With former President Donald Trump ruling out any more presidential debates between now and Election Day, CNN shifted course Thursday and invited both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to participate in town hall events with voters.
Harris immediately accepted the network’s invitation.
“Trump may want to hide from the voters, but Vice President Harris welcomes the opportunity to share her vision for a New Way Forward for the country. She is happy to accept CNN’s invitation for a live, televised town hall on October 23 in Pennsylvania,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
The network said the town halls will take place before a live audience of persuadable and undecided voters from Pennsylvania.
“We continue to believe the American people would benefit from hearing more from the two major candidates for President of the United States and so CNN has extended invitations to both Vice President Harris and President Trump’s campaigns to participate in separate CNN Town Halls on October 23,” CNN said in a statement on Thursday.
The network previously proposed a debate between Harris and Trump in Atlanta on October 23. Harris quickly accepted the invite, but Trump repeatedly shrugged it off, despite the Harris campaign’s attempts to goad him into participating.
With the CNN offer on the table, and a Thursday deadline for a response looming, Fox News wrote to both campaigns on Wednesday and offered to host its own debate in Pennsylvania on October 24 or 27. The Harris campaign likely would have said yes to that invitation, too, if the CNN deadline passed without a deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But on Wednesday night, Trump very bluntly said “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH” in a post on Truth Social.
The Republican nominee again claimed he “won the last two debates” and said he had accepted Fox’s previous invitation to a September 4 debate, which Harris did not accept, preferring to participate in the ABC-sponsored debate on September 10 instead.
Trump has also claimed that it is “too late” for a rematch with Harris. In fact, the CNN date proposal was in line with final debates of other recent election cycles.
On Thursday afternoon, once the CNN deadline passed, the network said it was moving on and seeking to hold town halls with both candidates.
The country’s leading Spanish-language network, Univision, is broadcasting its own town hall with Harris on Thursday night and with Trump on October 16.
CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Samantha Waldenberg contributed reporting.
