So says the presidential nominee who still hasn't held a press conference, or done an interview without an Emotional Support Running Mate on hand. After haranguing Donald Trump to stick to the debate agreement that he made with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris has grown more desperate to extricate herself from it. 

On Thursday, ABC News reiterated the rules of that agreement:

Next month's debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won't have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren't speaking, or written notes, according to rules that ABC News, the host network, shared this week with both campaigns.

A copy of the rules was provided to the Associated Press on Thursday by a senior Trump campaign official on condition of anonymity ahead of the network's announcement. The Harris campaign on Thursday insisted it was still discussing the muting of mics with ABC.

The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, a disastrous performance for the incumbent Democrat that fueled his exit from the campaign. It is the only debate that's been firmly scheduled and could be the only time voters see Harris and Trump go head to head before the November general election.

Trump's campaign immediately agreed on these rules, as it had with Biden's campaign at the time. Now, however, it's Harris who wants to renegotiate, or perhaps more accurately, it's Harris who now desperately seeks an excuse to refuse to debate. After her substance-less performance in a CNN interview, Harris has taken to Twitter this morning to accuse Trump of -- get this -- being afraid of a live mic.

How many times has Kamala been in front of a live media mic in the last six weeks? Yeah, exactly:

Donald Trump is surrendering to his advisors who won't allow him to debate with a live microphone. If his own team doesn't have confidence in him, the American people definitely can’t.

We are running for President of the United States. Let’s debate in a transparent way—with the… https://t.co/mjyaiUTwAA

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 31, 2024

Ahem. When has Trump ever been afraid of a live mic? The most dangerous place in the world for the past four decades in pop culture has been between Trump and a microphone, or even more the place between Trump and a camera. Since Harris has been the nominee, Trump has done at least three scheduled press conferences, taking questions on an extemporaneous basis for an hour or longer, not to mention talking freely with his press corps as he travels to campaign.

And for that matter, when have Trump's campaign advisers ever controlled what Trump does? Puh-leeeze. They only wish. Even his attorneys have to get a laugh out of that accusation, as long as they can bill for the hour it will take to stop chuckling.

The only explanation for this is a confidence crisis -- but at Team Kamala, not Team Trump. They made the same strategic mistake that Joe Biden made by baiting Trump into a debate, assuming that he'd balk at the conditions. They have less excuse than Biden's team did, having seen that Trump had no problem with either the debate or the conditions in June, and Trump has every reason to figure that Harris isn't any more prepared to deal with him than Biden was. 

On one level, Team Kamala wants to have the mics live so that Harris can play the "mansplaining" and "interrupting" complaint game. She did that successfully with Mike Pence, but that's because of Pence's genuine courtly nature. If they're expecting Kamala Harris to look strong with that ploy again, that's just another indicator that they really don't know their opponent at all. 

However, this obsession with the mics has begun to make Harris look desperate to find an excuse to run away from Trump. That's the real case of projection this reveals -- Harris and her team are too afraid to put her on stage with Trump. 

Why? Because Harris doesn't fight, and doesn't know how to fight. We saw that exposed in the CNN interview on Thursday night, and not just because she didn't take an arguably well-deserved swing at Trump over his remarks about her identity, although that's what made it clear. Harris kept repeating that "my values haven't changed" even though she stopped fighting for the policies tied to them.  She doesn't do press conferences because she can't defend whatever positions she has in any given moment. Dana Bash gave her two clear opportunities to explain her policy changes, and Harris uttered platitudes and word salads that didn't even attempt to explain those changes.

Ask Tulsi Gabbard how well Harris fights in debates. The two debate exchanges in 2019 between the two of them lasted perhaps ten minutes total, and that was enough to completely derail Harris. And Trump is much more experienced and aggressive in debates than Gabbard was in 2019, plus she will have to be on stage with Trump for 90 minutes. 

Kamala wants to run away. Like cowards often do, she wants to blame her opponent for her own pusillanimity.