Newsmax political analyst Mark Halperin said Friday that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is calling for a second debate with former President Donald Trump because her performance in the first debate fell short.
Trump announced on Thursday that he does not intend to participate in another debate with Harris, despite her campaign’s request for an October rematch after their Tuesday showdown. Halperin, on “Wake Up America,” claimed the Harris campaign believes another debate is necessary because she failed to effectively present herself or demonstrate her competence to voters during the initial face-off.
WATCH:
Mark Halperin Says ‘Dirty Little Secret’ Is Harris Campaign Pushing For Rematch Because She Didn’t Do Well Enough pic.twitter.com/VNdxOYdWDX
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 13, 2024
“I think he’s trying to get the debate on friendly terms and see if he can force Kamala Harris, because the dirty little secret is the Harris campaign wants another debate because they think they need it, because she didn’t do a full, adequate job of introducing herself to the country, convincing them that she’s ready to be president and she’s got specific plans,” Halperin said. “These post-debate polls are not of undecided voters. They’re of all voters. And undecided voters are different than all voters. To do a poll of undecided voters, though, is extremely expensive because it costs a lot of money to find undecided voters to poll.”
Halperin pointed to reporting by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to suggest that undecided voters “anecdotally” were not “as impressed with Kamala Harris as all the MSNBC anchors were about how she did.” The analyst also said that nobody he has spoken to anticipates a polling shift due to the debate and added Trump should not square off with Harris again if the moderators will be as active against him as they were on ABC News on Tuesday.
Halperin predicted there will be another debate and “the compromise will be they’ll do it on NBC and they’ll try to find people at NBC who aren’t biased.”
CNN’s Van Jones warned Friday that Trump would likely be a tougher opponent in a second debate with Harris.
“If she debates him again, he will be a different guy. He usually screws up the first debate and gets better in the second debate,” Jones said. “I think he underestimated her. I think he had a bunch of nut jobs around him on his plane, getting him all psyched up about eating dogs and all kind of crazy stuff. And so when he got there, he was not in the right mindset and she whooped him.”
“I think he doesn’t like losing and I think he knows he lost and I think if he does come back, he’s going to be much more formidable, but also Kamala Harris is getting better every single day, every time she touches the microphone, she gets better,” he added.
The former president previously challenged Harris to three debates, but the vice president only agreed to the ABC News face-off.
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