When former President Donald Trump looks up from his seat in Bryant-Denny Stadium Saturday night during the Alabama-Georgia football game, he may see more than just 100,000 fans watching a high-stakes college football showdown. That’s because Vice President Kamala Harris plans to troll her opponent over his refusal to debate her for a second time — from the skies.
The Harris campaign has arranged to have a small plane fly over Tuscaloosa during the game with a banner declaring, “Trump’s Punting on 2nd Debate.”
It’s a challenge that won’t just be visible to those cheering on the Crimson Tide or the Georgia Bulldogs from the stands, a campaign official tells CNN. The Harris campaign will also air a national ad during one of the most highly anticipated games of college football where she calls on the former president to meet her on the debate stage one more time.
“Winners never back down from a challenge,” the ad’s narrator says. “Champions know it’s any time, any place. But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home.”
The vice president’s campaign has accepted CNN’s invitation for a second debate next month, but Trump has so far declined to accept, arguing the October 23 date is “too late” for another face-off because early voting has already started in some states. Both the 2020 and 2016 races included mid-October debates in which Trump participated.
Despite what he’s said publicly, Trump has privately flirted with the idea of meeting Harris on the debate stage one more time, sources tell CNN. Several of his advisers have argued that it could serve as a way to make his case to the American people that Harris has had more than four years in office to fulfill the campaign promises she’s making now, a message that some of Trump’s allies didn’t think he pushed hard enough when they debated earlier this month in Philadelphia.
But some of Trump’s advisers believe his mind is firmly made up that it won’t happen. The former president himself has said it could depend on his mood.
A second meeting could serve Harris as well. While several polls, including the New York Times-Sienna College, found that viewers overwhelmingly thought Harris beat Trump in the debate, it didn’t deliver a significant bump and the race has remained in a dead heat.