Update: At a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, Trump backed away from another debate, saying “The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late. Voting has already started.”

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Donald Trump for a second time on October 23. Now the ball is in the former president’s court.

After getting trounced by Harris in their first debate earlier this month, Trump initially ruled out a second face-off. “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” he posted on Truth Social two days after the candidates faced off on ABC. But by that Friday, he seemed more open to the idea. “Maybe if I got in the right mood, I don’t know,” he told reporters during a news conference in California.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement that “Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate.”

Trump’s performance in the last debate was largely characterized by a series of malicious and incoherent lies. As my colleague David Corn wrote:

He tossed out—often in a hard-to-follow jumble of words that probably could only be deciphered by his true devotees—one debunked lie after another. Undocumented immigrants are stealing and eating people’s pets in Ohio. (“I see people on television talking about it,” he said as way of confirmation.) And undocumented migrants are violently taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. Doctors in Democratic states are executing babies after they are born. Crime is down throughout the world but increasing in the United States. Everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and all legal scholars—wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Harris and the Democrats are scheming to confiscate all guns. Joe Biden has pocketed money from Ukraine and China. Harris is a “Marxist” and hates Jews, Arabs, and Israel. He has had no connection to Project 2025. Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the violence on January 6. Top professors at the Wharton School have praised his tariffs plan (which many economists have said will lead to inflation and unemployment). The economy when he was president was the best ever.

Trump, apparently, saw this as a win. “In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Whether or not Harris and Trump face each other again, their running mates Tim Walz and JD Vance will take part in a debate on October 1, hosted by CBS News.

Donald Trump will be campaigning in North Carolina today—without Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor by his side. The Trump campaign has remained mum about Robinson, a top Trump ally, since CNN reported on Thursday that Robinson had made a series of “inflammatory comments” on a pornographic message board more than a decade ago, including referring to himself as a “black NAZI!” and praising Mein Kampf as a “good read.”

This wasn’t Robinson’s first scandal. Last October, Jewish Insider reported that Robinson had made antisemitic comments on social media going back a decade, including sharing a quote about racial pride that has been attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Trump endorsed Robinson in March despite these remarks, even referring to the candidate, who has denied that systemic racism exists, as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Trump won North Carolina in 2020 with his narrowest margin of victory. Politico reports that the Harris campaign sees the scandal as an opening to appeal to voters in the state. “Trump made Mark Robinson,” advisers wrote in a memo, “and he will have to answer for him.”

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign released a new ad highlighting Trump’s past praise of Robinson, and Robinson’s comments on abortion. The ad includes a clip where Robinson says, “abortion in this country is about killing a child because you aren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

In a video on Thursday, Robinson denied writing the posts revealed by CNN. “You know my words, you know my character, and you know I have been completely transparent in this race and before.”

More than a week after a disastrous debate, President Joe Biden sat down with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News to answer some of the tough questions his performance raised about his ability to run for office. Biden repeated many of the claims his team had already made since last Thursday: he was sick, he was exhausted, and yes, he had a bad night, but it wasn’t an “indication of any serious condition.”

He made clear he would not consider dropping out of the presidential race, with one concession—”if the Lord Almighty comes down” to tell him to.

Whether or not God intervenes, Democrats are beginning to step in. In the week following his debate, four House Democrats called on Biden to step out of the race, and they were joined this morning by Rep. Angie Craig from Minnesota, the first member from a swing state to make the call.

“Given what I saw and heard from the President during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of forceful response from the President himself following that debate, I do not believe that the President can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump,” Craig said in a statement. Biden won Minnesota in 2020 by 7 points. FiveThirtyEight reports that he currently leads Trump in the state by about half a percentage point.

Craig’s stance might not come as a surprise. As early as 2022, she was questioning whether Biden should run again in 2024. “I would say we need new leaders in Washington up and down the ballot in the Democratic Party,” she answered when asked if she would support Biden’s run two years ago.

Representatives Mike Quigley of Illinois and Lloyd Doggett of Texas, both who called on Biden to drop out before the Friday interview, have reemphasized their positions since seeing the conversation. Quigley told CNN, “What we need right now—and what I think takes a spine—is to step aside and recognize the president of the United States doesn’t have the vigor necessary to overcome the deficit here and it’s going to affect us all.” Doggett, who was the first member of the House to make a statement encouraging Biden to drop out, told CNN, “Joe Biden is a good man. He’s an American patriot. Yet the need for him to step aside is more urgent tonight than when I first called for it on Tuesday.”

Stephanopoulos asked Biden what he might do if Chuck Shumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi told Biden his staying in the race might risk losing the House and the Senate. He mostly rejected the premise of the question, stating that none of these people have said he should leave, and that he doesn’t expect any of them are going to.

“If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race,” Biden said, “The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”