Less than a full week after saying he was “terminating” a planned debate with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Donald Trump announced he would agree to do that debate after all — and suggested two dates for additional debates.
Trump discussed the issue of debating Harris during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. For several weeks, Trump had called into question whether another presidential debate would even occur, following President Joe Biden’s departure from the presidential race and Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket.
Trump had previously agreed to debate Biden on September 10 in a debate to air on ABC News. But he backed out of that agreement, citing unfounded claims about the network’s supposed bias against him.
“Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on Fox News, rather than very biased ABC,” Trump said in a Truth Social post last month.
Late last week, Trump made it official — at least, for a few days — by claiming he had “terminated” the ABC News debate.
But on Thursday afternoon, Trump switched his stance yet again, suggesting three dates total for debating Harris.
In addition to the September 10 ABC News debate he now says he wants to do, Trump also called for a debate six days prior to that on Fox News, and for a third date on September 25 on NBC News.
The details for the debates have yet to be hammered out, Trump added. His characterization of the NBC News debate was also uncertain, as he described it as being a “fairly full agreement” with the network.
“I think it’s very important to have debates,” Trump said during his presser.
He also implied that Harris wouldn’t agree to debate him at all.
“The other side has to agree to the terms. I don’t know if they’re going to agree,” Trump said.
Shortly after Trump’s press conference was completed, the Harris campaign stated that she would appear at one of the proposed debate dates — the one for ABC News, which had previously been agreed to. The campaign has not yet released any word on the other proposed debates.
Trump’s latest flip-flop on the debates was somewhat predictable, as he had relented in recent days over his disagreement with debating Harris on ABC News. On Wednesday, he had said during an interview on Fox News that he would “be debating her, I guess, in the near future.”
“It’s going to be announced fairly soon, but we’ll be debating her,” Trump explained.
People familiar with Trump’s thinking had also indicated that Trump was likely to agree to debates that wouldn’t be just on Fox News, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
Trump may be more willing to debate Harris due to his poll numbers against her slipping, as national polling shows that the race for president has altered considerably since Biden dropped out and Harris became the nominee. A debate is still a gambit for Trump, who many commentators noted had a poor debate performance against Biden (though not as disastrous as Biden’s performance), but might be necessary for him in order to regain the narrative in the presidential election season.
According to an aggregate of data from FiveThirtyEight, Harris leads Trump by nearly 2 points — still within the margin of error for most polls, but a huge turnaround for Democrats compared to when Biden was in the race just a few weeks ago.
Although the race is still very tight, Harris is also gaining ground in a number of swing states. In Wisconsin, a poll published this week finds her leading Trump by 8 points among likely voters when third party candidates are considered, and in a head-to-head matchup in Georgia, the two are tied.
The momentum shift is so significant that Cook Political Report has shifted the predictions for three swing states in a positive direction for Harris, switching Arizona, Georgia and Nevada from “lean Republican” to toss-up status.
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