Harris to Taunt Trump During Georgia v Alabama Game

“Winners Never Back Down From A Challenge… But Losers, They Whine and Waffle And Take Their Ball Home,” the campaign taunts.

As the 2024 election heads into the final stretch, the Harris campaign is sort of literally leaving it all on the field.

This morning the campaign launched Athletes for Harris, to organize and mobilize athletes and coaches for the Harris-Walz campaign, pointing out that athletes are trusted voices, especially for young men, and sporting events bring in politically diverse crowds. The campaign is using these events to improve their reach with young men and Gen Z. Today, they got the endorsement of 15 NFL Hall of Famers already.

Athletes for Harris is captained by co-chairs Thomas Booker, Magic Johnson, Billie Jean King, Steve Kerr, Ali Krieger, Candace Parker, Doc Rivers, Dawn Staley, Ali Truwit and Chris Paul.

Keeping in line with the push among athletes, the campaign will use the primetime Georgia Bulldogs versus Alabama Crimson Tide game ex-president Donald Trump will be attending to fly a banner over the stadium saying “Trump’s Punting on 2nd Debate,” while nationally they’ll air a ad titled, “Say it to my face.”

The campaign says the new ad will “remind Americans how Trump continues to punt on Vice President Harris’ challenge to join her for the second presidential debate on October 23 on CNN. The ad will run nationally during tonight’s game. In addition to the television ad, a plane will fly above Bryant-Denny stadium reminding attendees, including Trump, of the facts: ‘Trump’s Punting on 2nd Debate.’”

“Winners Never Back Down From A Challenge… But Losers, They Whine and Waffle And Take Their Ball Home,” they taunt.

The ad:

NARRATOR: Winners never back down from a challenge. Champions know it’s any time, any place.

But losers, they whine and waffle and take their ball home.

RACHEL SCOTT, ABC NEWS: Trump now refusing to debate a second time.

FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN CHARLIE DENT: He did terribly in the last debate. He’s so easily triggered by Kamala Harris.

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage.

If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.

I’m Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.

Republicans from Kellyanne Conway to Senator Lindsey Graham have said they want Trump to debate the Vice President again, but we can be pretty sure none of them actually want that to happen, unless they’re quietly rooting against Trump.

There is nothing but further humiliation awaiting the convicted felon were he to debate again, even with CNN’s no factchecking rules. Some Republicans intuitively understand this, including Trump, who has refused to accept the pre-arranged debate on CNN with the VP.

Trump could use a second debate to rehab his destruction of his own image, but he could only achieve that if he were to deliver actual policies that weren’t related to the border deal that he destroyed, stay on topic and not talk about crazy conspiracies while avoid being goaded by Harris.

But as we’ve seen at his rallies, Trump cannot stay on topic. He rambles for an hour and a half, taking out his decades old grievances to stroke them as even his most loyal fans leave early. Not even diehard Trumpers want to watch him howling and crying like a madman in need of his narcissistic supply.

It’s a good thing for Trump that he’s holding significantly less rallies this election cycle as compared to 2016. And one of the reasons cited for that is that he’s “older” now and wants to stay at Mar-a-Lago. It seems a majority of the country would also like him to stay at MAL; perhaps that can be arranged on November 5th.

Trump is trying to claim that Harris wants to debate again “because she lost” the debate in which the country saw a wildly out of control Trump talking about fictional boogeymen eating cats and dogs in his running mate’s, Senator JD Vance, state of Ohio. Trump and Vance’s false claims about Haitians in Springfield led to repeated bomb threats against elementary schools and other institutions, causing them to have to close down.

It goes without saying that the entire lie about people eating cats and dogs was so thoroughly debunked that the cat belonging to woman who filed the police report was found… in her home. In the basement. She has since apologized to her Haitian neighbors for filing the police report suggesting they played a part in her pet’s brief disappearance.

Vance was told *before* the debate that the cat and dog eating lies weren’t true. Yet, the day after the rumor was debunked, Trump repeated it to a national audience on the debate stage, resulting in bomb and shooting threats to close down colleges and local city offices.

“Donald Trump walked off the stage at the first debate angry and rattled after he failed to offer any coherent vision for where he wants to take this country, so now he’s trying to take his ball and go home. No matter where Trump looks tonight – whether it’s up in the sky or at the TV in his luxury box – he won’t be able to escape the truth: Trump is running away from a second debate with Vice President Harris because he doesn’t want the American people to see just how weak and unpopular he and his Project 2025 agenda are,” said Harris-Walz Communications Director Michael Tyler in a statement sent to PoliticusUSA.

It’s hard to believe there are people who still support the Republican ticket after Trump’s 34 felony convictions and being found liable for rape and fraud as well as indictments for inciting a domestic terrorist attack against his own country and trying to steal the 2020 election, but there are, albeit fewer as the support is being chipped away by Republicans endorsing Harris and offering a permission structure to their base to do the same.

Another horrible debate showing Trump’s decompensating mental health could only cause him to lose support. He can’t win enough new voters over because the lies with which he won 2016, like claiming he would fix everything and promising to keep open a factory he never did anything to address (that in fact closed during his term), are a harder sell now that he already had a chance and failed miserably.

People only need to be reminded of how Donald Trump handled covid to understand the inherent danger of his pitch, “What do you have to lose?”

The answer is, a hell of a lot, including our lives.