Two days after his widely criticized performance in a debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Trump declared Thursday that he would not participate in another debate with the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump used his Truth Social platform to declare he won the first debate and hurl insults at Harris and President Biden, while suggesting 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 social media platform X. “We owe it to the voters to have another debate.”
Trump used a sports analogy in his announcement. “When a boxer loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” Trump said on Truth Social. He then maintained that polls “clearly show” that he won Tuesday night’s televised matchup with Harris.
Trump did not specify which polls he was referring to, and the claim strained credibility since the most widely reported national polls showed the opposite: A large majority of viewers said Harris had won the 105-minute debate on ABC News. Polls conducted by CNN, YouGov and a consortium that includes SoCal Strategies all showed a majority favoring Harris’s performance, by a margin of about 20 percentage points each.
Trump’s message also included insults against Harris and Biden and then used all capital letters to tell the vice president that she “should focus on what she should have done over the last almost four-year period.”
