Following his indigent performance in the ABC News presidential debate on Tuesday night, Republican candidate Donald Trump announced in a post on his social media platform on Thursday that he will not participate in any further debates with Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris before the November 5 election.
Former President Trump and Harris had different proposals for a future debate. Trump pushed for a Sept. 25 meeting hosted by NBC News, and Harris’ campaign said immediately after Tuesday’s event that they wanted another debate sometime in October. Fox News had offered to host a debate in October.
But Trump made it clear on Thursday that he would not participate in another debate with Harris. He declared victory in the meeting on Tuesday – which initially Surveys show Harris has gained the upper hand – and compared Harris’ demand for a rematch to that of a boxer who had lost.
Harris could better spend his time solving the country’s myriad problems, he said.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ Polls clearly show that I won Tuesday night’s debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the radical left Democratic candidate, and she immediately demanded a second debate,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.
“KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEARS. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he added.
In her own tweet about an hour after Trump’s tweet, Harris renewed her call for another debate.
“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate,” she said wrote“We owe it to the voters to have another debate.”
In a Average In three national polls conducted by 538, ABC News’ opinion and data division, 57 percent of respondents said Harris won the debate and 34 percent said Trump won, including one Republican-sponsored poll.
Trump and conservative allies spent the time after the debate On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, it was argued that ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis were biased in favor of Harris.
Trump and several others complained that moderators had fact-checked Trump’s statements, including false claims about child murder and migrants eating pets in Ohio, while Harris had not.
There will be another debate, however, between the vice presidential candidates, Republican U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Democratic Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. The two will meet in New York City on October 1.
Trump debated President Joe Biden in June when Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. The president’s indigent performance in that debate led to his exit from the race weeks later – and Harris’ arrival.
