Will Trump and Harris Debate Again?
Credit - Emily Elconin—Bloomberg/Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images
After Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump squared off in the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10, attention has already shifted to when a rematch will happen—if at all.
While the Harris campaign was on the fence before the ABC debate whether they would take part in another, immediately after the first face off, which observers widely deemed a victory for Harris, an eagerness to do it again was clear. “Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement Tuesday night. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”
After stepping off the stage, Trump spoke to Sean Hannity on Fox News and suggested that Harris wanted a rematch because “she lost.” As for whether he wanted to face off again, Trump said he’d “have to think about it. … If you won the debate, I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it. Why should I do another debate?” Trump repeated similar claims on Truth Social that Harris only wanted a rematch because “she lost so badly.”
Trump, like many of his allies, criticized Tuesday’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, claiming the debate was “three against one” because of their real-time fact-checks of his false claims.
“Maybe if it was on a fair network,” Trump said, when pressed by Hannity about doing another debate against Harris. “You would be fair, actually, you want to know the truth,” Trump said, suggesting he would participate in a debate if it were to be moderated by Hannity, a Trump supporter and confidante.
Fox announced on Tuesday evening that it invited both campaigns to take part in a debate on the network in October, moderated by news anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. But Trump did not like the proposal—instead pitching his preferred Fox personalities to moderate. “I’d love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret,” he said over the phone on Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning. “I’d love to have, frankly, Sean [Hannity] or Jesse [Watters] or Laura [Ingraham].” Trump added that CNN, which hosted the debate in June between Trump and then-candidate President Joe Biden before Biden dropped out of the race following a disastrous performance, “was much more honorable” than ABC in moderating. CNN’s moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did not fact-check the candidates on stage, though CNN did post fact-checks online.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told CNN around the same time on Wednesday morning that “President Trump has already said that he’s going to do three debates [with Harris]: We had the September 4th debate, which was going to be on Fox and Kamala Harris was a no-show; we had last night; and President Trump already said that, on September 25th, we would do a debate on NBC.” (In August, the Harris campaign said it would only participate in two presidential debates: ABC’s on Sept. 10, and another in October for which the details remain to be finalized.)
Trump, however, said on Fox & Friends that he was “not inclined to do” another debate with Harris, but he added: “I think we let it settle in, and let’s see what happens.”
Speaking to reporters later Wednesday, Trump said: “Are we going to do a rematch? I just don’t know. We’ll think about it.”
Harris’ and Trump’s participation in the ABC debate was the result of months of back-and-forth between both camps. Multiple networks, including Fox and NBC, have proposed dates for potential future debates, but only one remaining 2024 debate has been mutually agreed on by both campaigns so far: a vice presidential debate between Trump’s running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Harris’ running mate Minn. Gov. Tim Walz.
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