Kamala Harris’ campaign left Philadelphia on Tuesday night eager for another showdown against Donald Trump. The former president, once eager to schedule a second debate, seemed not so sure.
Trump, whose debate performance was widely panned as chaotic and peppered with falsehoods, insisted Wednesday morning that he’d been the victor against Harris. Another debate, Trump suggested, would hand the vice president another bite at the apple.
“The first thing they did is ask for a debate because when a fighter loses, he says ‘I want a rematch,’” Trump said Wednesday morning on “Fox & Friends.” Pushed on whether he would agree to another debate, the former president said: “I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night, we won the debate, we had a terrible network.”
Trump bashed ABC News, which hosted the debate, as “the most dishonest news organization” and called Tuesday’s debate — during which moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis repeatedly fact-checked Trump — “three to one” and “a rigged deal.” Still, he characterized his performance as “one of my better debates, maybe my best debate.”
That Harris and Trump would appear on stage at all was for a time an open question amid squabbling over when, where and how they would meet — for the first time — on the debate stage. The former president had called for multiple debates, including one on Fox News on Sept. 4 — an offer Harris rebuffed. Trump then threatened to drop out of the ABC News debate, then the campaigns squabbled over the rules, the main snag being whether each candidate’s microphone would be muted while the other spoke.
Harris, whose team had fought for unmuted mics but ultimately relented, still appeared to try to interrupt Trump even with her volume turned down. At one point, Trump shut her down, saying “I’m talking now … does that sound familiar?” — a reference to Harris’ 2020 debate with Mike Pence when she cut off a Pence interruption by saying “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.”
“She wanted a moment like she did with Mike Pence,” Trump said Wednesday, “but I actually got that moment too, I won that too because she was talking while I was speaking quite a bit actually.”
Late Tuesday, Harris’ campaign released a statement calling for a second debate and Fox News offered to host one moderated by Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier “while early in-person voting gets underway in multiple battleground states,” on Oct. 9 in Arizona, Oct. 15 in Georgia or Oct. 16 in North Carolina.
“Seems like the American people would love another opportunity to see these candidates. It’s been such a short window and they deserve as many opportunities as possible,” MacCallum said during the network’s post-debate coverage. “We certainly hope they will take us up on that.”
But Trump on Wednesday appeared to reject the network’s offer, saying “I wouldn’t want to have Martha and Bret.” Although he said he “probably” wouldn’t agree to any more debates, he said he would consider right-wing pundits Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham — Fox News opinion hosts who are sympathetic to the former president.
“I didn’t think Martha and Bret were good last night,” he added, as the “Fox & Friends” hosts scrambled to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade defended the anchors, saying they would “do a phenomenal job” and telling Trump “you would find them extremely fair.”
Harris campaign spokesperson Quentin Fulks affirmed Wednesday on CNN that Harris “is open to a debate in October.”
“But if I were Donald Trump,” he said, “I would not want to debate Kamala Harris.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Fox News anchor Bret Baier’s first name.
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