(CNN) – Does Donald Trump really want his running mate, JD Vance, to have the last word in this fall’s debates? Or does Trump want that opportunity for himself?
That is one of the questions now on the table after Vice President Kamala Harris challenged Trump this Saturday to a second debate hosted by CNN next month.
The only agreed-upon debate remaining this presidential election season is the Oct. 1 showdown between vice presidential candidates Vance and Tim Walz.
CBS is hosting the vice president debate and allowing other networks to simulcast the meeting, as CNN did in June and ABC did earlier this month. The contrasts between Walz, 60, and Vance, 40, will no doubt be fascinating.
But historically, the vice president debate has never been the last of an election cycle; running mates often appear among the debates between the candidates at the top of the list.
Of course, this year’s election cycle has been unusual for many reasons, including the earlier general election debate between President Joe Biden and Trump, and Harris’ late ascension as a candidate.
But it sure would seem anticlimactic to have Walz and Vance in charge of the last debate of the cycle.
Several television networks have competed to hold additional presidential debates this fall. Harris’ campaign signaled she would be interested, but only after the vice-presidential debate.
CNN offered to host Harris and Trump on October 23 in Atlanta, the site of the Biden-Trump showdown in June. (Trump said he won that debate and Biden dropped out of the race three weeks later, so returning to the Atlanta studio could be tempting for him.)
This Saturday afternoon, Harris publicly agreed to participate on October 23 and encouraged Trump to join her.
Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement that “Trump should have no problem accepting” since “it is the same format and setup as the CNN debate he attended and said he won in June, when he praised CNN’s moderators, rules and ratings.”
NBC, the largest television network that has not yet held a debate this year, also showed interest in hosting Harris and Trump. Harris’ advisers may have calculated that Trump would be more willing to accept the CNN event.
But Trump’s campaign quickly responded Saturday by reiterating the Republican’s statement that there will be no other debate, pointing to his social media post from last week that said, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”
At a rally this Saturday afternoon, Trump stated that October 23 is “too late” because “the voting has already started.”
But, as political scientist Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, observed in A debate closer to election day “could influence the small percentage of undecided voters and also motivate (or demotivate) many on both sides.”
The last presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle was held on October 22.
Still, Trump cares a lot about TV ratings, so you have to wonder if he’ll really pass up the opportunity to reach 60 to 80 million viewers once again before Election Day.
This year’s first two presidential debates were indisputably valuable to the tens of millions of voters who tuned in.
Americans would benefit from another debate, CNN said in a statement Saturday, because the public would “hear more from these candidates as they make their final decision.”
