Donald Trump on Saturday refused the offer to debate again with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris before the American presidential election.
• Also read: What if Trump actually doesn’t want to win this election?
“It’s too late to have a new debate, the voting has already started,” the Republican candidate said at a campaign rally in North Carolina, referring to the start of early voting in some states across the country.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris challenged her Republican opponent Donald Trump to debate again on CNN on October 23, a few days before the American presidential election.
“Vice President Harris is ready to take on Donald Trump on stage once again,” her campaign wrote in a statement.
The former Republican president has so far rejected the idea of facing his rival again in the November 5 election.
“Won”
By all accounts, she was the one who dominated the debate on September 10, constantly drawing her rival toward the subjects most likely to hurt his ego: participation in his rallies, the disaffection of his former political allies, his international reputation…
This did not prevent Donald Trump from claiming that, on the contrary, it was he who had “won” the debate, while attacking the impartiality of the two ABC journalists who moderated the exchanges.
Donald Trump’s team did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests for comment on the possibility that he would ultimately accept this new exchange.
“There will be no third debate,” the Republican candidate had asserted in mid-September, including his televised exchange in June with President Joe Biden, then still a candidate, in addition to his confrontation with the vice president.
Seven states to win
With 45 days to go until the election, the outcome of the presidential election remains more uncertain than ever, with Donald Trump and Kamala Harris neck and neck in several of the seven key states where everything will probably be decided.
The septuagenarian Republican will be holding a campaign rally early this afternoon in one of them: North Carolina.
The former president won this southeastern state, bordered by the Atlantic, in his duel with Joe Biden in 2020.
But her new rival Kamala Harris is counting on African-Americans and young people, two electorates remotivated by her candidacy, to win in November.
Especially since Donald Trump could suffer from a scandal targeting a candidate for governor, whom the Republican billionaire has long ardently supported.
Mark Robinson, who is aiming to become the state’s first black governor, is accused, according to CNN, of having published controversial messages, on Nazism and slavery, on a pornographic site during the 2010s.
While the presidential election is on November 5, America has actually already started voting. Polls opened Friday for the start of early voting in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota.
