Vice President Kamala Harris agreed to a new debate with former President Donald Trump on Saturday, but Trump declined.
Harris accepted an invitation from CNN for a debate on October 23 and wrote in a message on X: “I hope @realDonaldTrump joins me.” Harris’ campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement to CNN that “Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate.”
At a campaign rally in North Carolina on Saturday, Trump said it was “too late” to debate Harris.
“The problem with another debate is it’s just too late — the voting has already started,” he told the crowd. “She had her chance to do it on Fox,” he added, referring to Fox News’ invitation earlier this month for the pair to debate in October.
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In August, Trump agreed to three debates with Harris leading up to Election Day: one on September 4, which never happened; one that took place on September 10; and one on September 25, which has not been scheduled.
But after the Sept. 10 debate — which was followed by Harris’s 5 percentage point increase over Trump among registered voters, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll — Trump appeared to change his stance on debating the former California senator again.
“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social on September 12.
“When a boxer loses a fight, the first words he says are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ Polls clearly show that I won Tuesday night’s debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate from the far left, and she immediately called for a second debate,” he wrote.
But last week, Trump suggested he might participate in another debate, telling reporters in California that it would depend “on whether I get in the right frame of mind.”
Trump has debated Harris only once so far, but the new debate would be his third this election cycle. On June 27, he debated President Biden, then running for reelection. Biden’s performance in that confrontation raised concerns among Democrats hoping to defeat Trump in the general election this fall. Under pressure, Biden quickly dropped out of the race and nominated his vice president to take his place in the race.
