Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia. There is virtual unanimity on this point both in the polls and among experts. Restrained euphoria has gripped Democrats, while some critical voices have been raised against Trump, even within his party. There is one person, however, who insists that Trump won: himself. The former president, who also refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election, announced this Thursday through his social network, Truth, that there will not be a new face-to-face against Harris.
“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he tweeted in capital letters. A new debate would be the second confrontation with Harris, but the third duel for the presidency of this campaign if we take into account the one with Joe Biden on June 27 in Atlanta (Georgia). Meanwhile, Kamala Harris, in North Carolina, where she was giving her first rally after the duel with Trump, said: “I think we owe the voters another debate.”
Trump has been on the offensive on his social network, although using falsehoods as an argument. “When a boxer loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are: ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ The polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Radical Left Candidate of the Democrats, on Tuesday night, and she immediately asked for a Second Debate,” he wrote, although the polls say the opposite. There is unanimity in the minimally serious flash polls that were carried out.
The CNN/SSRS poll gave Harris the win with 63% to Donald Trump’s 37%. The Republican-funded SoCal Strategies/On Point Politics/Red Eagle Politics poll narrowed the lead to 53%-34%. The YouGov poll had Harris’s lead 54%-31%, still in favor of the Democratic candidate, who won by an average of 23 points, despite Trump’s insistence to the contrary, which has already been parodied by comedians.
Kamala Harris cornered her rival, put him on the defensive, positioned her messages and acted as a well-trained prosecutor who subjected her accusations to a rival who took all her bait. Attacking his ego became a magic formula to throw him off balance. However, the effect that all this will have on voters is much more uncertain.
“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face at the ballot box this fall: moving forward with Kamala Harris or moving backward with Trump,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement after the debate. “That’s what they saw tonight, and what they should see in a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” she added.
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Trump, for his part, has been dodging the issue for two days until his firm refusal. On Tuesday, in his surprise appearance in the press room, he already said that Harris wanted to debate again because she was defeated. He insisted on the same idea on Wednesday in an interview on Fox News. “When a boxer loses, he says: ‘I want a rematch.’ I don’t know if I want to do another debate,” he said. Now, again with that argument, he rejects the third debate.
The former president complained that ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir had been “very unfair.” In Atlanta, Trump congratulated the CNN anchors. In Philadelphia, he protested that it had been a “three-on-one” debate. The winning team doesn’t usually complain about the referee.
The only thing left to do is the debate between the vice presidential candidates, Tim Walz for the Democrats and JD Vance for the Republicans. It will be held on October 1 in New York, produced and broadcast by CBS.
In the 2020 election, there were two face-to-faces between Trump and Biden. In 2016, there were three duels between Trump himself and Hillary Clinton. This one closes with two debates. The first will go down in history for having led to Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race for re-election. The second, held on Tuesday, will be the only one held by whoever wins the White House after the November 5 elections.
Harris’ campaign has also scored another success, this time at the cash register. Donations in the 24 hours following the debate reached $47 million (about 42.5 million euros). Democrats are using clips from the debate to launch ads for their candidate.
