Will Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Debate Again? Here’s What We Know

After Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump squared off in the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10, attention has already shifted to when a rematch will happen—if at all.

While the Harris campaign was on the fence before the ABC debate whether they would take part in another, immediately after the first face off, which observers widely deemed a victory for Harris, an eagerness to do it again was clear. “Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement right after the debate. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”

Trump, however, appears to have ruled out taking part in another debate. On Truth Social on Sept. 12, he posted: “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” Trump said during an interview with Telemundo Arizona that day that he and Harris already “discussed everything” in their first showdown. “We just don’t think it’s necessary,” he said.

Harris suggested otherwise. “I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” she said at a campaign rally the same day.

On Sept. 21, O’Malley Dillon announced that Harris accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Trump on Oct. 23. CNN hosted the debate in June between Trump and then-candidate President Joe Biden before Biden dropped out of the race following a disastrous performance, and Trump had praised the network. O’Malley Dillon said that Trump “should have no problem agreeing to this debate.” Harris also posted on X that she “will gladly accept” a second debate on Oct. 23, and that she hopes Trump will join her.

But Trump still turned that down. “The problem with another debate is that it's just too late,” he said at a campaign rally on Sept. 21 in Wilmington, N.C. “Voting has already started.” In 2020 and 2016, Trump participated in debates in late October after early voting had already begun.

The next day, Harris pushed Trump again. “Join me on the debate stage, let’s have another debate,” she told reporters. “There’s more to talk about, and the voters of America deserve to hear the conversations that I think we should be having on substance, on issues, on policies.” At a fundraiser earlier, Harris reportedly said, “My opponent seems to be looking for an excuse to avoid when he should accept.”

Trump’s backing off of a rematch comes after his campaign had initially challenged Harris to multiple debates. But the Republican candidate’s tune changed following the Sept. 10 debate. After stepping off the stage, Trump spoke to Sean Hannity on Fox News and suggested that Harris wanted a second go because “she lost.” As for whether he wanted to face off again, Trump said he’d “have to think about it. … If you won the debate, I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it. Why should I do another debate?” Trump repeated similar claims on Truth Social that Harris only wanted a rematch because “she lost so badly.”

Trump, like many of his allies, criticized ABC’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, claiming the debate was “three against one” because of their real-time fact-checks of his false claims.

“Maybe if it was on a fair network,” Trump said, when pressed by Hannity about doing another debate against Harris. “You would be fair, actually, you want to know the truth,” Trump said, suggesting he would participate in a debate if it were to be moderated by Hannity, a Trump supporter and confidante.

Fox announced on Sept. 10 that it invited both campaigns to take part in a debate on the network in October, moderated by news anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. But Trump did not like the proposal—instead pitching his preferred Fox personalities to moderate. “I’d love to have somebody else other than Martha and Bret,” he said over the phone on Fox & Friends on the morning of Sept. 11. “I’d love to have, frankly, Sean [Hannity] or Jesse [Watters] or Laura [Ingraham].”

Trump added that CNN, the moderator of his debate with Biden, “was much more honorable” than ABC. (CNN’s moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did not fact-check the candidates on stage, though CNN did post fact-checks online.)

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told CNN around the same time on Sept. 11 that “President Trump has already said that he’s going to do three debates [with Harris]: We had the September 4th debate, which was going to be on Fox and Kamala Harris was a no-show; we had last night; and President Trump already said that, on September 25th, we would do a debate on NBC.” (In August, the Harris campaign said it would only participate in two presidential debates: ABC’s on Sept. 10, and another in October for which the details had yet to be finalized.)

Asked whether Trump would join the CNN debate on Oct. 23, campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung referred the media to Trump’s comments on Truth Social.

Harris’ and Trump’s participation in the ABC debate was the result of months of back-and-forth between both camps. Multiple networks, including Fox and NBC, have proposed dates for potential future debates, but only one remaining 2024 debate has been mutually agreed on by both campaigns so far: a vice presidential debate between Trump’s running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Harris’ running mate Minn. Gov. Tim Walz.