To encourage Donald Trump to return to the debate stage with Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats are planning a new messaging campaign calling the former president a “coward” for declaring he will not debate again.
The Democratic National Committee will set up static and mobile billboards and even have a staff member dressed as a chicken appear at Trump’s upcoming campaign rallies.
The chicken posters, which will be seen for the first time on Monday at Trump’s rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, feature a digitally altered image of Trump in a chicken costume and the words “There is no debate: Donald Trump is a chicken.”
Harris and Trump met in Philadelphia this month for their first debate, hosted by ABC News.
The two argued over immigration, inflation and abortion, but just two days later Trump wrote on Truth Social: “There will be no third debate!”
While Harris and Trump only met once on the debate stage this cycle, Trump also debated President Joe Biden in June when he was still in the race.
On Saturday, Harris’ campaign announced that she had accepted CNN’s invitation to participate in a debate on October 23.
“Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate. It has the same format and structure as the CNN debate in June, which he attended and claimed as the winner, praising CNN’s moderators, rules and ratings,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, co-chair of Harris’ campaign, said in a statement Saturday.
CNN moderated the debate against Biden earlier in the cycle, and Trump has indicated he would like other networks to moderate the debate as well. Last month, he said he had agreed to a proposed debate on Fox News.
But Trump reiterated his decision not to participate in the debate again on Saturday, telling the audience at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “The problem with another debate is that it’s just too late. The voting has already started.”
Early voting began last week in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota.
In a press release about the upcoming chicken billboards, the Democratic National Committee pointed out that Biden and Trump debated in the 2020 presidential election on October 22, after the election had already begun.
There was no immediate response from the Trump campaign team to a request for comment.
