WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris is criticizing Republican Party candidate Donald Trump for not agreeing to another presidential debate before voting ends on Nov. 5. But he doesn’t appear to be changing his mind.
“Let’s have another debate,” Harris, the Democratic nominee, said Sunday. “There’s more to talk about, and the voters of America deserve to hear the conversations that I think we should be having about the substance, the issues, the policy.”
Harris and Trump debated for the first time September 10, but both campaigns have yet to reach an agreement with another news organization to host a second debate. Two days after their only debate to date, Trump decided would not agree to any other.
Harris-Walz campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon released a written statement this weekend announcing that Harris had agreed to the Oct. 23 CNN debate and urged Trump to do so as well.
“Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate,” Dillon wrote. “It’s the same format and layout as the CNN debate he attended and won in June, where he praised CNN’s moderators, rules, and viewership.”
Trump downplayed the issue during rally on Saturday in North Carolina, saying it was “too late” because early and mail-in voting had already begun in some states.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden held their final debate October 22nd.
Four years earlier, when Trump and Hillary Clinton were running for the Oval Office, they debated on September 26, October 9 and October 19.
In an attempt to get Trump into the debate, the Democratic National Committee paid for mobile billboards calling him “chicken” and showing him dressed as a yellow chicken. Those billboards, as well as another trying to link him to Project 2025, will go up in Pennsylvania Monday evening before a campaign stop.
DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman said in a statement: chicken billboards that Trump previously said he would debate anywhere, anytime.
“The American people deserve another opportunity to hear Vice President Harris and Donald Trump lay out their starkly different visions for our country before Election Day,” Rahman wrote. “Instead, Trump is busy hiding from the American people because he knows they will reject his Project 2025 agenda, which would raise taxes on the middle class, ban abortion nationwide, and use the federal government to seize virtually unlimited power over our daily lives.”
However, Harris and Trump are both in conversations with CBS’s “60 Minutes” for in-depth interviews that will air back-to-back on October 7.
The vice presidential candidates are scheduled to debate Oct. 1 in New York, hosted by CBS. It will be the last debate of the cycle unless Trump changes his mind.
Trump, Harris, VP’s Associates in Swing States
Campaign travel will continue to be a major issue for Republicans and Democrats this week, with just over six weeks left until voting ends.
Harris is expected to rally her supporters in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday.
Trump will be in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday to talk about his tax plans, then on Wednesday he will travel to Mint Hill, North Carolina. Then on Friday he has two stops in Michigan; one in Walker and the other in Warren.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is expected to hold a campaign event in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Tuesday.
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, will not be on Capitol Hill in the final week of the session before the election, but will hit the campaign trail.
Vance is scheduled to arrive in Traverse City, Michigan, on Wednesday, then stop at two locations in Georgia on Thursday and travel to Newton, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
