WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris is criticizing Republican candidate Donald Trump for not agreeing to another presidential debate before the election ends on Nov. 5. But he doesn’t seem inclined to change his mind.
“Let’s have another debate,” Harris, the Democratic nominee, said Sunday. “There’s more to talk about, and the voters of America deserve to hear the conversations I think we should be having about substance, issues and policy.”
Harris and Trump discussed for the first time on September 10, but so far the two campaigns have not reached an agreement with another news organization to schedule a second debate. Two days after their only debate so far, Trump explained He would not agree to anything else.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris-Waltz campaign, released a written statement this weekend announcing that Harris had agreed to a CNN debate on October 23 and urging Trump to do the same.
“Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate,” Dillon wrote. “It has the same format and structure as the CNN debate in June, which he was a part of and said he won by praising CNN’s moderators, rules and ratings.”
Trump brushed that aside during a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, saying it was “simply too late” because early voting and mail-in voting had already begun in some states.
During the 2020 presidential election campaign, Trump and then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden held their Final debate on October 22nd.
Four years earlier, when Trump and Hillary Clinton were vying for the Oval Office, they debated on September 26, October 9 and 19.
To get Trump to debate, the Democratic National Committee has funded mobile billboards that refer to him as “chicken” and show him wearing a yellow chicken costume. Those billboards, as well as a second one linking him to Project 2025, will be installed Monday night before a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman wrote in a statement about the chicken billboard that Trump had previously said he would debate anytime, anywhere.
“The American people deserve another opportunity to hear Vice President Harris and Donald Trump stand side by side before Election Day to lay out their starkly different visions for our country,” Rahman wrote. “Instead, Trump is hiding from the American people because he knows they will reject his Project 2025 program, which raises taxes on the middle class, bans abortion nationwide and uses the federal government to exert virtually unlimited power over our daily lives.”
However, Harris and Trump are both in conversation with the CBS program “60 Minutes” for in-depth interviews that will be broadcast back to back on October 7.
The vice presidential candidates will debate in New York City on October 1. The show will be hosted by CBS. It will be the last debate of this cycle unless Trump changes his mind.
Trump, Harris and their running mates in the swing states
Campaign travel will continue to be a central theme for Republicans and Democrats this week, with just over six weeks left until the end of the election.
Harris supporters are expected to Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday.
Trump will be in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday to talk about his tax plans before heading to Mint Hill, North Carolina, on Wednesday. He then has two stops planned in Michigan on Friday: the first in Walker and the second in Warren.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is expected to hold a campaign reception in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Tuesday.
Republican vice presidential candidate and Senator JD Vance of Ohio will not be on Capitol Hill in the last week of the election but will be on the campaign trail.
Vance is scheduled to be in Traverse City, Michigan, on Wednesday before making two stops in Georgia on Thursday and heading to Newton, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
