Vice President Kamala Harris wants to go another debate round with former president Donald Trump.

The Democrat’s campaign plans to announce after Tuesday’s debate a desire for a second meetup with the GOP nominee before the November elections, according to a person familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. The decision to request another debate was made before both candidates took the stage Tuesday night.

Trump has previously called for three debates with Harris, but it was not immediately clear whether he would agree to a second meeting after Tuesday’s clash in Philadelphia. Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign adviser, responded to the news with a brief statement. “Of course,” he wrote. “They need clean up.”

The Harris campaign is expected to continue to push for the candidates’ microphones to be live during the next meeting — a position that Trump’s campaign refused to agree to for Tuesday’s debate.

The debate negotiations have been fraught since both the major parties agreed to abandon the system of three presidential meetings overseen by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. President Joe Biden, when he was leading the Democratic ticket, proposed a June debate on CNN and Tuesday’s debate on ABC, and Trump quickly agreed.

But after a disastrous June debate performance resulted in Harris taking over Biden’s campaign, Trump initially indicated that the debate planned for Tuesday on ABC had been “terminated.” “I’ll see her September 4th, or I won’t see her at all,” he posted on social media on Aug. 3.

Nine days later, he proposed three debates, on Sept. 4, Sept. 10 and Sept. 25. Harris responded by saying she would talk about future debates only after Trump and her met on Sept. 10. Trump opted to do a town hall with Fox News Host Sean Hannity on Sept. 4 instead, and agreed to the Tuesday debate.

The Harris decision is driven by the campaign’s all-hands effort to give her more face time with key undecided and unlikely voters, many of whom still are far less familiar with her candidacy than that of Trump. While the Harris campaign has a much larger field operation and is spending far more money on advertising, her strategists have been focused in recent weeks on introducing her and her plans to voters, casting their candidate as “A New Way Forward,” despite her current White House role.

Since the last night of the Democratic National Convention in August, the Harris campaign has spent $101 million on television, radio and digital ads, according to AdImpact, compared to $47 million spent by the Trump campaign. When outside groups focused on the presidential election are included, Democrats have outspent Republicans by a margin $186 million to $138 million, according to AdImpact.

Trump has tried to overcome his disadvantage by spending far more time in interviews, including the Fox News town hall and multiple podcast interviews.

Network executives have proposed a wide array of possible dates for future meetings of Harris and Trump, giving both campaigns multiple options for another setting.

Both campaigns have agreed to an Oct. 1 debate hosted by CBS in New York City between both major party vice-presidential nominees, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). The Harris campaign rejected the Trump campaign’s proposal for a second meeting between Walz and Vance on Sept. 18.

From the moment Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, it was clear she was on a singular mission: to get under former president Donald Trump’s skin.

She walked directly up to Trump, and into his space, to shake his hand — a maneuver a Harris campaign official described in a text as a “power move.” She used an analysis by his alma mater — the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania — to rebut his economic plan. And she rattled off some of the 200 Republicans who have worked for previous Republican presidents and nominees but who have endorsed her over Trump, their party’s standard-bearer.

“If you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is — if he didn’t make it clear already — just ask people who have worked with him,” Harris said, gaining momentum. “His former chief of staff, a four-star general, has said he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States. His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of defense has said the nation, the republic, would never survive another Trump term.”

And that was all in the first 30 minutes. She later mentioned the “late, great John McCain,” whom she knows Trump despises. She talked in detail about Trump’s criminal convictions and that he was found liable for sexual assault in New York. She talked about him losing the 2020 election repeatedly. She talked about his response to the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville in 2017, widely viewed as a low point in his first term. She repeatedly brought up Project 2025, a right-wing plan written by his allies and advisers that he has denounced.

A Harris campaign official described the effort as part of a multiday strategy — including an ad released Tuesday morning featuring former president Barack Obama mocking Trump’s obsession with crowd size — that her team hoped would ensure that Trump walked onto the debate stage “triggered.”

