Why Donald Trump refuses debate rematch against Kamala Harris

Donald Trump sensationally declared ‘NO DEBATE’, but the analyst who accurately predicted Joe Biden’s withdrawal says it’ll still likely happen. Here’s why.

Donald Trump’s refusal to face Kamala Harris in a debate rematch may be an elaborate ruse to negotiate a home-court advantage on Fox News.

The art of the deal: Political analyst Mark Halperin, who reported Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the election in detail three days before it was official, predicted that Mr Trump is “playing hard to get”.

■ “If you go to a Chinese restaurant, you can expect to get Chinese food. If he agrees to do a debate on NBC or CBS, no matter who the moderators are, he might not get a different result than he got at ABC,” Mr Halperin said.

■ “Saying no today doesn’t mean he has to say no tomorrow,” he added. “Don’t assume there’s no debate. And don’t assume he might not be probing to see how desperate she is, ‘Maybe I can get a debate on Fox’.”

Why it matters: In the immediate aftermath of the debate, Donald Trump claimed the showdown was “rigged” and suggested Ms Harris seemed “awfully familiar with the questions”.

■ In 2016, CNN fired contributor Donna Brazile after email leaks revealed she shared debate questions with Hillary Clinton. Ms Brazile was later hired by ABC News, where she also works as a contributor.

■ “Absolutely not,” an ABC News spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “Harris was not given any questions before the debate.”

She said, he said: The Harris campaign and Republican leadership agree that another debate was still an open question, and that Mr Trump was just posturing.

■ “We do not consider this the last word from him,” Harris campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told Playbook. “He is just working through his feelings after losing very badly Tuesday night.”

■ The second-ranking Republican in the Senate, John Thune, said “it would be helpful” for Trump to agree to a debate, saying they didn’t get deep “enough into the substance of their differences”.

The bigger picture: While most metrics show Ms Harris handily won the debate among most viewers, there is scant or mixed polling evidence that her style over substance performance moved the undecided independents in the handful of toss-up states that will decide the election.

■ Allies are now pressing the vice president to do more interviews to fill in the gaps voters have on her policies.

■ “I don’t think you can hide for 56 more days from media interviews,” a Democratic strategist speaking on condition of anonymity told NBC News. “The biggest issues with her are because people still don’t know enough about her. It’s going to take a lot more than one debate and one CNN interview to scratch the itch.”

Originally published as Why Donald Trump refuses debate rematch against Kamala Harris