Fox News anchor Bret Baier said Donald Trump is the reason his network has not yet hosted a second debate with the former president and Vice President Kamala Harris.
"The latest is — I actually believe, this is me talking — that the Harris campaign would do a Fox debate if the former president has come to the conclusion that there really shouldn't be another debate," Baier said during an appearance this week on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt's show.
"Now, his reasoning — don't know," he continued. "I always thought that it would be like a bug zapper in the backyard for the former president in that he couldn't get away from the light of 70 million viewers and that he would have to eventually — just knowing him, you know — do it if it was on Fox and something he could agree to.”
Baier, who regularly communicates with both the Trump and Harris campaigns, said he is "getting the sense from him and the campaign that they aren't moving past it. And really the holdup is not the Harris campaign and Fox; it is the former president."
Trump and Harris went toe to toe earlier this month in an ABC News-hosted debate that each camp quickly claimed as a victory shortly after it ended.
Harris accepted an invitation over the weekend from CNN to debate Trump a second time in October, but the former president rejected the offer, telling his rally crowd in North Carolina that "she had her chance."
"The problem with another debate is that it's just too late: Voting has already started," Trump told supporters in Wilmington, North Carolina. "She's had her chance to do it with Fox. You know, Fox invited us on, and I waited and waited, and they turned it down."
"They turned it down, but now she wants to do a debate right before the election with CNN because she's losing badly," he said.
The GOP nominee then compared Harris to "a fighter" who "sees the polls" and "sees what's happening."
"But it's like a fighter who goes into the ring and gets knocked out. The first thing he says is, I want a rematch," Trump said.
Mediaite recently reported that Trump made clear he would prefer to have one of the network's prime-time opinion hosts moderate a Fox-hosted debate, instead of Baier or news anchor Martha MacCallum.
Harris is widely viewed as being unlikely to participate in a debate hosted by Fox.