Kamala Harris has accepted an invitation from CNN to take part in a new debate with Donald Trump on October 23, her campaign announced on Saturday.
“Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate, which has the same format and structure as the CNN debate that Trump participated in and claimed victory in June, where he praised CNN’s moderator, rules and ratings,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
“I would be thrilled to host the second presidential debate on October 23rd,” Harris later posted to X. “I hope Donald Trump will join me.”
President Trump debated Joe Biden in June when the US president was seeking reelection. Biden performed so poorly that he eventually dropped out of the race in July, with Vice President Harris winning the nomination.
When asked about Harris accepting CNN’s invitation, a spokesman for Trump noted that the former president had previously said there would be no more debates.
Shortly after, Trump spoke at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, saying that Harris wanted a rematch because she had lost.
“She’s done one debate, I’ve done two. It’s too late to do another one. I would have liked to do it in many ways, but it’s too late now. The votes are already cast, voters are flocking to the polls right now. Will you all go out and vote? Let’s go vote,” Trump said.
The first in-person voting began Friday in Minnesota, Virginia and South Dakota, with mail-in ballots also being sent out days ago.
Harris and Trump held their first presidential debate in Philadelphia on September 10, and it was widely believed that the Democratic candidate Harris had won, but Trump denied this.
The event was a last-minute effort as it was originally scheduled for Biden, the Democratic frontrunner, but Trump eventually agreed to attend and Harris’ campaign ultimately agreed to the original rule of muting microphones when the candidates were not speaking.
Two days after the debate, Trump said he would never do it again, but claimed Harris’ offer to rematch was proof he’d won the first debate.
“When a professional boxer loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I want a rematch,'” he writes.
Harris’ campaign responded by calling Trump a coward and then making a splash by accepting an invitation to another debate on Saturday in a move that appeared to be aimed at riling up her opponent.
The vice presidential debate will take place on October 1 between Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.
The debate’s schedule and platform have been as contentious as the campaign itself, with the Harris and Trump campaigns clashing repeatedly over what format the debate should take, including where, on which network, with which moderator, whether microphones should be muted or not, and whether there should be an audience.
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After a debate hosted by ABC News earlier this month, Trump criticized the network’s hosts, David Muir and Lindsey Davis, for being biased in their approach.
“In my opinion, they are the most dishonest, most disloyal news organization,” he complained on Fox News.
But a YouGov poll after the debate found that a double-digit percentage of registered voters who responded said the moderators had been “fair and unbiased.”
While 43% said the moderators were fair, 29% said they were biased in Harris’s favor and 4% said they were biased in Trump’s favor. There was a strong partisan split, with 55% of Republicans saying the moderators were biased in Harris’s favor.
But Trump did offer praise, drawing a comparison between his debate with Biden in June and calling the cable network “more prestigious” than ABC.
While CNN hosts didn’t fact-check the candidates live, ABC hosts did, most memorably when David Muir debunked as baseless a racist right-wing conspiracy theory repeated by Trump that the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio, was eating other residents’ pets.
Reuters provided reporting assistance.
