Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, on Saturday called former President Trump’s offer to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on Fox News in September a “masterstroke.”

“I think it’s great,” Trump’s vice presidential pick told SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Saturday.” “In some ways, it’s a masterstroke because, of course, the Kamala campaign has been saying for a long time that President Trump is afraid to debate Kamala Harris, which, of course, is absurd because the last time he debated their nominee, that nominee withdrew two weeks later.” 

President Biden pulled out of the race and endorsed Harris as the nominee last month after his weak debate performance in late June drew concerns from Democrats.

Late Friday night, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I have agreed with FoxNews to debate Kamala Harris on Wednesday, September 4th. The Debate was previously scheduled against Sleepy Joe Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant, and I am in litigation against ABC Network and George Slopadopoulos, thereby creating a conflict of interest. 

KAMALA HARRIS FACES A DIFFICULT DECISION WITH VP PICK: STRATEGIST MATT KEELEN

“The FoxNews Debate will be held in the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, at a site in an area to be determined. The Moderators of the Debate will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and the Rules will be similar to the Rules of my Debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his Party – BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!”

Trump and Biden had previously been scheduled to debate on Sept. 10 on ABC. 

Vance said Trump has “fairly” said about the previously scheduled debate, “I’m not going to do a debate before the Democratic National Convention because maybe they’ll switch out their nominee again.” 

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for Aug. 19-22. 

The Ohio senator added that Trump was “throwing down the gauntlet of ‘I was willing to go to CNN,’ which is far more hostile to him than any network would be to Kamala Harris, and ‘Kamala Harris, why don’t you come and agree to a debate.

“The thing that we’ve learned about Kamala, Matt, over the last four years, is she’s incredibly bad if she’s not scripted, right?” 

13 DAYS: KAMALA HARRIS HAS NOT HELD A PRESS CONFERENCE SINCE EMERGING AS PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE

On Saturday, Harris hit back at Trump’s offer for a new debate on X, writing, “It’s interesting how ‘any time, any place’ becomes ‘one specific time, one specific safe space.’ I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.” (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Vance added that the final reason he’s thinks “it’s so smart for the president” to want an audience at the debate is “he really feeds off of human beings, which is like natural and normal for a political leader.

“You’re supposed to lead people, and to lead people you actually have to sort of like people and engage with them well,” he said. “So, him having a crowd for this debate, I think, is really important because it will show his natural leadership ability. And it also shows, frankly, that people are kind of turned off by Kamala Harris. So, I think it’s good. Hopefully, it happens, and hopefully Kamala Harris agrees to it. If she doesn’t, then, clearly, she’s the one who’s afraid to debate.”

President Biden dropped his bid for re-election after a weak debate performance against former President Trump June 27.  ( Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Harris hit back at Trump’s offer for a new debate on X Saturday, writing, “It’s interesting how ‘any time, any place’ becomes ‘one specific time, one specific safe space.’ I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.”

In the spring, Trump had called on Biden for a debate “any time, any place.” 

“Donald Trump is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out,” Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told Fox News Digital. “He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10.”

Tyler said Harris would be at the previously scheduled ABC debate “one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a primetime national audience. We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to. Mr. Anytime, anywhere, anyplace should have no problem with that unless he’s too scared to show up on the 10th.”

Early on a Saturday morning at Rawley Duntley Park in Lancaster — the high-desert sun blazing — George Whitesides, a Democrat running for Congress, was encircled by dozens of cheering, noisemaker-blasting volunteers.

“I really want to make sure that even the astronauts out there can hear his name!” Nadia Abrica, an organizing director with the state Democratic Party, shouted, pointing to the sky. “George! George! George!”

“Are you guys feeling fired up?” Whitesides asked the crowd. “Are you feeling ready to go? … Are we going to change the House of Representatives?”

“Yes!” they screamed.

Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff under President Obama, is running to unseat Rep. Mike Garcia, the thrice-elected Republican incumbent, in California’s hotly contested 27th Congressional District in northern L.A. County. The race will be crucial in determining whether Republicans maintain their narrow majority in the U.S. House.

Democrats, riding the national enthusiasm unleashed by Vice President Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race, feel good about their chances to flip the district.

“You feel the difference — and what really helped is the re-energizing when we found out about Biden dropping out,” said Alvarez Marcos, 61, a volunteer for Whitesides. “We’re building off that.”

But after leaving the pep-rally vibe at the park to knock on doors at a nearby apartment complex, Whitesides spoke with middle-of-the-road voters who made one thing abundantly clear: Winning this purple suburban district will not be easy.

“I am not a Democrat,” said a young woman who was the first to open her door. “Are you for open borders?”

“No, ma’am,” Whitesides said, after trying to summarize his message — largely about creating local jobs — in about 90 seconds. “We’re trying to create a secure border for our country.”

In this presidential election year dominated by hyperpartisan national issues — including immigration — both Whitesides, 50, and Garcia, 48, are trying to cast themselves as a moderate and their opponent as a political hardliner.

