Donald Trump on Wednesday turned down an invite from Fox News to debate Kamala Harris in late October. “There will be no rematch!” he wrote on Truth Social.
The former president mostly considers Fox News friendly territory, and often treats it as a public relations arm for his messaging. He had pushed for a debate on the conservative channel previously.
So his flat-out rejection, even if he did say he would not debate Harris again after his disastrous performance in their first showdown, was somewhat surprising.
The network offered a debate in Pennsylvania on Oct. 24 or Oct. 27, saying in a statement it “would present an opportunity for each candidate to make their closing arguments.” Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier were proposed as the moderators.
But hours later on Truth Social Trump offered a litany of excuses for saying no.
He said it was “very late” in the process. He said he had agreed to a Fox News debate in early September that Harris refused. (At the time, both candidates had already agreed to a Sept. 10 debate on ABC News). He dubiously claimed he beat her the first time around, even though Harris was broadly viewed as the winner. He wrote he had a lead in the polls that was “getting bigger by the day.” And then, jumping on a comment Harris made on “The View that has been amplified by conservatives, he wrote that his opponent said “she would not do anything different than Joe Biden, so there is nothing to debate.”
CNN had also proposed a late-October debate that Harris accepted but Trump has spurned her calls, the network said. CNN’s deadline for a formal response from the two was to expire at noon on Thursday.
The Harris campaign did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.