In that, Harris largely succeeded.

Trump’s advisers had tried to prepare him for personal insults and attacks on his past — especially his various criminal indictments — and he began the debate calmly enough, seemingly determined to half scowl, half stare straight ahead through Harris’s answers, refusing to take her bait. Much of the debate prep — billed as “policy sessions” — was about getting him ready for the personal attacks and preparing policy rebuttals.

“Kamala Harris came in rehearsed. She delivered the prepared lines that her handlers gave her but she didn’t answer a single question on the issues,” Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said.

But Trump simply couldn’t resist. The former president gets particularly irritated when Democrats bring up his former advisers who have publicly turned on him — especially John F. Kelly, the former White House chief of staff to whom Harris alluded — and he became more animated Tuesday night when Harris ticked through a list of his former advisers and their rebukes.

“I fired most of those people, not so graciously,” he said.

Later, when Trump attacked Harris on immigration, falsely alleging that Biden-Harris policies had allowed migrant crime to run rampant, the vice president was ready with a well-practiced retort.

“I think this is so rich coming from someone who has been prosecuted for national security crimes; economic crimes; election interference; has been found liable for sexual assault; and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing,” she said, as Trump, unable to control himself, abandoned his thousand-yard gaze to nod — and then shake — his head dismissively, before accusing her without proof of being behind the charges.

But if Harris landed any knockout blow — at least to Trump’s own psyche — it was when she invited viewers to attend “one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” which she called “a really interesting thing to watch.” She mocked him for regularly talking about Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer, and for claiming that windmills cause cancer — and then she went in for the kill.

“And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” she said.

At this, Trump’s eyes flared, his eyebrows arched high. Harris continued to make her point — “The one thing you will not hear him talk about is you,” she said — but Trump was already agitated. He dismissed a question from the moderator, saying he wanted to respond to her rally comment.

“She said people start leaving,” Trump said. “People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go.”

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) praised Trump’s debate performance in the spin room following it. But he also acknowledged some skill on Harris’s part. “What we learned tonight is that Kamala Harris is actually probably pretty good at needling people,” he said.

As the debate continued, Harris continued to do just that. She described herself as a “middle-class kid raised by a hardworking mother,” and as someone who, unlike Trump, knows “not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times.” And she repurposed Trump’s signature line from his signature show, “The Apprentice,” to rebut his repeated false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” she said. “So let’s be clear about that. And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

Trump again said the election was stolen from him, repeating a claim many on his team do not believe is popular with general election voters.

But by then, already off-kilter and having lost at least some of the self-restraint his aides hoped he’d display, Trump was already playing on tilt.

Returning to immigration, a weakness for Harris, Trump instead repeated false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said, in a claim that prompted a real-time fact-check — false — by one of the debate moderators. “The people that came in — they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

At another point, he used dismissive language to portray immigrants in broad strokes, saying, “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically.”

When Harris said that “world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump,” and that military leaders, including some who have worked with him, have called him “a disgrace,” Trump’s response was to invoke an authoritarian, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as a de facto character witness.

Trump’s advisers have encouraged him not to repeatedly bring up the 2020 election — and his false claim it was stolen — as well as his defense of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

They wanted him to avoid his obsession with the Democratic Party replacing President Joe Biden with Harris as the nominee, following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June. Instead, they have urged him to focus on policy issues, which they believe will accrue to his political benefit.

Yet on Tuesday night, Trump’s execution of those goals was mixed. At times, he moved to attack Harris on policy, but he also repeatedly found himself defending and engaging on those topics his team wanted him to avoid.

“It’s important to remind the former president: you’re not running against Joe Biden,” Harris said. “You’re running against me.”

After the debate, Trump’s allies tried to spin his performance. He came to the spin room himself, citing unnamed polls that he’d won. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) said Trump’s critics had expected him to be nasty and personal — but in fact it was Harris who did that.

