Two days after his widely panned performance in a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Trump on Thursday declared that he would not participate in another debate with the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump used his Truth Social platform to declare that he won the first debate and to hurl insults at Harris and President Biden, while also suggesting that it was his opponent who had avoided scheduling a second debate.
“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate,” Harris responded on the social media platform X. “We owe it to the voters to have another debate.”
Trump used a sports analogy in his announcement. “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” Trump said on Truth Social. He then contended that polls “clearly show” he won the televised Tuesday night encounter with Harris.
Trump did not specify which polls he was referring to, and the claim strained credulity, since the best known national polls all showed the opposite — that a wide majority of viewers said Harris won the 105-minute debate on ABC News.
Polls taken by CNN, YouGov and a consortium including SoCal Strategies all showed a majority favoring Harris’ performance, by a roughly 20-percentage-point margin in each.
Trump’s campaign released its own internal polling data Thursday afternoon, contending that after the debate the Republican had gained a few percentage points in the swing states likely to determine the outcome of the election.
Trump’s message also featured name-calling against Harris and Biden and then took to all capital letters to tell the vice president she “SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD.”