“People are excited to bring positive change to the district, and they’re really excited to beat Mike Garcia, who they view as this extreme guy who doesn’t connect or fit with the folks in our district,” Whitesides told The Times.

Rep. Mike Garcia is looking to keep the Antelope Valley seat he has held since 2020. The race will be crucial in determining whether Republicans maintain their House majority.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Whitesides calls Garcia a pro-Trump sycophant and highlights the congressman’s vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election results after the Jan. 6 insurrection, as well as his vote against President Biden’s $1-trillion infrastructure bill.

Whitesides also points to Garcia’s anti-abortion record. Garcia was among the GOP congressional members who signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and, in 2021, co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which amounts to a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions. (Garcia later indicated he could support such exceptions for rape, incest or threats to the mother’s health — a departure from the bill. He did not sponsor a reintroduced version.)

Garcia’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

But his backers are trying to paint Whitesides as a far-left mega-donor trying to use his personal wealth to buy a congressional seat.

As a first-time candidate, Whitesides has no voting record to scrutinize. So, Republicans have zeroed in on his hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to progressive candidates and causes.

Ben Petersen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement that Garcia, a former Navy pilot, “has led a life of service, from flying fighter jets in combat to his mission in Congress of lowering inflation and defending public safety.”

“Voters can easily spot the difference with extreme George Whitesides, who backed legislation raising the cost of living and bankrolled radical activists attacking police and dismantling law and order,” he added, referencing Whitesides’ support of Equality California, an LGBTQ+ rights organization that prominent conservative fundraisers have dubbed a defund-the-police group. (Whitesides has touted his endorsement by Equality California.)

About an hour’s drive north of solidly liberal downtown Los Angeles, the 27th Congressional District stretches from fast-growing Santa Clarita to the Kern County line. It includes the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, as well as rural desert towns such as Acton and Pearblossom.

With its close proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, the region has deep ties to the military and aerospace industry, as reflected by the name of its recently disbanded Minor League Baseball team, the Lancaster JetHawks.

Once staunchly conservative, the district has become more favorable to Democrats, with the population growing younger and more diverse as L.A. residents moved in for more affordable housing. Redistricting after the 2020 census made CA-27 even bluer by excising conservative Simi Valley.

Just over 41% of registered voters are Democrats, and about 30% are Republicans. More than a fifth are independents, a wildcard that makes the district somewhat unpredictable.

The district voted for Biden in 2020. But in the 2022 gubernatorial race, it backed Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle over Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Though his district has more registered Democrats than Republicans, frustrations over California’s high cost of living have given GOP Rep. Mike Garcia an edge in earlier campaigns.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

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The district has been on the front lines of partisan warfare since Katie Hill, a millennial Democrat, unseated the Republican incumbent in 2018, only to resign less than a year later amid a sex scandal. Garcia won the seat in a special election and retained it in two subsequent elections, thrice defeating the same Democratic challenger, former state Assemblywoman Christy Smith.

In the 2020 general election, Garcia defeated Smith by just 333 votes. He won by 12,732 votes during the subsequent midterm election, when fewer people cast ballots.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, calls this year’s election a toss-up.

“When you’ve run a company that launches humans into space on a test-flight program, you kinda get used to being involved in high-stakes things,” said Whitesides, the former chief executive of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic. “We’ve got to flip the House so we can protect all these hard-won gains in healthcare and climate and jobs.”

“The Republican caucus right now is totally dysfunctional,” he added. “I”m trying to bring, like, actually getting stuff done back into focus. Wouldn’t that be great? Make the Congress work again.”

Lawrence Becker, a political scientist at Cal State Northridge, said it’s “going to be a tough election for Garcia.”

Most voters “are going to the polls with the presidential election on their minds,” he added. Trump is deeply unpopular in California, and having him at the top of the ticket “becomes a bit of a headwind that Mike Garcia has to face.”

Still, frustrations over California’s high cost of living and gas prices — potent issues for the many residents in this district who make the long commute to L.A. for work — have previously given Garcia an edge. He easily won last spring’s three-way primary election with 55% of the vote, while Whitesides got 33%.

State GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said the fact that Republicans are able to be so competitive in a district where Democrats have a large registration advantage shows how much voters “are getting sick and tired of what California Democrats have been serving up to them.”

Both parties are pouring money into the race.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that supports Republicans running for the House, is planning an $18.2-million ad blitz in the L.A. area this fall, with a focus on the 27th district.

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the super PAC, said Garcia has a unique biography that resonates in his district. As a Navy pilot, the congressman flew in more than 30 combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom before spending 11 years as an executive with the defense contractor Raytheon.

“California voters remain fed up with rising crime, chaos at our border and skyrocketing costs — all caused by Democrats’ progressive single-party rule,” Parella said in a statement. “The House majority runs through California, and CLF is committing significant resources here this fall.”

George Whitesides introduces himself to Sean and Megan Holst. “It’s supposed to be more affordable in the Antelope Valley,” Megan says. “I thought we had a decent income, and it’s still — it’s hard.”

(Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)

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Meanwhile, Whitesides — who loaned his campaign more than $1 million — is outraising his opponent. As of June 30, Whitesides’ campaign had $3.9 million in the bank, according to the Federal Election Commission. Garcia’s campaign had $2.2 million on hand.

Whitesides’ campaign is seizing on accusations that Garcia hid his sale of up to $50,000 in Boeing stock in August 2020, just before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, of which he was a member, released a scathing report about the company.

According to the Daily Beast, which first reported the sale, Garcia missed the 45-day deadline to disclose the sale and filed paperwork only after narrowly winning his election that November.

A spokesman for Garcia’s campaign told Politico that Garcia had not seen the report before it became public and that his failure to disclose his stock sale was an accident.

After leaving Rawley Duntley Park that late-July Saturday, Whitesides — who has embraced his nerdy-dad vibe — donned a white NASA ball cap and brandished a 50-SPF spray can of sunscreen for his canvass of the apartment complex.

In each brief interaction, he said that, while running Virgin Galactic, he created 700 local jobs and that he was centering his campaign around job creation.

Propped in one apartment window was a license plate that read, EPDMLGY. Whitesides bounded up to the door, saying, “Epidemiology! Come on, that’s my voter.”

“I’m a moderate Democrat,” he said when Nancy Welsh, a 63-year-old pharmaceutical administrative assistant, opened the door. “I worked for NASA, so I’m a big science and facts kind of person.”

When Whitesides asked what issues were important to her, she laughed and said: “Don’t get me started.”

He stopped Megan and Sean Holst, a married couple in their early 30s, as they walked their golden retriever, Cosmo. “I know you from my dad!” said Megan, whose father planted a Whitesides yard sign outside his home on a dirt road in Acton.

Megan said she supports abortion rights and did not like Garcia’s record on the issue. But the couple — she is a clinical lab scientist and he is a programmer — are pretty moderate, she said. Mostly, they care about local issues, such as crime and cost of living. They have lived in the apartment complex for years and hope to someday be able to afford a house.

“It’s supposed to be more affordable in the Antelope Valley,” she said. “I thought we had a decent income, and it’s still — it’s hard.”

Whitesides handed her his campaign flier. She said she would consider it.

FIRST ON FOX: House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told Fox News Digital his committee will continue to probe a scrapped plea deal with the alleged terrorists behind the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday stunningly revoked a controversial plea deal that would have reportedly taken the death penalty off the table for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, who are awaiting trial in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The announcement came after House Republicans on the Armed Services and Oversight committees separately launched investigations into the circumstances of the plea agreement.

“I appreciate that Secretary Austin listened to my concerns and reversed this horrible decision,” Rogers told Fox News Digital on Saturday. “However, this plea deal should have never occurred. I still expect the Secretary to provide HASC with answers on how this happened.” 

The chairman wrote to Austin on Thursday demanding documents related to the plea deal, including “all documents and communications containing terms, conditions, agreements, side-deals, or any mutually developed, related, conditional, or linked agreements with any party relating to terms and conditions of the plea agreements.”

‘BAND OF KILLERS’: MAJOR HOUSE COMMITTEE LAUNCHES PROBE INTO ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’ 9/11 PLEA DEAL

The GOP committee chairman also asked for records of communications spanning the Biden administration regarding the plea deal, which he called “unconscionable.”

“I, along with much of our nation and Congress, are deeply shocked and angered by news that the terrorist mastermind and his associates who planned the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, which killed nearly 3000 innocent people, were offered a plea deal,” Rogers wrote in the letter, first obtained by Fox News Digital. 

“Tragically, the news is a ‘gut punch’ to many of the victims’ families.” 

Rogers gave the Defense Department an Aug. 23 deadline to comply with his request. 

BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION BACKTRACKS, REVOKES PLEA DEAL FOR 9/11 TERRORISTS

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers is demanding more information on the plea deal for Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and two other 9/11 defendants.  (Getty Images)

The terms and conditions of the deal were never disclosed, but it took the death penalty off the table, three relatives of 9/11 victims were told by the Office of Military Commissions (OMC), the New York Post reported.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001 in the worst terror attack on U.S. soil in American history. Families of the victims, groups that represent them and lawmakers had expressed bewilderment and fury that those who planned the attack might not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

PLEA DEAL REVERSAL FOR 9/11 TERRORISTS WINS PRAISE AND DEMANDS FOR JUSTICE FROM VICTIMS GROUPS, REPUBLICANS

The Brooklyn Bridge 9/11 Tribute in Light in New York City. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

However, that deal was rescinded after Austin relieved the official in charge of the military commission who had signed off on the agreement and assumed their authority for himself. 

“Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024,” the secretary wrote in a short memo Friday.

The defense secretary did not explain why he had not intervened before the plea deals were signed and publicly released. The Department of Defense declined to comment on Austin’s decision. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., announced a parallel investigation into the plea deal in a letter to President Biden on Friday. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Biden-Harris administration’s sudden reversal. 

Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind and Stepheny Price contributed to this report.