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Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has unsuccessfully sought to change the rules of her upcoming debate with former President Donald Trump on Sept. 10.

During his lone debate with President Joe Biden, one of the debate conditions was that the mic of whoever was not responding to a question from a moderate at the time would be muted, but Harris’ team sought to eliminate that rule in the hopes that Trump would attempt to talk over Harris and make himself look bad to viewers.

But ABC executives said this week that the rules for the Biden-Trump debate on CNN would apply to their debate as well, meaning that Trump’s mic will be muted when it’s not his turn to speak and vice-versa for Harris.

The rules, detailed in a network email reviewed by The New York Post, include restrictions such as no audience presence, no pre-written notes or props, and muted microphones when they are not speaking. Candidates will only be allowed a pen, a pad of paper, and a bottle of water while on stage.

After days of negotiations, which Republicans have criticized as a Democratic maneuver to entrap Trump, the network has decided to keep the mute protocol originally used in the Trump-Biden CNN debate, the outlet reported.

Both campaigns were informed by ABC News, via Chief Counsel Eric Lieberman, that the upcoming debate at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center would follow the same muted microphone protocol used in the previous CNN debate. The email, sent on Tuesday, outlined the established rules and requested formal agreement from both sides, The Post reported.

Earlier this week, meanwhile, HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher challenged CNN host Kaitlin Collins over her network’s fawning coverage of Harris’ Democratic National Convention acceptance speech last week while adding that the network appears to most American cable news consumers as being overwhelmingly left-leaning.

Maher began the segment by noting a viral moment from Collins’s appearance on the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” after the host suggested that CNN is fair to both sides of the political aisle.

“He [Colbert] said something like, ‘You guys at CNN just report the news,’ and the crowd burst into laughter,” Maher recalled. “That tells you a lot, doesn’t it?”

Collins, unsurprisingly, offered up a strong defense of her employer. “CNN is the place where both sides can watch, and I think my show is evidence of that. We have lawmakers on from both the parties. We’ll have Elizabeth Warren on one night, and we’ll have Ted Cruz on another night. I think lawmakers from both parties should take questions, and you should push both of them,” she said.

“I’m talking about the people on CNN and I know what the conservative side of America thinks and I don’t blame them. I watched Kamala’s speech last night. It ended at 8:09 or, I guess, 11:09 in the east. It wasn’t until 11:23 until the one conservative guy, what’s his name?” he said, referring to former George W. Bush staffer and CNN contributor Scott Jennings. “Lonely Scott, I call him,” Maher said to audience laughter.

“From 8:09 to 11:23, they were just gushing about how great a speech [Kamala Harris delivered at the convention]. And I think she did fine, I didn’t think it was as good as they were making it out to be,” Maher said. “But if I’m a conservative in America and I’m watching CNN just for the straight middle of the road, that’s what I hear for 15 minutes, that it’s great. And then lonely Scott. When you look at the panel, it does look like tokenism. It’s almost the same as ‘The View.’ It’s almost better to have nobody there like MSNBC.”

Again Collins defended her network and her show, saying it’s her job to call “bullshit” on both sides.

“Look, I’m from Alabama,” she said. “I’m from a very red state, I have a very conservative family, and a lot of them are Trump voters. They watch my show every night, and they know that they can trust me, that we call bullshit on every side.”

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