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Trump says he will not debate Harris again


Donald Trump will not debate Kamala Harris again, the former president said Thursday.

“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social, referencing the first as his June debate with President Joe Biden and the second as his debate with Harris on Tuesday.

Harris’ campaign, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, had challenged Trump to an additional debate immediately following their showdown earlier this week, and Fox News offered to host it.



“We owe it to the voters to have another debate,” Harris said Thursday at a rally in North Carolina minutes after Trump’s announcement.

But Trump on Wednesday told “Fox & Friends” he “probably” would not agree to another debate with the network and on Thursday confirmed he would not debate the vice president again at all, citing what he characterized as a decisive victory in a contest widely viewed as having gone favorably for Harris.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, “I WANT A REMATCH,”” Trump wrote Thursday.

Both campaigns claimed they won Tuesday’s face off, during which Harris largely managed to sidestep questions about the Biden administration’s records and her own past positions by getting under Trump’s skin, spurring the former president to go on meandering rants about crowd sizes and unsubstantiated claims that Haitian migrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets.

Immediately following the debate, Trump told reporters in the spin room “this was my best debate.” But he has bashed ABC News for what he called “a rigged deal,” citing a handful of times moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked him live. But even some Republicans acknowledged that Trump’s performance had been lackluster, with Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) calling it “a missed opportunity” and some GOP strategists telling POLITICO they were not impressed.

Asked Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” about Fox’s offer of a debate moderated by Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, he derided those anchors and offered Fox opinion pundits Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham instead.

Trump’s team was uncertain about whether or not the former president would be willing to commit to another debate.

On Wednesday morning, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump who helped with negotiations for the ABC News debate, told CNN the Trump campaign had already committed to a debate with NBC on September 25.

And later that day, Lara Trump, the RNC co-chair, said her father in law would be open to another.

“I think he’s very open, I think the American people deserve to see these two people and hear their ideas,” she told Fox News.

Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, released a memo after the debate claiming the former president actually received a boost after his debate performance, which was widely panned by Republicans as a missed opportunity.

“We found that despite the best efforts of Kamala Harris and media to portray the debate as some kind of overwhelming win for her, voters did not see it this way as support for her remained flat,” Fabrizio wrote in a “confidential memorandum” that was sent to reporters. “The only change we saw was a 2-point bump for President Trump in both ballot configurations.”

Harris’ campaign on Wednesday posted to X a full recording of the debate, calling it “our newest ad.”

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Harris pulls ahead of Trump in battlegrounds, poll finds


Vice President Kamala Harris is just barely pulling ahead of former President Donald Trump in the battleground states, according to CNN/SSRS polls released Wednesday.

Harris polls above Trump in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, the poll found — though her slight lead is either within or just barely outside the margin of error. The candidates are tied at 47 percent in Pennsylvania, and Trump leads Harris by 5 points in Arizona.

Across the battleground states, Trump polled above Harris when voters were asked which candidate they trusted more to handle the economy and immigration. Both are major liabilities for Harris’ campaign, and Trump and his surrogates have continuously bashed her vice presidency as one that saw major inflation and a worsening crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Harris polled above Trump when it came to protecting democracy and on abortion and reproductive rights, two issues upon which Harris has built her campaign as she seeks to define herself as a foil to Trump, who set in motion the overturn of the federal right to abortion and denied losing the election in 2020.

In Arizona, 62 percent of likely voters said they would support a state constitutional amendment creating the fundamental right to abortion, according to the poll.

Fifty percent or more of the likely voters across the battleground states said Trump’s views and policies were too extreme. Just under half said the same about Harris, whose momentum the Trump campaign is trying to slow with television ads calling her “dangerously liberal.”

Democratic Senate candidates are running slightly ahead of Harris in the battleground states. In Nevada, the poll shows Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen leading GOP nominee Sam Brown outside the margin of error, 50 percent to 40 percent. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, respectively, have slight leads over their Republican opponents. The races in Arizona and Pennsylvania are inside the margin of error; in Pennsylvania, Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. and GOP candidate Dave McCormick are dead even, just like the presidential race there.

The poll was conducted for CNN by the independent firm SSRS Research between Aug. 23 and Aug. 29. A total of 4,398 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin found from a registration-based sample were surveyed online and by phone. The margin of error varied by state from plus or minus 4.5 percentage points to plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

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