Vice President Kamala Harris said on Saturday that she would be open to debating former President Donald Trump for a second time in October, ahead of the November U.S. presidential election.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s campaign, said in a statement that Harris has accepted CNN’s invitation to a debate on Oct. 23. That would be less than two weeks before the election.
“I will gladly accept a second presidential debate on October 23. I hope @realDonaldTrump will join me,” Harris wrote in an X post.
It isn’t the first time the Harris camp has proposed another match. Shortly after Harris and Trump held a debate hosted by ABC News earlier this month, O’Malley Dillon said Harris was ready for round two against him. But as Harris was raising millions of dollars following the campaign, Trump declined to face her again.
In a post on the Trump Media & Technology Group’s social network, Truth Social, the Republican presidential nominee said there would be “no third debate.”
On Saturday, a Trump campaign spokesperson referred CNBC back to Trump’s Truth Social post about there being no third debate.
“She’s done one debate,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina on Saturday. “I’ve done two. It’s too late to do another. I’d love to, in many ways, but it’s too late.”
The first 2024 debate for Trump was against the current president, Joe Biden. CNN ran the event in June. But Biden struggled on the debate stage. Democratic donors expressed concerns about Biden’s prospects, and Democratic members of Congress called on Biden to end his election bid. In August, Harris accepted the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
“Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in her statement. “It is the same format and setup as the CNN debate he attended and said he won in June, when he praised CNN’s moderators, rules and ratings.”
— CNBC’s Rebecca Picciotto contributed to this report.
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