Harris Challenges Trump to Debate Again as She Rallies in North Carolina

At her first post-debate campaign events, Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly challenged former President Donald J. Trump to a second onstage clash and sought to use her opponent’s erratic performance as a springboard into the race’s final stretch.

“I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” Ms. Harris said at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., less than an hour after Mr. Trump wrote in all capital letters on his site Truth Social that “there will be no third debate!”

Despite Ms. Harris’s sharp performance on Tuesday night — her team quickly said she would be willing to debate again — her campaign has indicated that it sees the race as virtually unchanged, and has tried to keep Democrats grounded by reminding donors and supporters that “elections are not won by debates.”

But at back-to-back rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro, Ms. Harris signaled that she would try to make some of Mr. Trump’s debate remarks echo through the rest of the campaign. And she immediately leaned into the contrast she had aimed to draw on Tuesday night.

Ms. Harris said that at the debate, she had talked about issues that mattered to American families, like bringing down the cost of living and lifting up small businesses, as well as protecting basic freedoms. Mr. Trump, she said, had reprised “the same old show.”

“Because, you know, it’s all about him, it’s not about you,” she said in her speech at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, where most of the roughly 8,600 seats were filled. “Well, folks, I said it then, I say it now. It’s time to turn the page.”