Trump declares there will be ‘NO THIRD DEBATE’ with Kamala Harris after campaign releases memo touting gains in ‘target states’
Former President Donald Trump declared Thursday that there will be “NO THIRD DEBATE” with Vice President Kamala Harris, half an hour after an internal campaign poll showed his Democratic opponent got no polling bounce in key states while Trump got a “2-point bump” from their verbal sparring match on ABC News earlier this week.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are ‘I WANT A REMATCH,'” Trump, 78, posted on his Truth Social. “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate.”
After being a “no-show” at a pre-planned Fox News debate that President Biden negotiated, Harris also “refused to do NBC & CBS” debates against him, Trump claimed.
“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he roared, referring to Biden’s June 27 debate debacle as the first and the ABC debate as the second.
“Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate,” the VP posted on X in response an hour later. “We owe it to the voters to have another debate.”
“We’ve done two,” Trump insisted to The Post. “You know, one against Biden, one against Comrade Kamala. I did well. I did really well.”
“So we just don’t think that there’s any need for it,” he said. “The debate polls, every single poll, had us winning it.”
No public poll of debate watchers has indicated that Trump got the better of Harris, 59, Tuesday night. However, at least two surveys — including one commissioned by The Post — showed that the veep’s support remained flat from before the Philadelphia forum.
In addition, six of 10 undecided voters in a Reuters-organized focus group said following the debate that they favored the Republican nominee.
“KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD,” Trump offered in his Truth Social post. “She and Crooked Joe have destroyed our Country, with millions of criminals and mentally deranged people pouring into the USA, totally unchecked and unvetted, and with Inflation bankrupting our Middle Class.”
“Everyone knows this, and all of the other problems caused by Kamala and Joe – It was discussed in great detail during the First Debate with Joe, and the Second Debate with Comrade Harris,” he said.
Trump campaign officials had lobbied for a Sept. 25 debate on NBC News, but Harris’ team never confirmed she would show for that.
The veep’s crew also turned down a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News, prompting Trump to hold a town hall event in battleground Pennsylvania with host Sean Hannity instead.
The 45th president unloaded in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning about the “unfair” ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis.
Catch up on The Post’s debate coverage
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- Read Trump’s and Harris’ closing statements from their first presidential debate
- Harris campaign calls for second debate after Trump’s performance is panned by critics
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- Harris tries to pin Project 2025 on Trump during first minutes of presidential debate
- Trump claims Harris supports abortions in the ‘ninth month — and she doesn’t deny it’ during presidential debate
- Everything to know about the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris presidential debate
“It was three on one. … It was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything and not correcting with her,” he said. “I thought I did a great job.”
Trump got the “2-point bump” in internal polling conducted after his debate with Harris, his campaign announced Thursday.
The survey of likely general election voters in seven swing states showed the two-point boost in both a hypothetical six-way race and head-to-head matchup between Trump, 78, and Harris, 59, a campaign memo from pollsters Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis shows.
Trump leads Harris, 49% to 46%, on a ballot that includes Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver and independent candidates Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., each of whom received 1% or less support.
In a one-on-one race, the former president beats the current vice president, 50% to 47%.
Before their verbal sparring match, Trump and Harris were tied at 46% on the six-candidate ballot and at 48% on the two-candidate ballot.
Another 3% were undecided before and remained so after the debate.
“Clearly, target state voters were not impressed by Kamala Harris’ empty platitudes and while the media would have people believe she is cruising to victory, this couldn’t be farther from the truth,” the memo states.
The Trump campaign survey took place on Wednesday night and included opinions from 1,893 voters in the seven target states.
The earlier poll from last week involved 5,600 likely voters in the states. No margin of error was listed.
Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada remain the most hotly contested battleground states, though the Trump campaign memo did not specify which were the “target states.”
Though RFK Jr. dropped out and endorsed Trump last month, he remains on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Trump team saw the Kennedy scion’s endorsement as key to its strategy in winning several swing states, and pollsters previously predicted to The Post that it would “benefit” the former president’s campaign.
“Most of Kennedy’s left-leaning support had already dispersed to Harris,” said Dave Wasserman, a senior editor and elections analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “So this could represent a meaningful benefit for Trump.”
A Leger poll commissioned by The Post after the Trump-Harris debate on Tuesday found that the Democratic presidential candidate won the war of words, 50% to 29%, but gained no extra support.
By contrast, Trump jumped up a percentage point, putting him behind Harris, 50% to 47%.
Only 3% said they were not voting for either candidate.
