Donald Trump announced in September that he will not sign up for another debate with Kamala Harris, but there are some pundits who suspect it may still happen before the 2024 presidential election.
The latest update is this: Fox News, a network Trump has long shown a preference for, has once again proposed to the parties that it could host a second debate between them. This time, the proposal is for the debate to take place in Pennsylvania on October 24 or 27, with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as moderators.
It remains to be seen whether Harris or Trump will accept this new pitch from the network.
Donald Trump announced his disinterest in another debate immediately after their September showdown.
In a post to his social media website, Trump wrote that his reasoning for declining a second debate with the vice president (and third overall, following the first with Joe Biden) is because he believes he “won” the debate against her.
Repeating an explanation he has shared in multiple post-debate interviews when he was purportedly still considering it, including in the post-debate “spin room,” he wrote in part, “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’” He then claimed that Harris “immediately called for a Second Debate” after their first meeting on Tuesday (September 10) night.
At the end of the message, after repeating his partisan claims about the state of the country under the Biden-Harris administration, he pronounced, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”
Trump and Harris had not formally agreed upon a second debate before that announcement.
However, there were reportedly multiple offers from other networks, including his favored choice of Fox News before their newest pitch. However, Trump apparently took issue with the proposal of Baier and MacCallum as moderators, saying on Fox & Friends, “I’d love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret. I’d love to have, frankly, Sean [Hannity] or Jesse [Watters] or Laura [Ingraham].”
In early August, however, Trump had himself proposed a debate featuring Baier and MacCallum on social media, which Harris declined to accept before they completed the first debate on ABC News.
Harris advisor David Plouffe responded to the news of Trump’s announcement of no third debate on Twitter by writing, “At long last we discover his spirit animal. The Chicken.” He also added, “Let’s see if chicken man excises Hannibal Lecter out of his speech tonight. If he does, demonstrates he was humiliated on that point on Tuesday night. If he doesn’t, well, that would be awesome. Classic win, win.”