Even though Kamala Harris says she has accepted a "debate" with Donald Trump on CNN, it seems as though she did not bother to tell the former president about that beforehand.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
During their first debate, Vice President Kamala Harris successfully provoked Donald Trump into looking like an angry, old weirdo. Now, she is trying to goad him into a repeat performance.
Harris did so by taking a page from the former president’s own playbook. After President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Trump announced that he had “accepted an invitation” from Fox News for a debate with Harris.
Back then, we noted that it was a bit strange that he seemed to have negotiated the details of that debate with the right-wing “news” network but not Harris. The duel never took place and was instead turned into a “town hall” with Trump and MAGA megaphone Sean Hannity.
Now, the vice president is trying to pull the same move.
“Vice President Harris is ready for another opportunity to share a stage with Donald Trump, and she has accepted CNN’s invitation to debate on October 23,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
She noted that having only one debate would be unprecedented (of course, Trump has already participated in two debates).
It is understandable that Harris will want to go head-to-head with the former president again. By all accounts (apart from right-wing online polls), she won the first debate handily… in large part because she managed to trigger Trump into abandoning anything resembling a strategy. Instead, he rambled on and on about migrants eating pets while Harris was seen laughing at him. That, in turn, has become the most memorable moment of the debate (as well as a viral song).
To make things even more enticing for the former president, the Harris campaign noted that this debate would feature the same format and setup as the one held in June, which was also hosted by CNN.
We weren’t a fan of this ploy when Trump tried it, and we are not a fan of it now.
If you want to debate another candidate, then ask them and don’t simply set something up with a network.
And, just like it didn’t work for Trump, it seems as though it will also not work for Harris.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina, the former president seemed to indicate that he is not interested in a rematch because it would be “too late” (for reference, the last debates in 2016 and 2020, in which Trump participated, were held on October 19 and 22 respectively).
His campaign may disagree. It is quite possible that he will need a boost less than two weeks before the election. Of course, Trump doesn’t think so because he probably genuinely believes that he won the first debate.
The end result is that there likely won’t be a Harris vs. Trump II, and, in light of how much actual policy was discussed last time around, that will only be a loss in terms of the debate’s entertainment value.
