC, or between the campaign and CNN, prior to Wednesday. But given the seeming unlikelihood that both campaigns would have agreed to the CPD’s three planned debates for the fall, some network executives, reading the writing on the wall, had thought through contingency plans. CNN, for one, was in a position to capitalize on the opportunity because they’d already discussed internally what a debate or town hall event would look like this time around—no audience, given CNN’s widely criticized town hall with Trump last year—and where it might be held. The network’s new Techwood campus in Atlanta is an ideal location given its security features and size. Both CNN and ABC also had the right people in place—debate-planning veterans Mark Preston and David Chalian at CNN, and Rick Klein at ABC—to pull off such last-minute moves.
CBS, according to a source familiar, was not far behind CNN and ABC with their proposal for a presidential debate. But they came in third, and the Biden campaign has made clear that they would only agree to two presidential debates. Inside CBS, there’s anxiety that the network is not in the mix for a presidential contest, and hope that the vice presidential debate goes their way. “There is optimism internally that the network will land one, but also worry that CBS wasn’t there out of the gate,” one person familiar with the discussions at CBS told me, noting there is pressure on executives and producers. “These are going to be important moments for ABC and CNN.”
The Biden campaign has already suggested it will not participate in a Fox News debate, as O’Malley Dillon said it would only participate in one vice presidential debate, and by broadcasters that hosted both a 2016 GOP primary debate and a 2020 Democratic primary debate, which would exclude Fox News and MSNBC.
“Despite not having a Democratic debate in 2016/2020, Fox News was able to secure town halls with Democratic candidates such as: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand,” Fox News wrote in their proposal to O’Malley Dillon last Friday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Vanity Fair. The letter also notes that “Fox News Media is in touch with Virginia State University as a possible location, since it was selected by the CPD as the first historically Black College or University to host a Presidential debate.”