Harris-Walz Communications Director Michael Tyler said Sunday that the American people “deserve a second debate” and signaled he was “confident” there would be another one.
In an interview on Fox News’s “MediaBuzz,” host Howard Kurtz pressed Tyler about his skepticism of former President Trump’s insistence that he won’t do another debate, asking, “Why do you think he might change his mind?”
“Yeah, that’s clearly what he’s saying since the debate ended,” Tyler said about Trump declining to participate in another debate, “but I think he’s even begun to hedge a little bit since then.”
“The vice president has been very clear: She thinks that the American people deserve another opportunity to see what they saw on Tuesday night, right, that clear contrast of visions between her, who wants to take this country forward and Donald Trump who wants to take us backwards, through his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Tyler continued.
“Obviously, they’re playing games right now, but at the end of the day, we believe that the American people deserve a second debate and we’re confident that’s what they’ll see in October,” he added.
Trump said Thursday he would not participate in another debate with Harris.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” Trump posted on Truth Social, asserting that he won Tuesday’s debate with Harris despite some polls showing otherwise.
Trump and Harris debated on Tuesday. The vice president repeatedly attempted to get under Trump’s skin, often succeeding as the former president went on tangents about crowd size, Biden and a conspiracy theory about migrants abducting pets in an Ohio town.
Harris’s campaign almost immediately called for a second debate between the two candidates. Trump waffled, suggesting he wasn’t inclined to agree to another one.
The former president had previously accepted, when Biden was the Democratic nominee, a Fox News debate in early September and an NBC debate in late September. Harris’s campaign said a second debate was dependent on the two candidates both participating in Tuesday’s event, hosted by ABC News.
