US President Donald Trump on Saturday rejected holding a second debate against Kamala Harris before the November 5 election, saying it was “too late” with early voting already underway in some states.
Earlier in the day, Harris’s campaign said she had accepted an invitation from CNN to participate in a debate on Oct. 23. It would have been the second debate between the candidates, following the Sept. 10 debate that most experts said she won.
“The American people deserve another chance to see Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debate before they cast their votes,” her campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
“I hope he (Trump) joins me,” Harris wrote on her X account.
Trump claimed during a rally in the swing state of North Carolina that he wanted to participate in the debate – calling it “good entertainment value” – but the start of early voting in some states has deflated the idea.
“It’s too late, the voting has already started,” he added.
He told a large, enthusiastic crowd of supporters that while CNN had been “very fair” when it debated President Joe Biden in June, “it won’t be fair again.”
Vice President Harris replaced her boss at the top of the Democratic ticket after the 81-year-old Biden’s disastrous showing against Trump.
His exit from the race leaves Trump, 78, the oldest presidential candidate ever, facing Harris, 59, who is much younger.
Voting is in progress
The announcement comes Saturday as some states have already begun early voting in a painfully close race.
The outcome is expected to hinge on seven swing states, including North Carolina.
Trump addressed the crowd in the coastal city of Wilmington from behind bulletproof glass, following an apparent second assassination attempt against him.
An armed man was found at his Florida golf course last Sunday, as law enforcement foiled any plan to harm the former president.
In July, Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a gunman opened fire from the roof of a nearby building. The US Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the candidate, acknowledged on Friday that there were “shortcomings” and “complacency” in the horrific security breach.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric
Trump won North Carolina in the 2020 election against Biden.
But Harris aims to flip the southeastern state to Democrats, thanks to her support from African Americans and young voters.
Trump’s speech on Saturday reinforced the hardline anti-immigration rhetoric that has become a centerpiece of his campaign, falsely claiming that migrants are “attacking villages and cities across the Midwest.”
He also promised the audience that the United States “will reach Mars before the end of my term.”
The former president faced a new challenge in North Carolina after a bombshell report Thursday revealed that Mark Robinson, a Republican gubernatorial candidate endorsed by Trump, described himself as a “black Nazi” and made other inflammatory comments on a porn site message board more than a decade ago.
Robinson denounced the CNN report as “outrageous tabloid lies.”
The presidential race remains close, and every vote will count in an election that Trump has again refused to say he will accept if he loses.
Trump faces criminal charges for his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, after which his supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.