Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci predicted that Donald Trump will eventually debate Vice President Kamala Harris — and warned the former president not to.
“It would be disastrous for him if he didn’t debate the vice president,” Scaramucci told CNN host Jessica Dean on Saturday.
The Republican candidate announced late Friday that he would not attend the September 10 debate hosted by ABC News. The president had previously scheduled a debate with Joe Biden before dropping out of his reelection bid last month, but he has since said he will not attend.
Trump has previously pledged to debate Biden “anytime, anywhere, anywhere” and has pushed for the next debate to be held on Fox News since Harris won the Democratic nomination. But he has backed a proposal to have the conservative network carry the debate on September 4 instead.
Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s White House communications director for 10 days, said it was natural for Trump to back away from the ABC News plan.
“I think it’s typical of him, but he’s 100 percent going to debate Vice President Harris,” Scaramucci said, predicting that such an event “probably” wouldn’t be on Fox News or ABC News.
He continued, “This is him posturing, this is him trying to get attention. It’s hard for him, but he’s struggled to get attention over the last three weeks. He certainly didn’t get attention compared to the Harris campaign, so that’s what he’s trying to do now.”
Scaramucci added that the former president knew he would eventually have to debate Harris before the election.
“Listen, he knows that if he doesn’t debate her, she and her vice presidential candidate are going to go on a six-week rampage about the fact that he didn’t debate her,” Scaramucci said, noting that there is an interest in Trump “having a hard time with women.”
He continued, “What a disaster it would be for him and his people if she could just say, very simply and succinctly, ‘He was just afraid to debate me because I was more organized, more cognitively aware, and more verbally acumenful than he was.’ What a disaster it would be for him and he knows it.”
