Every major scientific poll following the debate showed that Harris won, including polls from CNN, YouGov, and SoCal Strategies. Trump rejected those polls, saying in the spin room after the showdown that he won the debate in a decisive fashion.
Though Trump has rejected the prospect of getting back on the stage with Harris before Election Day, her campaign doesn’t believe he will stick with his decision.
“The vice president is clear she believes there should be another debate, and we do not consider this to be the last word from him,” Harris spokesman Brian Fallon told Politico. “He is just working through his feelings after losing very badly Tuesday night.”
Trump and Harris have been inconsistent with their messaging about debates, including when, where, and how they should happen.
Trump’s basis for rejecting a rematch lies in his belief that only a loser would ask for another fight as soon as the first one finishes. He had called for three debates with Harris, including one later this month.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate.”
“KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” Trump continued.
Despite Harris’s strong showing, she doesn’t appear to have gotten a postdebate bump. Polls in the overall presidential race are more or less locked in a dead heat.
Less than an hour after Trump’s post, Harris continued to call for another debate.
“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate,” she said at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. “And I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate because this election and what is at stake could not be more important.”
It’s unclear how long Trump’s noncommittal phase will last or if he truly will not commit to another debate against Harris. After President Joe Biden exited the presidential race following a disastrous debate performance, Trump was noncommittal about debating Harris.
Trump proposed a debate on Fox News, but the Harris campaign did not consider that proposition because the ABC News debate, which was on Tuesday, had been agreed to by the Trump and Biden campaigns.
When Harris entered the race and quickly rose as the presumed nominee of the party, she was committed to the ABC News debate.
“I have agreed to the previously agreed-upon Sept. 10 debate. He agreed to that previously,” Harris told reporters five days after Biden exited the race. “Now, it appears he’s backpedaling. But I’m ready. And I think that the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage, and so I’m ready. Let’s go.”
In response, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, said it “would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds” since Harris was only the party’s presumptive nominee.
Harris quickly hit back, asking, “What happened to ‘any time, any place’?”
What happened to “any time, any place”? https://t.co/HlR6UmlZxx
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 26, 2024
Trump said he wanted to debate Harris because it is “important for a presidential race” but had not yet “agreed to anything.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything. I agreed to a debate with Joe Biden,” Trump said in July. “But I want to debate with her, and she’ll be no different because they have the same policies. I think debating is important for a presidential race. I really do. You sort of have an obligation to debate.”
A few days later, in a series of posts to Truth Social, Trump said his agreement to the Sept. 10 debate “has been terminated” because he would no longer be facing Biden.
“I’ll see her September 4th, or I won’t see her at all,” he posted in reference to his proposed Fox News debate, noting Harris was “afraid” to debate because “there is no way she can justify her Corrupt and Open Borders, the Environmental Destruction of our Country, the Afghanistan Embarrassment, Runaway Inflation, Terrible Economy, High Interest Rates and Taxes, and her years long fight to stop the words, ‘Merry Christmas.’”
Harris remained committed to the debate. Her campaign told the Washington Post at the time that there were no negotiations with Trump or Fox about a new debate.
“It’s interesting how ‘any time, any place’ becomes ‘one specific time, one specific safe space,’” Harris posted on X following Trump’s posts. “I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.”
He eventually warmed up to a debate and committed to Tuesday night’s event.
“I look forward to the debates because I think we have to set the record straight,” Trump said in August. “I think it’s very important that we have them. I hope she agrees to them. … I think they’ll be very revealing.”
After criticizing Trump for trying to renege on his agreement with Biden to participate in debates, Harris had a flip-flopping moment of her own.
Rather than keeping the rule about candidates having their microphones muted while their opponent was speaking — a rule that proved to be a boon for Trump, as it forced him to stay disciplined and let Biden talk himself out of the race — Harris tried to keep the microphones on throughout the event.
The Harris campaign wanted to unmute the microphones during the debate because it viewed interruptions from Trump, as he had in the 2016 and 2020 debates, as a good thing for the campaign. Trump also said he was all right with unmuted microphones, but his campaign pushed against it and preferred them to stay muted.
Her campaign asserted Harris is “fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President.”
Eventually, both campaigns agreed to the debate and muted microphones.
“We accepted the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones,” the Harris campaign wrote.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Americans want to hear both candidates present their competing visions to the voters, unburdened by what has been. No notes, no sitting down, no advance copies of the questions. We’ll see you in Philadelphia next Tuesday,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told the Washington Examiner.
The vice presidential debate between Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) is set for Oct. 1 on CBS News.
