Trump hits out at Harris’s 30-year friendship with network boss ahead of TV debate

Tuesday’s first face-off with Kamala Harris expected to be watched by more than 70m US viewers

They are two power couples of the California elite.
Since the 1980s, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff have been such close friends with Dana and Matt Walden that the vice-president credits them with “being responsible” for her marriage.
But this week that relationship became a line for Donald Trump owing to Ms Walden’s job overseeing the network that will host the upcoming US presidential TV election debate.
Ms Walden is a boss at Disney, the parent company of ABC News where the first debate between Trump and Ms Harris will be broadcast.
The former president told Fox News that he did not expect fair treatment from ABC.
He said: “I agreed to do it because they wouldn’t do any other network.
“The other thing is, her best friend is the head of the network.”
Tuesday’s debate is expected to be watched by more than 70 million viewers in the United States.
Ms Harris’s 30-year friendship with Ms Walden, co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, is hardly a secret.
Their respective husbands Mr Emhoff and Mr Walden have known each other even longer, having met in the 1980s.
“In many ways, Dana and Matt are responsible for my marriage,” Ms Harris said at a 2022 Democratic fundraiser at the Waldens’ home in the well-heeled Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood.
According to Open Secrets, a website that tracks political donations, Ms Walden, 60, has been a generous supporter of Democrat candidates including Ms Harris, California governor Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi.
However, she reportedly stopped fundraising for the Democrats in February last year when she took over her job, the portfolio for which includes ABC News.
Richard Porter, a former member of the Republican National Committee, said: “ABC reporters are all Democrats rooting for Harris.
“Calling them out in advance forces them to consider how biased they are and will sound, and maybe just maybe, embarrasses them into playing the debate straighter than they otherwise would.”
The network denied Trump’s allegations of bias.
It said: “All editorial decisions are in the hands of ABC News management and the seasoned journalists and producers of ABC, who hold themselves to the highest journalistic standards.”
Trump’s complaint was also dismissed by Alan Schroeder, author of  Presidential Debates: Risky Business on the Campaign Trail.
He told The Telegraph: “This is fairly standard pre-debate posturing. Trump in particular,  and candidates in general,  try to set the stage in advance favourably to themselves.
“That gives you a pretext to come back and say ‘I warned beforehand it was unfair’.”
As Trump found out in August 2015, his friendship with the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, did not spare him a mauling from Megyn Kelly, one of the moderators of the Republican candidates’ debate.
Trump won a victory during the prolonged jostling ahead of Tuesday’s head-to-head when it was decided only the microphone of the candidate answering the question would be left on.
The Harris campaign opposed the muting of microphones believing it would benefit Trump.
Both candidates are spending the weekend preparing for the debate, with Ms Harris locked away in a Pittsburgh hotel rehearsing her attack lines and Trump taking “policy time” with aides whenever possible.
Some Trump aides have urged him not to react angrily on stage to Ms Harris, to whom he has been openly hostile on the campaign trail. One adviser told The New York Times that he had been encouraged to be “happy Trump” on Tuesday, rather than “mean, bully Trump”.
He is expected to use the event to tie Ms Harris to some of the more unpopular policies of the Biden administration, and its record on the economy and illegal migration.
The hope from his team is that Trump can channel Ronald Reagan’s 1980 debate performance, in which he asked voters whether they felt better or worse after the Carter administration. Mr Reagan went on to win the election that followed.
Ms Harris, meanwhile, is preparing for the debate with a stand-in Trump, Lee Strasberg, an acting teacher who has been wearing a wide-shouldered boxy suit and red tie. A full debate stage has been set up at her hotel. and she has rehearsed lines on the economy.
Past presidential debates have proved pivotal. In 1960 a sweating Richard Nixon looked uneasy when facing a calm John F Kennedy.
While radio listeners thought Mr Nixon had won, television viewers overwhelmingly favoured Mr Kennedy, the youthful-looking senator from Massachusetts.
In 1984 Ronald Reagan deftly dealt with questions about his age by saying he would not exploit for political purposes the “youth and inexperience” of his opponent, Walter Mondale.
Prof Schroeder said: “The debate will be significant because of the nature of Kamala Harris’s candidacy.
“She came in as a relative unknown. She hasn’t had the time to introduce herself to the public. do the self-intro to the public, even though she has been vice-president.
“For her, this is the chance to show who she is in a high-pressure situation. For her, the stakes are very high.
“This will be the biggest audience of the campaign. This is her chance to seal the deal.”
However, Ms Harris also faces disadvantages, said Christopher Galdieri, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.
“She hasn’t been on a debate stage since 2019.  This has traditionally not done nominees any favours.
“I suspect we’ll also see her use the ‘weird’ attack about Trump and other attacks that are designed to make him look weaker and smaller.
“Trump will probably try his ‘kitchen sink’ strategy of throwing multiple attacks at Harris, largely because he hasn’t found one that sticks yet in comparison to ‘Sleepy Joe’  or ‘Crooked Hillary’.”