The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced on Thursday that she will hold two televised debates with her Republican rival Donald Trump, while the two candidates for vice president will face off once, in an effort by the campaign to put an end to the ongoing tensions over this issue.
The candidates had agreed to hold one debate on Sept. 10 and another between their vice presidential running mates on Oct. 1. But the Trump campaign was pushing for two more debates in September and an additional vice presidential showdown.
“The debate discussion has ended. The Donald Trump campaign has accepted our proposal for three debates, two presidential and one vice presidential,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.
“Assuming Donald Trump does participate in the September 10 debate,” she added, Harris’ running mate Tim Walz would debate Trump’s vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance on October 1, and then there would be another Trump-Harris showdown later in October.
Harris, the first woman to hold the office of vice president, seeks to make history by becoming the first woman elected president of the United States, and she is rushing to introduce herself to the public before November 5, the date of the presidential election.
She and Walz will head to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week on the back of strong starts for both, who have managed to reverse Trump’s lead in the polls and draw huge donations and crowds to their rallies.
CBS posted on its X social media platform on Wednesday that it had offered four potential vice presidential debates in September and October to Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Vance, the senator from Ohio.
The two candidates accepted the October 1 date, which comes after early voting begins in several states, but Vance proposed holding a debate before that on September 18, which CNN offered to host.
He told Fox News earlier that he would not have “one of these phony debates… that don’t have a real audience.”
ABC News will host the Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10 after the former president declined to do so, citing a legal dispute with its executives.
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