“It was actually her,” Waltz said. “She went very personal.”

Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who extensively prepared Trump for the debate, said his anger wasn’t surprising.

“He’s not a fake politician who delivers recited lines like Kamala Harris does. And he cares a lot about the things that he’s doing. So I’m not surprised that he lets a little emotion out sometimes,” she said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was slightly more candid, noting that Harris’s “goal was to rattle him — her goal was to bait him.”

“There were points where he got a bit rattled, but not to the point he lost the point he was trying to make in total,” said Graham, who added that Trump was best when he talked about policies and her record.

Still, Graham conceded: “It could have been better.”

Isaac Arnsdorf and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.

Tuesday’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump was as widely anticipated in some D.C. neighborhoods as a championship game. So, residents took to bars, cafes and campus centers to watch and fend off nerves with a drink or two in hand and sympathetic ears nearby.

On Tuesday, students at Howard University were eager to get a look at Harris, one of their graduates, on the stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Dirty Water, a bar in the H Street Corridor that typically hosts Boston sports fans, partnered with the D.C. Young Republicans to air the proceedings.

Before the debate began, Anaya Brodie stood outside a ballroom at Howard, handing out a stack of small sheets of paper printed with the “debate bingo” that she created. Bingo players crossed off squares for moments during the debate, such as when Project 2025 came up. There were squares for throwing insults, rolling eyes, Trump saying “wrong” or Harris giggling.

“Some people celebrate the Super Bowl, but it’s Howard. So, like, the debate kind of feels that way,” Brodie, 17, said.

The crowd in the ballroom quickly grew so big that organizers had to open a second space to broadcast the debate. Many students were locked into the policy points, listening closely to the back-and-forth. Others sat with notebooks and laptops open, finishing homework and catching up for class.

The audience cheered for what they saw as moments of victory for Harris, snapping their fingers and nodding heads in agreement. They jeered at points they disagreed with.

Brodie, wrapped in a white blanket, sat on the floor at the front. She said she was feeling a bit more optimistic about the election after Harris joined the race and checks the polls nearly every day. She even saw Harris on campus during welcome week.

The freshman says she’s excited about the possibility of the first Black woman president.

“I wanted to be the first Black woman president, but that seems too stressful,” Brodie said. “So, I’ll let Kamala have it.”

Trey Jones, an 18-year-old freshman, said he was excited to see someone who could “finally stop Trump.” He said Harris is an inspiring candidate, and he loves her connection to Howard. It’s cool to know that she lived in the same dorms that students do today and spent time on the same campus, he said.

“The parties after she wins are going to be fun,” Jones said. “We will be partying day and night.”

At the Dirty Water bar, Toby Keith, Shaboozey and other country singers were blaring over speakers as patrons sipped their drinks.

One of the attendees was seeking public office himself and courting votes. Ciprian Ivanof, the Republican candidate for D.C.’s shadow representative, sat in the corner of the second-story bar. He was there during the debate in June between Trump and President Joe Biden, and he said he felt it was important to show up again.

“Republicans are highly isolated in D.C.,” Ivanof, 36, said. The resident of the Chevy Chase neighborhood sensed the shift in feelings around the election and said that Harris seemed “much more cognitively capable than Biden, but she seems to have public speaking problems.”

The largely male crowd remained relatively sedate when Trump and Harris jousted on abortion and women’s reproductive rights. Those seated at the bar looked at each other incredulously when moderator Linsey Davis fact-checked Trump’s claim that some Democratic leaders supported legislation that allows abortions in later stages of pregnancy or even “probably after birth.”

Some of the loudest hoots and hollers of the night at Dirty Water came on the issue of border security, immigration and Trump citing the assassination attempt on his life. Attendees gathered on the patio and along a rooftop deck broke out in laughter when Harris was questioned on the changes in her policy positions.

