On Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, took to Truth Social on Thursday with a barrage of posts, totaling at least a dozen within two hours. In a series of increasingly agitated updates, the former president claimed that “polls clearly show” he won the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. He used this unsubstantiated claim to justify his refusal to participate in another debate.
Trump provided no evidence to support his assertion, which contradicts the general consensus and instant polls suggesting that VP harris clearly won the debate. He emphatically declared, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” in a post marked by all-caps fury.
Kamala Harris quickly responded, pointing out that only one debate has occurred so far and emphasizing that both candidates “owe it to voters” to engage in another debate.
If Trump’s refusal to debate Harris again is indeed a measure of his victory, the rest of the Republican Party seems out of sync with this view. Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) had already suggested before the debate in Philadelphia that refusal to participate in a second debate might be an indicator of losing.
“You want to know who won?” Collins asked, hypothetically. “Find out who refuses to do a second debate.”
During his posting spree, Trump also used his platform to endorse Republican candidates Bernie Moreno for the U.S. Senate in Ohio and Kari Lake for the Senate in Arizona. Additionally, he posted a series of AI-generated images of cats and amplified a false and racist narrative about Haitian immigrants in Ohio allegedly abducting and consuming pets.
