Kamala Harris doesn\u2019t get to decide if Donald Trump debates her a second time. But she will attempt to extract a cost if he won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Her campaign has hired a plane to trail the words \u201cTrump\u2019s Punting on 2nd Debate\u201d over Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Saturday night, where Trump is expected to attend the much anticipated 7:30 p.m. Eastern time football matchup between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama.<\/p>\n
For the millions of football fans who tune in from home, she will also run a new ad nationally on ABC that hammers home her point.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinners never back down from a challenge. Champions know it\u2019s anytime, anyplace. But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home,\u201d the narrator says at the start of the spot, over images of a football game and washed-out footage of Trump missing a golf putt.<\/p>\n
The 30-second ad ends with footage of Harris challenging him to another rally, with the words \u201cWhen we fight, we win\u201d hanging on a sign in the background.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, Donald, I do hope you\u2019ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage. If you\u2019ve got something to say, say it to my face,\u201d Harris says.<\/p>\n
The new ad and flyover is just the latest step in a Harris campaign strategy to shift from encouraging Trump to attend another debate to mocking him with increasing ferocity if he will not. Harris advisers say their ultimate goal is to get him back onstage with Harris before a national audience. But if he continues to say no, they plan to use that fact to undercut his self-description as a strong leader who is best able to run the country.<\/p>\n
The prime-time matchup between Georgia and Alabama \u2014 who have together won three of the past four college football national championships \u2014 is expected to be one of the biggest college games of the fall season, with significant viewership in the key battleground state of Georgia.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter where Trump looks tonight \u2014 whether it\u2019s up in the sky or at the TV in his luxury box \u2014 he won\u2019t be able to escape the truth: Trump is running away from a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris because he doesn\u2019t want the American people to see just how weak and unpopular he and his Project 2025 agenda are,\u201d Harris-Walz communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement, with a reference to a conservative policy plan that Trump says does not reflect his agenda. \u201cBut winners don\u2019t back down from a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign announced its desire for a second debate minutes after the first matchup between the two candidates concluded, a plan that the campaign had decided upon before the debate even began. Previously, Trump had proposed three matchups between the candidates, but Harris advisers said they would discuss subsequent meetings only after the first on Sept. 10.<\/p>\n
Trump has argued that the only reason Harris wants to get back on the debate stage is that she performed so poorly the first time. He declared victory after their first meeting on ABC, falsely claiming \u201cevery poll\u201d showed him as the winner, while citing unscientific web surveys that counted the opinions of visitors to conservative news sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, \u2018I WANT A REMATCH,\u2019\u201d he wrote on social media following his debate with Harris and previously with President Joe Biden. \u201cKamala should focus on what she should have done during the last almost four year period. There will be no third debate!\u201d<\/p>\n
But independent polls showed Harris as the clear winner of the first matchup, measured both in the share of people who said she performed better and in the increase in her favorability rating among those who watched. National and battleground state election polling since then have shown slight movement in the race in favor of Harris. But the race remains within the margin of error in most states, with Trump in a much stronger position nationally than he was at this point in the 2020 contest.<\/p>\n
Harris advisers, flush with cash from record late-summer fundraising, have made the staging of major events that get the attention of voters a top priority of their campaign. They have also targeted major sporting events for their advertising, with significant advertising around the Olympics and the Copa Am\u00e9rica soccer tournament and plans for professional sports advertising in the fall. The Democratic National Committee has purchased digital billboards outside two college football games this weekend in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
While Trump is universally known, Harris entered the race this summer as an unknown quantity for many voters.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the Harris campaign has been sending surrogates on cable news to mock Trump\u2019s rejection of another meeting in increasingly blunt terms. David Plouffe, a top strategist for Harris, has called Trump \u201cchicken man\u201d on social media because of his decision to not agree to another debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe took his lunch money last time,\u201d Harris-Walz campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu said Thursday on MSNBC. \u201cHe lost and he knows it and he\u2019s afraid of being humiliated again,\u201d Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) said days earlier.<\/p>\n
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) went even further on Sept. 21. \u201cIf you remember the first debate, he would not even look at her once. He never even glanced at her because he is a coward,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s too scared to debate her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump previously ruled out attending the Sept. 10 debate before reversing course, and Harris advisers still think he may change his mind. They have accepted an Oct. 23 date on CNN, with the same moderators and rules that Trump agreed to for his first June debate with Biden. Trump subsequently praised CNN for how it conducted that matchup, which led to Biden abandoning the race in the wake of a widely panned performance.<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign has not ruled out other possible networks, dates or moderators, including Fox News. This is a shift from the approach of Biden, who announced in the spring a list of networks where he would debate that did not include Fox News. At the time, Trump\u2019s campaign expressed concern that Biden would not agree to any debates, and the Trump campaign quickly accepted two dates under the guidelines Biden laid out.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Trump has privately asked others about whether he should reverse course and agree to another Harris debate. His 2016 campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has been privately pushing him to agree to another meeting, while allies like Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) have also said publicly that they think another debate is in Trump\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally hope he debates again,\u201d Graham said. \u201cI think the narrative is she\u2019s smart, she\u2019s talented, and I think she\u2019s a mile wide and an inch deep, and it\u2019s mostly happy talk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kamala Harris doesn\u2019t get to decide if Donald Trump debates her a second time. But she will attempt to extract a cost if he won\u2019t. Her campaign has hired a plane to trail the words \u201cTrump\u2019s Punting on 2nd Debate\u201d over Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Saturday night, where Trump is expected to attend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}