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Donald Trump has agreed to debate Kamala Harris on September 4 after the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee challenged her Republican counterpart.
Late on Friday, Trump announced on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he had accepted an offer from Fox News to hold the debate in Pennsylvania with anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.
“If for any reason Kamala is unwilling or unable to debate on that date, I have agreed with Fox to do a major Town Hall on the same 4 September evening,” Trump wrote.
Trump said the rules would be similar to his previous debate with Mr Biden – but include “a full arena audience”.
Last week, Harris said she was “ready” to go head-to-head with the former president on the debate stage, and accused him of “backpedaling” on his previous commitment to debate President Joe Biden on September 10 on ABC News.
Trump lamented on Friday that he was having to face a new Democratic candidate after Biden announced on July 21 he would withdraw his campaign for re-election, and backed his vice president for the top of the ticket.
“I spent hundreds of millions of dollars, time, and effort fighting Joe, and when I won the debate, they threw a new candidate into the ring. Not fair,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “But it is what it is!”
“Nevertheless, different candidate or not, their bad policies are the same, and this will be strongly revealed at the 4 September debate,” he added.
Trump emerged with a clear advantage from his June 27 debate with Mr Biden, whose faltering performance renewed voters’ deep concerns about his age and ultimately led to the president’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.
Trump has previously said that he would not debate Harris because she was not the official candidate. On Friday, Harris secured the delegate votes needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
She reached the requisite 2,350 delegate votes during a virtual roll call vote ahead of this month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Harris said she was honoured to be the presumptive Democratic nominee. “The tireless work of our delegates, our state leaders, and our staff has been pivotal to making this moment possible,” she said.
Trump has previously claimed that he didn’t need to debate his Democratic counterpart because he is leading in the polls and voters already knew where he and his Democratic rival stood on issues.
“Well, I want to,” he told Fox Business Network. “Right now I say, ‘Why should I do a debate?’ I’m leading in the polls, and everybody knows her, everybody knows me.”
Source: independent.co.uk
