Will There Be Another Presidential Debate?
Following his delusional performance during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that he toppled his opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris. Despite being undercut by fact checks throughout the evening and spouting off conspiracy theories — this time, he’s lying about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and “transgender operations on illegal aliens” — the former president has maintained on Truth Social and elsewhere that he won the showdown and that Harris “wants a second debate so bad because she lost.”
Voters, however, don’t see it that way. According to a Thursday Reuters/Ipsos poll, 53 percent of voters familiar with the debate found Harris to be the evening’s champion. And at Thursday rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina, Harris made clear that she is more than happy to pummel Trump in a second matchup.
“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,” Harris said to a cheering crowd in the battleground state, according to the Guardian. “On Tuesday night, I talked about issues that I know matter to families across America, like bringing down the cost of living … but that’s not what we heard from Donald Trump.”
BREAKING: Over 25,000 North Carolinians came out to see Kamala Harris today. The energy and enthusiasm surrounding this campaign is unprecedented. Retweet to make sure all Americans see this. pic.twitter.com/TqwZIa121k
— Kamala’s Wins (@harris_wins) September 13, 2024
Harris’s willingness to get back onstage with Trump stands in stark contrast to her opponent’s version of events. On Truth Social, Trump wrote that he’d already addressed our nation’s issues “in great detail during the First Debate with Joe, and the Second Debate with Comrade Harris.”
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” he added. “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate.” In case his stance wasn’t clear, he ended the rant with an all-caps missive: “KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”
According to the Guardian, the Harris campaign has previously stated the Democratic nominee would be open to debating Trump again in October. But if Trump continues his tantrum, at the very least we’ll get to see his running mate, J.D. Vance, take on the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz in New York on October 1. Expect lots of couch jokes and childless-cat-lady jabs.
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