Trump says he will not debate Harris again

Donald Trump will not debate Kamala Harris again, the former president said Thursday.

“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social, referencing the first as his June debate with President Joe Biden and the second as his debate with Harris on Tuesday.

Harris’ campaign, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, had challenged Trump to an additional debate immediately following their showdown earlier this week, and Fox News offered to host it.

“We owe it to the voters to have another debate,” Harris said Thursday at a rally in North Carolina minutes after Trump’s announcement.

But Trump on Wednesday told “Fox & Friends” he “probably” would not agree to another debate with the network and on Thursday confirmed he would not debate the vice president again at all, citing what he characterized as a decisive victory in a contest widely viewed as having gone favorably for Harris.

“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, “I WANT A REMATCH,”” Trump wrote Thursday.

Both campaigns claimed they won Tuesday’s face off, during which Harris largely managed to sidestep questions about the Biden administration’s records and her own past positions by getting under Trump’s skin, spurring the former president to go on meandering rants about crowd sizes and unsubstantiated claims that Haitian migrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets.

Immediately following the debate, Trump told reporters in the spin room “this was my best debate.” But he has bashed ABC News for what he called “a rigged deal,” citing a handful of times moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked him live. But even some Republicans acknowledged that Trump’s performance had been lackluster, with Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) calling it “a missed opportunity” and some GOP strategists telling POLITICO they were not impressed.

Asked Wednesday on “Fox & Friends” about Fox’s offer of a debate moderated by Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier, he derided those anchors and offered Fox opinion pundits Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham instead.

Trump’s team was uncertain about whether or not the former president would be willing to commit to another debate.

On Wednesday morning, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump who helped with negotiations for the ABC News debate, told CNN the Trump campaign had already committed to a debate with NBC on September 25.

And later that day, Lara Trump, the RNC co-chair, said her father in law would be open to another.

“I think he’s very open, I think the American people deserve to see these two people and hear their ideas,” she told Fox News.

Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, released a memo after the debate claiming the former president actually received a boost after his debate performance, which was widely panned by Republicans as a missed opportunity.

“We found that despite the best efforts of Kamala Harris and media to portray the debate as some kind of overwhelming win for her, voters did not see it this way as support for her remained flat,” Fabrizio wrote in a “confidential memorandum” that was sent to reporters. “The only change we saw was a 2-point bump for President Trump in both ballot configurations.”

Harris’ campaign on Wednesday posted to X a full recording of the debate, calling it “our newest ad.”