Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci predicted that Donald Trump would eventually debate Vice President Kamala Harris and warned the former president if he did otherwise.
“It would be a disaster for him if he didn’t debate the vice president,” Scaramucci told CNN host Jessica Dean on Saturday.
The Republican presidential candidate announced late Friday that he would not commit to an ABC News-moderated Sept. 10 debate he had with President Joe Biden before Biden dropped his re-election bid last month.
Trump, who previously stated he would debate Biden “anytime, anywhere, everywhere,” has insist on the next debate will take place on Fox News since Harris took over the Democratic ticket and backed a proposal for the conservative network to moderate a September 4 debate.
Scaramucci, who famously had a 10-day stint as White House communications director, said Trump pulling out of the ABC News plan is par for the course.
“I think it’s very typical of him, but he’s 100% going to debate Vice President Harris,” Scaramucci said before predicting that such an event would “probably” not be moderated by Fox News or ABC News.
“This is how he acts, this is how he tries to get attention,” he continued. “It’s hard for him, but he’s had a hard time winning the attention cycle over the last three weeks. He certainly hasn’t gotten it in relation to the Harris campaign, and so he’s trying to do that now.”
Scaramucci added that the former president understands that he will ultimately have to debate Harris ahead of the election.
“Listen, he knows that if he doesn’t debate her, he has six weeks to be harassed by her and her vice presidential candidate for not debating her,” he said, noting that there attention is being paid to the fact that Trump has a “tough time with women.”
“What a disaster it would be for him and his people if they could say very simply and very succinctly: ‘He was just afraid to argue with me because I am more attuned, I am more cognitively aware or [I have] more verbal acuity than him,'” Scaramucci continued. “What a disaster it would be for him, he knows that.”