Toward the end of the debate, John Logan turned to his friends near the bar and muttered, “She won.” Logan, a field director for U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan (R), wanted to be among other Republican friends. But the self-described “Massachusetts Republican” was in the minority among the pro-Trump crowd.

“I think we should all be relieved that someone with such candor and someone with such ability to unite people with the way that she speaks has won,” Logan, 26, said. “I think that’s a big step forward for where we could be going as a country.”

Logan echoed his boss’s stance as a voice of moderation within his party. “I think a lot of Republicans feel the way I feel,” Logan said. “But they feel like they’re constrained by the fact that Trump has a very, you know, committed base.”

Back at Howard, Jasmyn Gore-Roberts, 18, couldn’t help but think about what makes someone a good leader as she watched the debate. When Harris spoke about lifting people up instead of tearing people down, Gore-Roberts, who is enrolled in a leadership class this semester, opened the notes app on her phone and jotted it down. The moment, she said, was inspirational.

“I just live, laugh, love her,” Gore-Roberts said.

Brodie said she thought Harris did very well but found the debate to be quite predictable.

Predictable enough that she hit bingo three times.

Former president Donald Trump pressed ahead with his ongoing effort to erode confidence in U.S. elections during his debate Tuesday night with Vice President Kamala Harris, repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 vote, refusing to condemn the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and claiming without evidence that Democrats are helping millions of noncitizens cast ballots this fall.

Trump twice declined to say whether he had any regrets about the attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters, egged on by the president, stormed the building in an effort to block the final certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

“Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her,” Trump said about a pro-Trump rioter who was killed while attempting to enter the House chamber that day. “Nobody on the other side was killed.” He did not elaborate on what he meant by “the other side.”

In addition to Babbitt, three police officers died in the immediate aftermath of the riot — one who collapsed that day while battling rioters and two others who took their own lives in the days to follow. Three other people died as a result of medical emergencies suffered during the riot.

Trump also said he was being “sarcastic” when he recently said he lost in 2020 “by a whisker” — a line that drew condemnation from far-right influencers such as Nick Fuentes and threatened Trump’s support among those who have repeated his false claims that the election four years ago was stolen.

“Look, there’s so much proof, all you have to do is look at it,” Trump said. No such proof ever surfaced in dozens of lawsuits that year, and Trump’s aides have testified that he was repeatedly told by allies that he had lost.

Trump on Tuesday suggested fraud will mar this year’s vote, specifically claiming without evidence that Democrats are encouraging noncitizens to cast ballots. The false claim has become a regular talking point among right-wing influencers, including X owner Elon Musk. Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections; noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

“We have to have borders, and we have to have good elections,” he said. “Elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.”

The remarks underscored the possibility that Trump may not accept the result in November if he loses. The former president has said he believes the only way he can lose is if the Democrats cheat.

Trump’s debate remarks come just days after he posted on social media his plans to jail people “involved in unscrupulous behavior,” related to voting in this year’s election, suggesting without evidence that the election could be stolen from him. Trump’s post prompted widespread condemnation from election officials, who said such rhetoric could provoke violence.

Harris seized on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat four years ago and predicted he would do the same if he loses this year, too.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So let’s be clear about that,” Harris said during the debate as Trump shook his head. “And clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that. But we cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he did in the past, to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election.”

Harris also condemned Trump’s recollections of the violent events of Jan. 6.

“I was there and on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation’s Capitol, to desecrate our nation’s Capitol,” she said. “On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured and some died. And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.”

Trump boasted of the admiration he has won from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has consolidated power by curtailing press freedom and choking off independent institutions.

“Let me just say about world leaders, Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man,” Trump said. “He’s a tough person, smart prime minister of Hungary.”

Harris was prepared with a retort to that, citing Trump’s comments that he wants to be a dictator, but only on his first day in office.

“He exchanged love letters with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un,” Harris said, before addressing Trump directly.

“It is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again,” she said, “because they’re so clear they can manipulate you with flattery and favors.”

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.